The death and rise of film

Recently, there seems to be a resurgence of film photography. Everywhere I look, I can't help but see blog after blog advising everyone of the merits of film photography over digital. I understood this was true over ten years ago, but many of these photographers were making these observations over the past couple of years. Did I miss something? Was I wrong to abandon film and switch to digital photography? I still have my film SLR's, and decided to explore my own personal relationship with photography to understand the reasons why I, and so many other people, made the switch to digital, and to see if film might be a viable alternative today.

The case for film: Early years

My son at 7 months

I've been using cameras for a very long time. I started out, like most people of my generation, with a 110 camera. My father gave me a Pentax K1000 for Christmas in the early 1980's. I used this camera to take baby pictures of my own son in the late 1990's. At the time, it seemed sensible: Digital cameras were cumbersome, expensive, and limited, only able to capture images at one megapixel or less with terrible low light performance. In contrast, my K1000, loaded with ISO 800 film and shooting through a fast F1.7 50mm lens, could take beautiful, high resolution handheld shots in very low light without needing a flash. I found the experience very satisfying and even gratifying. The ability to capture very high quality images without popping a flash into baby's newborn eyes felt empowering as it created a special bond between father, baby, and camera. Using a manual camera with natural light made the entire process feel very natural. The possibility of that camera becoming a family heirloom became very real to me. The camera and lens was just over 20 years old; I reasoned that, mechanically and optically, it was possible for my camera to last for a hundred years if it was taken care of. This realization caused me to buy my second film SLR, a Pentax P3n, so that I could better preserve my K1000 for future generations.

The case for digital: Discovering advantages

My Pentax K1000 film SLR

By the time 2001 rolled around, the digital photography world had changed significantly. Up until this point, I would shoot pictures in rolls of 24. I would start by deciding which film to buy: ISO 100 for outdoors, ISO 400 for indoors, ISO 800 for low light; the higher the ISO, the greater the grain and the lower the image quality. If I didn't load ISO 400 in one camera body and ISO 100 in the other, I'd usually go for ISO 200, a middle-of-the-road film not great at anything but not disappointing either. I often took two or three shots of people at events, just in case someone blinked. If I still had frames left on a roll after an event, I would shoot off some random pictures to finish the roll so I could get it developed. I had to pay for 24 4x6 pictures each time. Most of them turned out fine, but I ended up keeping more than I had to just because throwing out a perfectly good picture seemed wasteful, even if it was a near duplicate of another. This was all assuming the film I had used didn't go bad or expire; a couple of rolls of cheap film bought in haste resulted in some pretty crummy vacation photographs. Photo albums, representing another expense of money, time, and space, would fill up and occupy increasingly more shelf space. My experimental creative photography endeavours were saved for the end of rolls used at events or on trips, because buying and developing a roll of film was an expense that needed to be justified. To share pictures with friends and family, I had to spend time with a scanner and software, scanning the pictures in one at a time and sizing them down to attach to an e-mail. This process could take hours.

A shot taken with my Fuji Finepix A201 digital camera

Some very affordable and well-designed 2 megapixel point-and-shoot digital cameras came into the market in 2001, with significant price drops during the holiday season. The pictures could be printed out at 8x10 size and still look sharp, and while the sensitivity of the sensor, typically at ISO 100, was a far cry from ISO 800 film, it performed adequately well for close indoor snapshots with its built-in flash and exceptionally well outdoors on well-lit days. The benefits were immediately obvious. When the Fuji Finepix A201 came into our family as a gift from my father, many of the shortcomings of film fell away. I wasn't restricted to a batches of 24 pictures at a time, and I could see right away if someone had blinked by checking the picture on the LCD display on the back of the camera. If everyone looked great on the first shot, there was no need to waste everyone's time for another. I could pick and choose to have printed only those pictures I really liked. Of course, I'd still keep all of the shots that turned out, but most would remain in digital format; as compressed JPEG's, they took up very little space. The pictures were so much more brilliant and clear, with no dust. Photo albums that were once a chore to put together became highlights of our lives; instead of page after page of similar pictures, they held only the best few pictures to mark those milestones in our lives. I could explore experimental creative photography with reckless abandon. I could spend an entire day taking some very bad pictures as I explored the limits of this little point-and-shoot camera, and ended up with a few interesting gems at no expense to me. Suddenly, photography became a hobby that even the most frugal person could enjoy. It was more than instant gratification; the lack of expense of buying film combined with the lack of waste made digital cameras well worth their higher price tags.

