I first switched back from digital to film in 2000. Yes, you read that correctly. From digital to film. In the year 2000. You see, I was working for Eastman Kodak during this time, Kodak Professional to be exact, and Kodak was, believe it or not, the company that put digital on the map. I had access to all the latest and greatest, and I was trained on how to use it. And I wore chartreuse golf shirts the entire time.
I did my first professional assignment with a digital camera in 1993, but it wasn’t until 1997 that the camera technology really came into its own. I can remember standing on a golf course in Flagstaff in 1997 shooting a commercial assignment, and the client was telling anyone who would listen, “This guy doesn’t even use film, he’s all digital.” I don’t think anyone involved knew what this meant. This was the era of big camera, small file, and it was semi-terrifying to work this way. No previews, slow computers, bad connectors and cables. The safety net was thin and unreliable.
By 2000, my honeymoon with digital was over. Digital was far more work and far more expensive than shooting film. Photographers from day one gave away the kitchen sink with digital and it almost immediately began to undermine the entire industry. Digital required a massive cash influx to purchase the equipment which was ten times the cost of film equipment, and also needed to be updated on a near-nonstop schedule. Rental houses had yet to begin stocking digital equipment because the lifespan of the kit was SO DAMN SHORT. Labs in Los Angeles, where I was living at the time, had recreational vehicles for rent, vehicles that came with computers, drives, viewing rooms and digital techs who actually knew how everything worked. It was crazy expensive, for both photographer and client.
Clients began to baulk.
One of the best photo labs in Los Angeles did a test and determined if you shot 40 rolls of 220 a day or less, it was far less expensive to shoot film. If you shot 40 rolls of 220 or more then it was cost effective to go digital. Boom. Clients returned to film in droves. Better skin tone, faster turn around time. YES, you read that correctly. Film was still faster and delivered better results, especially for those working with skin tone.
And for the photographer, in essence, they got their life back. Instead of staying up all night processing digital files, they could return to paying the lab to do that work, and charging the client for it. I can’t tell you how many photographers struggled against this while spending countless days and nights doing what they used to pay the lab to do, while also struggling to get clients to pay for this “tedious” behind the scenes work. (Anyone not charging their clients for this time is straight up crazy.) Clients also began to demand certain camera types for certain jobs, and the photographers took it on the chin by having to pony up or risk losing the job. (This was a dark time people.)
Industry publications, all fueled by the tech ad dollar, were relentlessly pushing the “film is dead” message, and legions of unsuspecting snappers found themselves with serious credit card bills and a dwindling customer base as more and more brands assigned some unsuspecting, low-level worker bee as their in-house photography “professional.” Why hire someone with skill when we can get an intern to do it for free?
“Good enough,” became the call sign for the entire
Digital Revolution, the precursor to the industry ending “fake it till you make it” mentality of today.
Speaking of today, all these years later, we still have people trying to sell us on their use of film. Let me be the first and last to say, “Nobody cares.” This is such an old, tired, dead story. The same can be said of those hyping the fact they made their photobook from iPhone images. There is NOTHING novel about this. NOTHING. If you are leading your conversation with your camera brand, or the fact you are using film, or that you are using an iPhone, you are screaming from the rooftops that you, my friend, are an amateur. (Nothing wrong with being an amateur but talking about this nonsense isn’t helping you.)
The vast majority, I’m talking 90% of all the film photography I see today, is subpar. Based more on the fact it was made on film than the light, timing and composition of the work itself. These essential building blocks of good photography often ignored entirely as the geeks orgy out over emulsion cliches. The vast majority of film work I see is static. Frozen. Derivative. Why? Because film is now so expensive to shoot, process, scan and deliver, it forces people to be overly concerned with frame rate. There is rarely any “shoot a scene to exhaustion,” effort which is what it takes to make great work. There is now the one or two frame “moments” of a static object, maybe the occasional portrait, but nothing that stands out. Urban abstract landscapes void of people. Barns, cars, people in beams of light on a street corner, anything near the Salton Sea, Yosemite, Cape Cod, or anything already done by Todd Hido. (Name any other Hipster Trail location.) Yawn. Wait, no, I fell asleep years ago.
Film photography has brought us the blizzard of mundane. However, before you go putting a nail in the coffin of film photography, there are exceptions to this rule. One of the best portrait photographers working in the celebrity space shoots film but you would never know it. He doesn’t talk about it. He just makes great work. He’s a professional. There are good photographers using film who focus on what matters; the work. Prosumers focus on materials. Pros focus on the take.
