One Thing: How my first (and only) photography class made me fall in love with film

I went to art school in the 90s for photography. Developed and printed my own B&W, color, cibachromes, van dyke brown and cyanotypes. I settled on mostly 35mm color and c-prints. It was great when you are learning and you have the schools´darkroom. Once I left school, I tried going back to use the darkroom at times, but with work etc it became harder. I used digital P&S cameras over the years but it didn't feel the same. I didn't do photography seriously for many years after that. Once I got the bug again, digital had matured and so did the printing and software. I love the fact I can do it all in small room in any house or apartment. For color, I prefer it.

That said, I can understand why people who grew up with digital are intrigued by film and why it could change their mentality on taking photos. I think if you like photography, you should try as many methods as you can until you find your thing.

And so the beat goes on. :-)

It's interesting how all the things you say about film are things that nobody was saying when it was the only way to take a picture.

Digital media has done this across the board... in the recording studio, where I make my career, nobody was enamored with the sound of tape when it was the only way to make a record. We were relentlessly trying to get rid of that "tape sound" and make recordings sound more true to life.

Digital cameras, recorders, etc. have gotten us to the promised land of effectively non-existent distortion and high fidelity to the source, en masse, in an affordable way, and I think our fascination with analog and all of its attendant headaches says more about human nature than which format is actually superior (which is, by nearly every objective measure, digital). We don't appreciate what is abundant... and we seek after the uncommon, the rarefied. (Digital media used to be this when it first came out. Remember that brief time when CD players were a status symbol?)

Stinking chemistry, blackout failures, film stuck half-way through loading a reel, stirring for days waiting for that last bit of powder developer to dissolve, drying marks, never being able to get that last bit of stubborn dust from the film carrier, paper that never laid perfectly flat, never getting exactly the final print exposure you wanted, despite practicing your dodge and burn technique for hours, never being able to reproduce the one time you got it right, burning your paper budget on test strips, deciding to try larger formats, realizing what it's going to cost to replace almost every bit of kit and abandoning the idea.

Those were the days.

If you're not wet printing, in a tiny home built darkroom, using smelly chemistry-- then you're not experiencing the proper thrill of photography and seeing that latent image magically appear before your very eyes!

I was shooting film and developing my own at school aged 14 in 1982.

Digital was a godsend. Never again will I mess about with film.

I understand the rationale behind slowing down, contemplating every shot, and making every frame count. But you can exercise shot discipline with digital too. Turn off the LCD display, disable WYSIWYG (if ML), manual meter, and just bring a 1 or 2 GB card out for the day. In software, you can batch process with a film emulation and resist the temptation to over-process. You can set as many constraints as you like.

A good photographer is a good phtographer with film, digital, a phone, or even without a camera; the same applies for a bad photographer. Film is good to learn, if you are willing to learn, but you can also learn with digital, if you want to learn. Shoot with whatever you can or want. Or don't shoot and enjoy with your eyes and register in your memory.

A wonderfully romantic article. I shot film for 30 years before switching to digital in 2004. Toward the end, I was having the color print film processed at the local WalMart, the one down the street from RIT, then scanning the negatives. I don't miss film at all.

I keep my FD lenses, an F-1 new and my Rolleicord for maybe ... doing film again, but if, only B/W using my development tank again.
On the other hand: I really like the directness of digital photography which is very good now in terms of fidelity/quality.
I started with film and it was expensive/my budget restricted. I learned to look twice to the viewfinder. With digital I am glad that I have learned photography that way and I try to decide as much as possible BEFORE I make the photo - on the other hand in some situation it is great to make several shots for safety.

Nice to encounter a discerning photographer.

I used film for 65 years before I switched to digital. Compared with most people using film, I always took very few shots, restricting myself to what would work and more often than not judging it well. On top of that I threw away most of my negatives, only interested in keeping the best.

When I turned entirely to digital in 2009 I continued the practice. Why accumulate loads of trash? The only time I will do so momentarily is when I am not quite sure of myself, so shoot extra and immediately discard all but the most successful. That does not often happen because i abhor success by accident rather than design.

