As the digital age marches
forward there seem to be a few people who have stayed behind.
These few people decide to use 35mm film instead of digital cameras as their source of photography.
“You can fire off 500 pictures
in one day with a digital
SLR and a memory card, but with film you’re really limited, which makes every picture more valuable,” junior
Zac Gunter said.
And although you can fire off up to 500 shots with a memory card with a digital
camera, the features that come with it do not even come close to comparing with a film camera.
Film cameras can give such effects as vignetting or even light leaks, the occurrence
that the sun leaks through the plastic and somewhat exposes the film to give it strange colors.
Professional photographers
and newcomers to film photography use film cameras just to get these sort of effects.
Other things that one can do to photos it to take a double
exposure, which is when you take two photographs on the same picture.
“The best part of using film is that there are so many decisions one can make when taking a shot,” Gunter, said, “and there is something so appealing about holding a photograph in your hands instead of just looking at a screen and thinking of how nice it is.”
Some people think that digital photography is quite impersonal compared to film photography because each action you make in film photography means one less meaningful and important shot.
Each shot is seen as an opportunity for perfection while digital seems to take this away.
“My arsenal includes a Minolta SRT-201 from the late seventies and a Yashica Mat 124 from the late sixties,
two cameras that are fully manual and use either 35mm or medium format film,” Gunter said.
In film photography there are many decisions one can make on how they want to start.
For example, there are two sorts of films, 35mm and 120.
“35mm is by far the most used type of film due to its convenience, yet, has a lower
quality compared to 120 film, which is less successful
due to it having has less shots per roll,” photo aficionado
Dylan Craver said.
Craver is one of the rare breeds of photographers that only shoots pictures with film, whether it be Polaroid, 35mm, or 120.
“Digital just never appealed
to me,” Craver said.
With different films come different cameras, each which operate differently.
There are SLR cameras with completely manual settings
and changeable lenses.
TLR cameras, short for twin-lens reflex, have two lenses and are generally faster and better than SLRs for reasons such as simplicity,
shutter speed, and it’s possibility to control long exposure pictures.
And then there are a plethora of other types of cameras, such as plastic, or toy cameras, like the Diana or Holga which many amateur
photographers choose to use when they first start experimenting with film.
Overall, many people view film photography as it’s own art that is slowly rekindling and re-growing into the phenomenon that it once was.