Also, beware of those selling film as the main story.
Anyone selling you on the right path for you is most likely mostly just trying to sell you in general. A membership, a set of actions, a book, something, anything. The industry, both real and online, is filled with charlatans. Film is just one avenue to exploit. In many cases, the people selling you film now are the EXACT same people who ten years ago told you film was dead and there was no reason to ever use it again. The EXACT same people who said websites and blogs were dead and that Instagram was what you HAD TO DO. Charlatans. All of them. Photographic snake oil salespeople who want your money, or subs, in whatever direction the wind blows. This entire thing is shameless and embarrassing. No wonder the world looks at us as a bunch of geeks. (And how long before they all depart film for medium format Fuji?)
If you want to shoot film then do it. Go for it. Spend your hard earned scratch on your emulsion of choice. Just remember we don’t care. We care about your process, your story, and your work, just not in this order. If I drive to a portfolio review and explain to the reviewer, “Hi, nice to meet you.” “Just drove here using Exxon Super Unleaded.” What do you think their response would be? How many times have I reviewed portfolios only to be faced by someone who leads with “I only shoot film.” I DON’T CARE. If that is the reason I’m looking at your work, sorry, not interested. That ship sailed decades ago.
This post is not meant to slam film photographers. This post is meant to help those who want to be taken seriously. And sure, this post is also to slam people focused on the wrong things while trying to sell others on the same nonsense. This does you, nor me, nor photography any good. Making great photographs is rare and expensive. Great photography often requires time, access, trial and error. Great photography does not fit the current online model of get rich and famous fast. Great photography and great following are often unrelated. Film, digital, whatever. Remember, the first reverse migration was happening around the year 2000. This is NOT new. This is NOT novel. This is NOT interesting.
Imagine your old, decrepit self somewhere down the line. Overflowing diaper, feeding tube, hanging on by a thread. The nurse comes and asks if you have anything left to say. “Well, I just want people to know I was a film shooter.” Heck, she might pull your plug right there. I would urge her to, and might even help her cover her tracks. It’s a public service after all. You see where I’m going here? It’s not something you lead or end with.
Comments 62
As ever in these matters, you are on the money.
Author
So tired of being right!
I’m starting a project this fall about the waterways of SW Ontario (sorry Dan, no people in this series, just landscapes). Will shoot in the season between fall and winter when the harvest is in and the fields are fallow but the snow’s not yet here. Been exploring tools that might match the vision: Brownie box camera, Leica SL (digital), Holga lens on a Pentax K1, Hasselblad 503 so far. None of these is quite right. Thinking pinhole next. Film or digital doesn’t really matter to me. I just need the right tool to get the images I see in my head down on paper.
Author
That’s it. Find vision, work backwards.
” The truth will set you free… but, first, it will piss you off. ”
Well done, Daniel
Author
Yes, truth is a pesky thing.
1. Todd Hido – Damn good stuff there
2. Exxon Super Unleaded? Must be nice to be rich! 😉
Author
Todd is also a great bookmaker. Maybe the most plagiarized photographer, at least in terms of YouTubers.
Word
Author
Ya.
“Because EVEN IF WE WIN, even if we play so far over our heads our NOSES bleed for a WEEK to ten days, even if GOD in heaven ABOVE comes down and points his hand at our side of the field, even if every man woman and child held hands together and prayed for us to win, it just wouldn’t matter, because all the REALLY good-looking girls would still go out with all the guys from Mohawk because they got all the MONEY. It just doesn’t matter.”
Ah, Daniel-san: that last paragraph of your rant is pure gold. Thank you for being a breath of fresh air…
Author
God do I love that movie. “Some kind of veal…..”
Danielsan,
You are SO right (you must be near comatose). I could go off on every point you made, but I’ll limit it to (1). When digital hit, they said if you don’t switch over immediately; you’d be out of business within a couple of years (speaking of editorial). The digital “expense” you speak of, was even more for the publishers…It was well over a “decade” before film wasn’t the preferred media and even longer for cover-shots.
Author
I had dinner with someone who ran one of the labs in LA. He looked at me and said “digital is never gonna work, if you use it you will go out of business.” Five years later we had dinner at the same restaurant and he said “If you go back to film you will go out of business.” It was pure crazy. Still is.
