Why shoot film?
Film photography sparked a revival of my interest in photography. Why shoot film?
If you look around, you can find many arguments, all of them probably true.
Film has a retrò feeling. Which is definitely good.
Film enthousiasts turn the high costs of film into an advantage: you have to think twice or three times before shooting. If shooting is not free, good technique matters. As a result, you end up with fewer pictures, more deliberate ones and eventually better results.
Some enjoy bringing old cameras back to life. Others appreciate the feeling you get by touching films and their boxes: I have heard someone say that unboxing films is like opening good bottles of wine.
To prove their arguments, film photographers point out that the most commonly used filters in digital photography are those that emulate the film effect. For decades digital filters have been developed to enhance the overall quality of the photos and even artificial intelligence recently has been used. Nowadays however, we are witnessing digital photography fighting against its perfection, eventually developing “dehancing” filters: introducing grain, reducing sharpness, fading colours.
A film photographer I am following on YouTube channel welcomes you in her dark room: “Today is print day and I'm so excited. I love print days in the dark room and honestly this is pretty much the only reason why I keep shooting film, because I get to do this, exactly this”. There is pleasure in carrying out the entire process and finally having a good print on barite paper.
However, I found the most convincing and inspiring answer on a YouTube channel named "grainydays". As the name suggests, the channel is dedicated to film photography. In the episode "why shoot films", the youtuber claims:
"in my opinion this is probably the biggest reason why i shoot film as well as older lenses: when i peep the scan i see grain, film, lens softness, and character. From an artistic perspective it's almost like i'm looking at a memory: it's imperfect".
