Re: Should every photographer try shooting film at least once in their life?
4
Yes you should try film
It is, as explained above, a completely miserable experience. If you do the whole process analogue then it is a nightmare. 4 hours in a dark smelly room to produce a few rather grey prints. Let some one else print and it is like a random number generator as to how things turn out. My last role of colour film included a sunset. The print lab set the white balance to render the sky grey!!!!!!
So instead you or some one else scans the negatives and then processes them. So now you have a really complicated way of making low quality digital files. You probably own a simple way of high quality digital files already. My phone probably turns out better scans than say under exposed Kodachrome
So why do I say yes
1. If you are under 35 (and male) you can grow a beard, wear tweed and be a hipster. Everyone will believe you about the great look of your photos. If you are female you can pull off the same trick but I'm not sure what you wear. But you don't have eat breakfast through the remains of yesterdays dinner stuck in your facial hair
2. When you print your messy scans they will turn out just fine. This will then save you from the total tedium of staring at everything at 100% and muttering soft and or noisey without realizing that it will be fine once converted for the output medium of your choice
3. You will no longer have to worry about whether you should be using film as you will know for sure that it is rubbish
4. You won't get into a bidding war on ebay over a 1990s titanium classic that doesn't doesn't take very good pictures but does match your outfit
5. You will be saved the heart break of proving me wrong. Buying a brilliant cheap camera. Finding a reliable scanning process and consistently turning out great images. Booking the trip of a life time costing thousands of dollars and using 2 years annual leave. Taking shot after brilliant shot and feeling sure that National Geographic will buy every picture. Then getting to the airport for the flight home and a guard with an automatic weapon insisting that you put all your film through the hold X-ray scanner and frying the lot....
PS yes i have had my film X-rayed. I did get images but it the x-ray had robbed contrast and added unwanted exposre but they were just family snaps from a horrible film slr with a terrible lens. But yes the guard did have an automatic weapon..