And I’ll go a step further, it’s the culture of effort that’s lacking. You say that photography is an idea, and that it is found in your perspective, which is nothing more than a cultural package, that it’s better to invest in books and education, but they don’t get it. You finish, and the first thing they ask you is ‘Yeah, yeah, but what camera do you use for your projects?’ Would anyone ask a painter what brush they use?
Author
People just want to be famous right now. Forget about study, learning, knowing your history. They are drunk on bots and strangers.
“Well, I just want people to know I was a film shooter.” 😂
Author
I’m sure that will get you a set of flowers.
“Just drove here using Exxon Super Unleaded.” OMG… priceless!
Could have embellished it further with “… in a Ford Festiva”.
I’m bookmarking this one as a rant worth re-reading when I need a good laugh.
If someone doesn’t drive a Ford Festiva I don’t want to see their photos.
Author
Or a Yaris.
Author
I love the Festiva. Not as much as Yaris, however.
Imagine if people stopped scrolling all the derivative social media piffle online and stopped parroting whatever some iPhone guru in a ponytail had to say and instead turned all that noise off and explored deeply whatever creative whispers were trying to claw their way out of their soul and then worked on expressing that, refining that, improving that, and sharing that. It would be so cool to see the originality and authenticity instead of everyone copying everyone else. But then Blaise Pascal had it right about humanity’s inability to sit quietly in a room. We seem afraid to be with ourselves these days. Always have to have that screen blinking. Thus, we shut off access to our creative gifts.
Author
I think if people stopped scrolling a lot of them would be faced with the fact they have none of their own ideas.
Your take on film to digital and back is a reflection of our society trying to find life hacks and then realizing, the tested and true way is still good.
Author
Yes, we often like to complicate things.
Take one film camera, one roll of 36 exposure film, set the intention to make it last for 7 days. What 36 images would you choose to capture?
Author
I’m going to add this to my next Q&A.
You do know there are more than 8 of us here , right.
Author
Okay, at least ten.
Nothing like a good rant over your morning coffee! But actually you’ve helped me become a better version of myself by sharing your point of view, I still have a long way to go with my photography but I’m much more conscious and intentional now. Social has never been my thing, so I can just nod along (it’s terrible how destructive and efficient these platforms are!). I’m grateful for that education, and if we meet somewhere, somehow, you don’t have to worry about the yerba tea bill 😉
Author
I like that. Glad I could help and yes to a future yerba!
I’m a “shoot a scene to death” kinda guy. Even a pitbull, when the light is great. 99% of my images are crap but I get a few tolerables every now and then. I get lots of insights from the bad ones too though, so that’s an important part of my learning process. There’s now way that I could afford keeping the same rate if I was shooting film. Nor financially, nor mentally, with the added logistics and manual labour burden. On the other hand, I still very much enjoy these old mechanical objects, engineering marvels if you like, the sound when cocking and firing the shutter, playing with the film. So sometimes the inner geek gets his satisfaction too. But only the result matters.
Author
99% of all our images are crap. It’s the same for everyone. I love film too. Rarely use it anymore but not because it isn’t great.
I find it odd when the most interesting thing about a photograph is the camera. I can only imagine (in 2024) a lot of this comes from years of social media, where people make a big deal about the “Leica look” or Mamiya RB67 and the use of Kodak Portra, and this positivity and an increase in surface level engagement encourages others to follow.
I wonder if many of the film photography-centric YouTube and Instagrammers see much in the way of an increase in sales for prints/photobooks. It must be tiring after a while getting asked what lens, aperture, shutter speed camera body, and film stock was used.
Author
I think that’s all they have ever known. If you have been in conversation with great photographers, publishers, curators, agents, etc. The nonsense conversation on YT is agonizingly useless. But if that is all you know, well, probably okay.
One thing I miss with film is meeting other photographers in the lab. Going for coffee whilst waiting for the results of the clip test. Digital confined me to a room in my house; a void of solitude and mice (computer mice). Photography as I knew it has gone. We must move on. Of the army of ‘influencers’ (god help us)…..It is amazing how they have folk hanging on their every word. They shoot the most tragically mundane photographs and people think the sun shines out of their SD card or their Lomography Lady Grey, it’s astonishing. Either their disciples are fantastically polite or artistically barren. Your prose is delicious, but you speak from on high, which is so much healthier than whining from the valleys.
Author
You are spot on. The lab time was awesome. Their audience doesn’t know any better, and their audience is 90% geeky men who are more interested in the kit and clothes and trendy hats. Same for all genres on YT, IG, etc. Its’ about conformity.
Preach, brother. Best article on the topic read to date.
Author
Gracias.