Anthony Armstrong Jones took some very famous photos but he took thousands for every one that was successful. That is not talent, just luck. Get chimpanzees to play the piano, sooner or later they will play all the keyboard works by JS Bach. [Not actually sooner, but maybe in a few billion light years.]

Film shooting really did and does force me to think about light and time. I would spot meter everything with an SLR and expose for highlights. High speed film was relatively grainy ISO 400 fujichrome. Otherwise the tightest grain was Provia and Velvia. I know that while limiting me it also made things more simpler and I could focus more on tight compositions. I think digital has advantages and disadvantages. When I was in college 50 years ago the nerds I knew who did alot of photography would sell plasma at the local plasma alliance and use the 20 bucks for film, and processing. Young folks can now shoot all day long without spending a penny for film. But with film I had to think alot more. Getting my processed chrome back in the mail was always like Christmas. I miss that aspect.

For prints only, yes, we can just shoot films. (Now the printing process is also digitalized.) While when we share the photos on the web, we still need to digitalize the pictures first. If we want, we may use the digital camera like a film camera, but not vise versa. The photography is nothing to do with the gear we use as long as the gear is "appropriate". Just wonder if we spend much more time in post processing than taking pictures, are we photographers or editors?

Wonderful post Gannon. I too, like you, really started getting interested in photography as a result of a high school photography class. My first photo was a black and white photograph taken with a pin-hole camera we all had to build ourselves before our teacher would let us make a photo. We started in the darkroom developing film he provided. By the time we were able to finally take our first photograph we were itching too so badly, and we were all hooked afterwards. I'll never forget that experience or my teacher and have been thankful for that class since. Thank you for sharing!

Edit: btw, the "fork in the road" shot, very clever ;). Love it.

Another polluter. Just what the world needs. Thank you.

Dvorak - that's a keyboard right? Googled it but not entirely sure.

Love seeing how some people like going retro. Like the current obsession with vinyl records, something else I'll never go back to. And film? Been there done that. Never again. No interest in smelling those chemicals again.

I once shot a roll of T-Max on my 645 and mistakenly developed in T-Max developer.

Who in the world would think that's a problem? Well, it turns out T-Max developer does not work with T-Max roll film. It ruins it.

I use my A7 mirrorless gear for detailed results, but my film cameras are just for my soul.

I shoot digital for parties and trips but at home when I contemplate my work, it's medium format film photography. During the Covid I got the urge, so bought a 4x5 large format film camera.. Both digital and film formats have right time and place and advantages. You really get to slow down when it takes 20 minutes to set up the first shot with a large format camera, tripod, etc.

I was working in the photo news business and 9-11 was the end of film for us. A lot of photographers had digital cameras already, usually whatever the big Nikon was, maybe the D1 and they were able to move photos to us via email from Brooklyn or wherever in NYC during that week.

We had a staff photographer still shooting film so on 9-12 they sent me out to buy several bricks of color negative film and also two Nikon digital cameras and lenses. I got one camera from Calumet and one from Alkit. That photographer learned how to use the new digital cameras and the film sat there and that was it for film. Never again.

My point is that photography is a product of the industrial revolution and like all technology the new replaces the old. I dragged a Large format camera for decades and I can say that Large format photography is a completely different thing however and the benefits of the large format process can not be equaled with digital photography. Happy shooting everyone.

Well, my experience was as a student like you years ago when all film emulsions were available. It was OK but condemned you to too much D&P time, out of the sun, with smelly chemicals. It was aklso far less exact.
I lost heart after Kodak ruined work from a 5 week landscape trip in Scotland. The slide film returned from Switzerland as the UK operation had closed down...
To re-enthuse me you would have to make all emulsions available everywhere as they were in the 70s, and you would have to produce far more accurate in-camera metering than we had then, because checking everything with a Lunasix is a drag.
But in view of the fact that IMHO these pictures with the article are so weak, I dont think you will convert any digital photographer to film, do you?

Film still is the only true way of archiving images. Every other medium past/present/future is just a fad.

