Once again, I would like to pop back into the world of film here. Why is film great? Well here are a few more reasons that continue where my previous articles (1 and 2) left off.
Reason One: Film is science right in front of your face. It may be simple to understand that a light sensitive sensor "sees" an image on a digital camera and then converts that to 1's and 0's. That's neat, but film, the "older" technology, can do this without electronics. Yes, some really good film cameras have electronic shutters and light metering, but you really don't need that. You are capturing light in that specific moment and then transferring it into a scanner or piece of paper. To me that is really cool. There is nothing computerized or digital happening. Just raw physics!
Reason Two: I will argue that shooting on film helps you improve your photograph whether on analog or digital. My previous article was all about my own personal realization of this. I thought it was just a thing people said but it could not be more true. You do not get an instant result and therefore you need to know a lot about light. You will take extra care about what your settings are and how the shadows and lights will look. I can already notice a small step increase in my own digital work. You won't regret it. There's nothing different except you have to give a little more effort in trial and error. Don't get discouraged!
Reason Three: You don't need those filters and effects! I briefly touched on this in my first film article but I must reiterate. All those special effects from VSCO, LIGHTROOM, and INSTAGRAM, and countless others are all based off of the same idea. FILM! Yes, I use them and yes, I do think that many of them are awesome too. A lot of younger people though do not realize that all those settings and filters and textures are based off of specific film types and old film camera effects. If you want the real thing, then filters won't cut it in my book. Go out and for maybe a price of a new outfit you can pick up a used SLR and some film; not a budget breaker. Experiment and you will find that you will like the look of the actually film "flaws" a lot better.