Great post as always! I love seeing/sharing my film and camera to connect with fellow film enthusiasts. It’s less about promoting my work and more about building community. With a different take, if you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend Van Neistat’s video on film photography https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSTxlc4JpaA&t=75s
Author
Love me some Van.
Great, as allways! You are the Frank Zappa of photography!
Author
I’ll take it!
Nobody cares about your pictures.
I’ve been thinking about this oft-quoted notion for quite some time now. On the one hand, I realise it to be but a subjective reaction to the imagery out there, or should that be, to the idea of the imagery out there, whether actually seen or not, and that on the other hand, it is possibly a stance almost totally dependent on the speaker’s occupation.
The late, great British fashion and advertising photographer, Terence Donovan, several times said that for the amateur, the most difficult thing in photography is finding a reason to make a photograph. Those words were spoken, to the best of my knowledge, before the advent of social media.
When that arrived, the game – and the people – changed. It was no longer the awkward little matter of thinking about making an interesting picture, it was about using the camera to prove the person, the self existed: without a snap, you remained invisible, hadn’t been anywhere or done anything. Suddenly, the requirement of any nod to high art vanished, giving freedom from thought its passport to unlimited exposure on the world-wide web.
If that’s true, then there need be no intrinsic value in those images, and as most folks have, by now, seen zillions of meaningless pictures, the desire to see another is fighting well against the odds. The realisation that the rest of the world is probably stuck in the very same situation acts as a perfect off switch: if you believe everybody else to be trapped in the same box as yourself, why would you care about their pictures, about their words, or anything else about them? Unless they are being nice to you. That anybody gives a photo three seconds of their life is generosity indeed.
However, that’s what I see as the amateur world.
If you want to think about the professional one, or whatever remains of it, then I think it’s a very different story, and always was. The pro has every reason, every need to see and know what the competition is doing – and for whom. The pro urgently needs yardsticks by which to measure his or her own progress or standing, their relative position in the game.
It’s been ages since I last picked up a cheque for work done; I don’t expect ever to do so again. That said, in no way has it diminished my interest and thirst for the wonderful photography of which some of my contemporaries, my heroes and heroines were capable of producing. To this day, I love looking at the oeuvre of the likes of Sarah Moon, Deborah Turbeville, William Klein, Peter Lindbergh and Hans Feurer. I know most of their published material by heart; I can honestly say that not a day passes that I haven’t paid my respects to at least a couple of them on the Internet. So yeah, I most certainly do care.
The thing is, their pictures were interesting, were about something. Deborah Turbeville summed it up beautifully: I want my pictures to mean something to me… I don’t want them just to stand there as some commercial thing.
Deborah Turberville – YouTube
The above is supposed to link to a brief DT video. I’m not much good at computers and their tricks; maybe nothing will link. At least I tried.
Author
If you want to think about the professional one, or whatever remains of it, then I think it’s a very different story, and always was. The pro has every reason, every need to see and know what the competition is doing – and for whom. The pro urgently needs yardsticks by which to measure his or her own progress or standing, their relative position in the game.
There you go…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPAO2qATEk8
Sorry, this may work instead (Deborah Turbeville).
Author
DT, the legend.
Thanks for another great write up. Some mornings I look into the mirror and wonder if I am film hipster. I probably am but who cares about labels!
About 7-8 years ago, by chance, I happened to pick up a film camera again(I grew up with film). It rekindled my love for photography. It makes me excited to work on personal projects that somehow digital did not do for me.
It gets me out of the house. I don’t tell people I use film, I just go out and shoot.
These days AI have us questioning the integrity of digital images more so than ever. Makes me wonder if there is archival value in documenting with film?
Author
You might be, but there are worse things. Just don’t let the talk of photography become more than the photography itself.
Zhan, these days I question everything. I even question myself, and try to decide which particular hat I have opted to wear on any particular day. The truth of the matter is that we have, within us, the capability to be whoever/whatever we want to be – within our own little world. Labels are important, especially the ones we use to define ourselves; not for a second do I imagine that anyone here does not have a particular sense of who and what they are. That’s their label.
I don’t have any idea how old you are, but I can promise you this: the older you get the more you realise how many wrong decisions you have made, not necessarily with the big things but the details. Those little things can eventually turn out to be, collectively, the nails in any one of your various coffins.
