Film Photography

By Mark Brimblecombe

If you started photography 25 years ago, or before, then you used a film camera. Since then, nearly all of us have transitioned to digital. Modern digital cameras are amazing. But so are film cameras. The process of making photos with film is different. This is an opinion piece, not a technical review, or even an answer to that stupid question, ‘Is digital better than film, or vice versa?’ They are different, like apples and oranges.

An analogy is that of using a car. Some people who use modern vehicles also have vintage cars. Both get you to a destination, but the experience of getting there is much different. For me the “film” experience is more enjoyable than the digital, partly because I make thousands of digital photos every week in my work. This is important to me, considering what Susan Sontag said about photographs: ‘They are experiences captured.’

From both the experience perspective and the outcome (the photograph), film photography is great because it is slow and not rushed. With digital one shoots hundreds if not thousands of photos on a shoot and returns home with perhaps 20 reasonably good photos after lengthy processing. With film, I typically get six to ten great photos from a roll of 36, with very little processing. Back in the 1980s, I did wedding photography with film ̶ six rolls of 36 (216 photos, all perfectly exposed by the way), and that was all that was needed for making up an album of prints. Now I shoot weddings in digital, sometimes with more than 2,000 photos, and I end up with maybe 60 great photos! Why? I’m shooting very quickly and not thinking enough about composition, exposure settings, etc. Besides that, it takes more than a day to process a few thousand digital photos. Sigh…

Film photography is by nature a slow process, and one can argue better, like slow cooking or matured wine. There’s no LCD screen on the back of the camera, so no instant results. You get to see your results a week or two after clicking the shutter button. There’s a “gestation” period.

Shooting film is slow in other respects too. I love Ilford FP4 and Ilford Delta 100 film, both 100 ISO. Ilford PanF is 50 ISO, and Rollei PRX 25 is 25 ISO. So, often a slow/long shutter speed is required with the camera on a tripod. There’s more time to consider the best composition and a desired exposure. I nearly always use an incident light meter to get the perfect exposure.

One of the lovely things about film is the grain texture, which is nothing like the “noise” in a digital photo. Low ISO film is very fine, so the grain is barely visible. But it’s there, and it’s beautiful. Another great thing about film is that you don’t get “blown out” highlights, the bright blobs when the pixels on the digital sensor can’t cope. With film (analogue) you record an infinite range of tones to pure white.

Once upon a time, I did the chemical processing of the film myself, and then scanned the negatives for bringing them into the “digital” darkroom. But now I just send the film off to The Black and White Box in Auckland for developing and high-resolution scans of the 35mm negatives (costing $36.00). They send me, via email/WeTransfer, the scanned negatives as 30.4 megapixel TIFF files. I then import them into Adobe Lightroom for a few minor tweaks. This is not expensive ̶ less than $2.00 per photo, including courier charges and the cost of the film itself. The known cost of creating your pictures is another reason why you tend to slow down and consider each shot carefully.

Film Photography

By Mark Brimblecombe

Back in the 1980s I had a Canon AE1, EF, and the amazing F1. Now I have a Nikon F5 (purchased for $500.00) which attaches to my existing Nikon lenses, the lenses that I use for my digital work (14-24mm, 24-70mm, and 70-200mm). I also have two of the best mirrorless cameras, both Voigtländers with optical viewfinders (unlike watching a TV with the digital mirrorless) and each with Voigtländer 35mm f/1.2 manual focus lenses. These are great for street photography. I may buy a medium format film camera (a 6x6 Hasselblad) or a large format camera (4x5” or 8x10”) when I grow up, however I’m not yet ready to grow up. The 35mm film camera is great for all I want to do, and a relief from using digital “Instamatics”.

Some years ago, I set up a Facebook group for film photographers in New Zealand. We now have 1,292 members, many of whom are active photographers and willing to help novices. Perhaps, one day, PSNZ will recognise the renaissance of film photography and promote film as well.

Mark Brimblecombe is a professional photographer based in Whanganui.He is a former member of PSNZ and an accredited “judge”.

You can see a collection of his film photography here: https://adobe.ly/3tCNWcs. Email him to “kick start” your experience with film photography: mark.brimblecombe@gmail.com