The comeback of film?

[Bob Salomon]

Marginal cost per shot is much higher in 35mm (though lower than in larger formats) and then there's the lack of instant feedback. Both tend to encourage one to take more time to get it right and just-so than a DSLR where one can, as we say in the (firearm) shooting world "spray and pray."

Professional sports and news photographers have been using spray and pray long before digital ever existed!

[Jim Jones]

Professional sports and news photographers have been using spray and pray long before digital ever existed!

If not a motor drive, at least many shots during an event. Decades ago this amateur tried to limit a basketball game to just one 36 exposure roll. Now over a hundred frames is typical, and that's usually shooting with a fast non-zoom lens which limits opportunities. Basketball and track are often better captured with one correctly timed shot than a series at 5 frames per second. For example, a runner breaking the tape at 15 mph is moving at 22 fps. With luck, the motor driven camera might capture the best moment. Or the runner might be a foot short of the tape in one shot, and three feet beyond in the next. A good photographer only needs experience, not luck. It always helped me to use a good rangefinder camera, not a SLR or DSLR. The latest tools are not necessarily the best tools.

[Pere Casals]

It always helped me to use a good rangefinder camera, not a SLR or DSLR.

It depends on what it had to be done... In some situations a Nikon F5 or a Canon EOS-1v was the right tool, because of many reasons, improving the chances for a good photographer to do a good job. Of course Cartier-Bresson is a good lesson about how to fire in the right instant with the right framing, but a Pro required the most advanced tools to have a good commercial job done every day, no doubt. Excellent Pros were using F5 and EOS-1v, and they knew why...

[Andrew O'Neill]

Film is too expensive to buy, develop and print (if they even want prints) for most people. And digital prints, if the Photoshop guys can keep their booger hooks from over saturating colors, look pretty good.

I'll still shoot film because I enjoy it, just like some painters still paint with oils because they enjoy it.
Heck, I still enjoy painting with oils---the fumes make me feel like this guy---
Attachment 185141

I go home everyday smelling of fixer, and turpentine. Who needs cologne??

[Grandpa Ron]

Digital vs. Film photography is not zero sum game. One does not lose and the others win.

Digital vs film is like car vs horse, speed boat vs canoe, snowmobile vs cross country ski. One is simply a technological advancement over the other. Many people enjoy both but most prefer the easier route.

There is nothing inherently noble about limiting yourself to a few well thought out photos, when you can take dozens of well thought out photos faster and cheaper. The folks taking photographs think through and frame each shot, otherwise they are just taking snap shots.

Basically film is for fun.

[BrianShaw]

Amen brother Grandpa... basically film is fun... and gets the job done the way I like doing the job.

[Drew Wiley]

Digital versus film is like going back to the old days when men slaved away with bent sore backs and crooked necks enslaved in galleys, and strained their fingers in torment hour after hour ... I'm referring to the torment of computers of course, which I find to be a backwards, anti-ergonomic, distinctly miserable form of photography. Thank goodness, my galley days are over. In fact, this momentary web session reminding me of my own years on the galley is just about over. I'm heading out to the darkroom, for some retirement fun I well deserve after my "pardon".

[Pere Casals]

Basically film is for fun.

Well, film is not for most (99.99%, or higher) commercial photography, but still it's a Pro choice for some jobs. Star Wars IX (Dec 2019) is being shot in film right now, while Rogue One and Solo were shot in Alexa 65 digital cameras, both made by the same company (Lucasfilm/Disney).

These are > $200 million productions... sometimes raising 2 billion at box office (Episode VII).

The difference in the resulting cinematography is quite evident, and that difference comes from the medium capabilities. Personally I've no doubt that, beyond preferences, the film footage is technically way beyond from what best digital cinematography gear may offer today.

This not always makes a difference, and in many situations digital has a superior result, of course, but some skilled people knowing well the film medium are able to obtain celestial aesthetics beyond any "No Film School" cathedratic may even dream.

Film still rocks in some selected major productions.

[Bob Salomon]

Well, film is not for most (99.99%, or higher) commercial photography, but still it's a Pro choice for some jobs. Star Wars IX (Dec 2019) is being shot in film right now, while Rogue One and Solo were shot in Alexa 65 digital cameras, both made by the same company (Lucasfilm/Disney).

These are > $200 million productions... sometimes raising 2 billion at box office (Episode VII).

The difference in the resulting cinematography is quite evident, and that difference comes from the medium capabilities. Personally I've no doubt that, beyond preferences, the film footage is technically way beyond from what best digital cinematography gear may offer today.

This not always makes a difference, and in many situations digital has a superior result, of course, but some skilled people knowing well the film medium are able to obtain celestial aesthetics beyond any "No Film School" cathedratic may even dream.

Film still rocks in some selected major productions.

And many theaters no longer can project film so they show it from digital media. So most viewers probably only see it from digital.

What do you think the demand for film stock will be when parts for those cameras are no longer available or when the cinematographers and directors using it now retire?

[Drew Wiley]

But the world population or potential audience is a lot bigger too, with more wealth and sense of spending it, so even a smaller percent of it might be enough. I don't care. Theaters are now so loud I have to use earplugs, and digital flicks currently look fake. I'd rather see a classic Technicolor flick anyway... the imagery often has some bits of registration issues or halo, but the hue reproduction is still unsurpassed. The movers and shakers of digital "projection" were shrewd, and did the same thing to theaters that refiners did to their gas station franchises - put them so far behind in debt to upgrade their facilities that the distribution source can easily break them and buy them out. But there seem to be a number of alt theaters too, including not only the usual hole in the wall types next door to motheaten paperback bookstores, but some big brand new venues. Redford is a major backer of these. And here the University recently spent hundreds of millions of dollars on such a facility. But I'm more interested in still images and classic museums than on seeing the latest paintball wall put on a screen as someone's MFA grad gimmick. I'm not worried. Film will probably be alive as long as I am, even if it's reduced to living in my freezer!