Documenting with film. I’d say that it all depends on what you’re shooting, and for whom you think the images may eventually be important. It takes a great leap of faith to imagine that film, and all the support material and chemistry that’s needed in order to turn latent image into fixed record, will continue to be manufactured. I have some old transparencies and a very few negatives surviving from my past. Without an old computer system (that I no longer have) that allows me to use my Canoscan, they don’t mean a thing because that’s all they can ever be: old bits of film.
If you really like the idea of serious documentation, you have to think hard about subject matter and why your choices may be important in the future. My take on that would be that you have to start young – young, because it takes time to build a library of meaningful images. I think I would apply the same general rules as once applied to stock photography, and cover subjects that have some broader general appeal than just the personal. Look for old buildings facing possible demolition, find out something about them and make notes. Shoot shop windows that clearly display today’s fashions in clothing and furniture; in essence, anything that future generations could use as symbolic of how we were in our day. Magazine kiosks: old ones revealed the huge choice of photographic publications once available… record the location and date of everything you shoot. Today’s dull can be to tomorrow’s amazing.
Yesterday, my son-in-law sent me a link to a 60s black/white photo of a street in Glasgow, which may strike you, as it did me, as quite unremarkable except for one thing: the style. It was a backlit shot, high-contrast, with exactly the same look as currently in vogue with famous street photographers (including M Leica users 😉 )around the world, from Australia to London. There ain’t nothin’ new left to do in photography.
I spent all my working life with film – digital arrived at the end of it and helped accelerate that ending – but once I got over yearning for the old days, I did come to realise that digital could actually be very useful in the then new amateur status within which I found myself. Speed; no need for dedicated darkrooms etc.; what was there not to like, other than the new learning curve (huge) and horrific expense associated with re-equipping myself to a reasonable level? I say horrific expense, but that was and remains a perspective derived from the point of view that one no longer expects a financial return on investment. In fact, it’s absurd to think of amateur usage purchases as investments. They are dead money. You may be very bright, and be able to turn the Leica world into something profitable for you, but for the rest of us, money down the drain. Sure, you can buy fun, but it remains a one-way economic arrangement. Thinking otherwise is just one of those little nails I was writing about.
Hi Rob, thanks for the thoughtful reply. I hope my comment about not caring about labels did not came across too harsh, it was meant as a jest.
It was also not about film vs digital (I have digital cameras). My point is that it brings me out and makes me want to see more. For me now, the film camera does that.
I only shoot for myself as a hobby. Little stories in my head to printed photos on my scrapbooks. I do the occasional street photos of my local neighborhoods. Did that for several years, ended up donating more than a hundred photo to my local library. They have it now in their permanent archive. I see that as a little win in life.
Hi Zhan,
Yes, the donation to the library is a good way of getting things into more permanent arrangements, and also the kind of place from whence further use of the images could arise: the library already has a public profile and is a natural place to which enquiries could be addressed by anyone interested in a historical aspect of the area.
No, not caring about labels didn’t strike me as being in any way harsh – it just struck me as being inaccurate because one way or the other, we are all saddled with an image of ourselves, either our own or that of us formed by others. We can’t avoid it unless we become monks, but then I guess that, too, becomes an image, a label.
Enjoy your photography!
Author
Libraries are still key.
Here all along I thought that voice in my head was me talking to myself – instead it was you or maybe me who knows? Whatever, but the same words were said except the chartreuse shirts – is never wear that.
Author
Remember those Kodak shirts? Holy crap they were garish. My boss was the first guy to rebel and commission an all black shirt with Kodak logo. It ruffled some feathers.
I don’t know why or for what reason but for some reason I found myself scrolling through instagram recently. And probably about 99% of all the (pretty bad) photos I saw, the caption was just the make of camera and lens (or film stock). It seems like photography these days has nothing to do with the story or the picture and everything to do with what gear you have.
Also, probably about 90% of that 99% were Leica shooters! Lol!
Kurt,
They might be, but is there any way of telling between ownership dreams and reality?
I have noticed that M shooters often tend to cut feet; I wonder if it’s a product of bad camera frame indication? Once one notices this kind of thing, it tends to become ever more present. Truth to tell, I think I first noticed it with snaps from HC-B. Naturally, one is obliged to assume such was an intentional mannerism rather than viewfinder flaw. 😉
Author
That’s the useless stuff that I can’t for the life of me imagine why someone would participate. Again, it’s 99% geeky, middle aged men who want to talk tech.
Rob,
I always believe that you can do anything in photography. Cut off feet, cut off heads, have wonky horizons etc. As long as the photographer did it intentionally.
Author
Same for books.
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