I suggest that there is an obvious gulf, between those who learned photography in the pre-digital age (3 years of classes, for me in the 60s), and those like Gannon, who have never shot Kodachrome. There is no way I can see analog photography the way Gannon does -or vice-versa. And that's fine, although it can get noisy :)

I switched from film to digital in 2003 and never looked back still have my post here (under different nickname) when I got my Canon D30, being unshackled from cost of film and developing not including wasting time scanning was awesome.

Use to shoot lots of Superia 1600 in nightclubs, my uncle still has my Pentax MZ 3 that I have him after I got my Canon D30 and still have my Canon AL-1 that I got in 2001.

Not dumping on their article and the writers experience but for me switching to digital was a one way door and no desire to go back.

Film photography gives me the possibility to work with medium format and large format cameras. And indeed, it slows down. Slowing down has nothing to do with a ret4rded working process. It's like playing chess, but not against the clock. It's about thinking before you make the next move. Yes, you could do that with digital, too. But do you?

It's so much more than specs. My kids recently discovered my C64 and they had so much more fun playing the old PacMan from 1983 or moon patrol that they don't use their Wii anymore. It the old slow Commodore better? Or Is he just tr4sh? Or does he simply got the fun to the point? My kids decided to play C64 on and on...

Anyway. If you don't want to shoot film, just go along, use your 8k@120 fps and grab the good frame in post. If there is any. I'm in the kitchen developing TriX in homebrew Calbe A49. ;)

Those of us who grew up with film still tend to shoot way to few frames. We forget there is no cost to exploring. When you had between 12 and 36 exposures on a roll which would at best cost 1 hour in a darkroom to develop and just contact print you do things differently.

Gannon Burgett, there were two cool things about it- one was that it was color film when most photos and movies and tv were b&w. And it was not just color, but it was really saturated colors.

But the main thing was that sometimes when you inhale the shop, you could get that “Kodachrome look” which not only had the colors, but also had an almost 3D effect.

It was hard to shoot with, very little dynamic range, so you had to nail exposure. It was slow, either 25 or 64, and was expensive to buy and to have processed. But man, when you put those slides into a projector and projected it onto a nice big screen, wow did they ever really pop.

As a professional photographer, about ½ a year ago I moved (partly) back from digital to a hybrid form of analogue photography. So I develop my films, I scan them and I print using ‘digital baryta’ paper + Epson printer.

Last week I showed some of those prints ,11.7 × 16.5 inches, to some colleagues. And they all said: ‘Wow, these prints are very nice with their typical analogue look and feel’.

They explained me in just a few words why occasionally I use my Nikon F2AS set instead of my Canon R6 set.

I had coures with Art Wolfe and Jim Brandenburg (even one pic a day) - that changed everything.
For b&w photography, I was 20 years loke a snail in the mountains with always to much snow (dust) on my pictures. Now for my squirrels, birds, butterflys even the fastest cameras with 30p/sec are to slow to catch more pricese moments... beeing fast and to know the camera and leses, is never a bad thing.

My fitst serious camera was Rebel XT also. I tried film later, in 2008 and it was magic for me. Cheap small beautiful cameras with x0.95 viewinder, amazing film Dyn.range and colors, Xpan and 617 panoramic cameras...
About the article: narrative seems to be fine, but not the images.

Are these photos supposed to be inspirational and make people start shooting film again?

As someone who came of age during film’s heyday, I can safely say “never again.” No matter, I appreciate the narrative anyway. I wish you, and all other film fanatics, joy in their own photography.

I started my photography career in the "film world".
And I don't have any nostalgia for the costly, cumbersome process, where finally I am going to scan the pictures anyway. When working, I appreciate the technology and speed, when enjoing making pictures over cities, landscapes, nature, macro, still-life ... I slow down, take time, love the flow. I can do these with the same equipment, although as a walking around tourist, I prefer my little camera.

If you are looking for a slow-down experience, try tethering with your laptop and go forward and back, change the scenario until you feel it's perfect.

Your experience mirrors that of most of us who came up on film (I hand rolled Tri-X in the 70s), specifically the finite/limited nature of film which, in turn, made us much more careful with each shot. I'm glad I retained at least some of that discipline but I much prefer the digital darkroom and sure don't miss travelling with 20-30 rolls . . .