Cheap digital photography progress

Easter lilly, taken with my Kodak DX6490

Over the years, prices dropped and features were added to digital cameras. By 2005, the savings in film and development were significant enough that we could afford to upgrade to a 4 megapixel superzoom camera, the Kodak DX6490, which was representative of many of the affordable superzooms available at the time. With an ISO that ranged from 80 to 800, the problem of choosing appropriate film was solved. Just like film, a higher sensitivity (ISO) resulted in more noise (grain). Further increasing the versatility of this camera was an impressive macro-capable lens with an equivalent zoom range of 38mm-380mm that had a versatile automatic or manual aperture range from F2.8 to F8. With a manual or automatic shutter speed that ranges from from 16 seconds to 1/1000th of a second, excellent low light focus capability, a great built-in flash, and with a compact size, this replaced both our point-and-shoot as well as my Pentax SLRs, as the resulting prints were amazingly clear and brilliant with colour. My household stopped using film entirely, and my SLR's got packed away. At the same time, my skills were improving. The instant feedback allowed me to further experiment into greater depth in the world of photography. This camera had limitations; the zoom lens didn't compare to a prime lens for image quality (but was still very good), the focus tended to be slow, and there was no way to adjust the JPEG quality nor the ability to shoot RAW, but these limitations were greatly overshadowed by the fact that it cost me nothing to shoot as much as I wanted for free, in addition to the benefit of instant feedback inherent in digital cameras. Instant feedback differs from instant gratification in that it enhances the learning process, with a result lasting well beyond the short-term effects of instant gratification. Did I also mention, no dust?

Enter the affordable DSLR

Dragonfly, captured with my Pentax K-x

Five years later, the price of digital SLR's came down significantly. With further savings realized from shooting exclusively digital over those five years, I was able to afford the Pentax K-x. While the Kodak superzoom is still in use in our household to this day (a testament to its build and image quality), I remained aware of its limitations having had extensive experience with SLR photography. I missed the image quality of prime lenses. I often wished I had a wider angle of view than 38mm. I didn't like the shutter lag of the Kodak super zoom. I would have liked to be able to hold the shutter open for longer than 16 seconds. I desired better manual control over the focus. I missed my fast 50mm lens, being able to open it to F1.7 with a beautifully thin depth of field, and I also missed being able to use my collection of 49mm filters. I still had those lenses and filters, and knew they worked on the new Pentax DSLR. Further, this new Pentax camera was boasting incredible ISO, up to 12,800, provided image stabilization to any lens attached to it, promised beautiful HD video, and eliminated the problem of shutter lag. The door to creative exploration didn't exist anymore; it was blown clean off its hinges, as this camera transported me into a world of endless creative exploration.

Old lenses and filters still work today

I discovered a trade-off with using the older lenses; and that is the crop factor. The sensor in the camera is smaller than that of a full frame negative, resulting in a 1.5 crop factor. This means that my 50mm lens becomes a 75mm lens, my 28mm lens becomes a 42mm lens, my 17mm lens becomes a 25.5mm lens, and my 80-200mm zoom becomes a 120-300mm zoom. I acquired other lenses recently; a 40mm pancake becomes a 60mm lens, and a 135mm lens becomes a 202.5mm prime lens. The Pentax K-x came with a kit lens with a range of 18-55mm, which translates to a very useful 27mm-82.5mm.

Rediscovering film

After reading blog posts about how superior film is in 2012, I decided to take my film Pentax cameras out of storage and shoot using my newly acquired lenses in their full frame glory during the holidays. Loaded with Fuji 200 and a fresh set of batteries in the old flash, I enjoyed holding and using these cameras once again, relishing their simplicity. The relationship between aperture and shutter speed, and watching it translate to the needle showing me the optimal exposure point was a treat. Utilizing the focus screen with a split circle, I was reminded at how bright and effective it was. Overall, the process was a little slower as I double checked to make sure all the settings were correct. Put the flash on the appropriate automatic setting, check. Set the shutter speed to sync with the flash, check. Make sure the F-stop matched the ISO and distance in the chart painted on the back of the flash, check. Focus, check once, check twice, recompose, squeeze the shutter release, and...forgot to wind the film. Wind the film, check the focus once more, recompose, squeeze the shutter release, ker-klunk. That satisfying mechanical movement as the spring, wound by my advancement of the film, released its energy in a split second to paint a frame of film with the light and colours I had just composed. I started thinking that I could learn to love film again.

Negatives

My wake-up call started when I discovered that the only place in town that would develop my film was the local Wal-Mart, and that it cost me 65 cents per picture, for each and every picture on the roll, whether I wanted it or not, for developing. The second thing I discovered was that the K1000 seems to have developed a very small small light leak. The P3n performed fine, however. In the end, factoring out the light leak in the K1000, seven shots were underexposed, five were out of focus or blurry, and four featured someone with their eyes closed. I paid $10.40 for bad or useless shots that I would have otherwise deleted. Out of the rest, I might have really wanted just under half of them. In other words, I paid a total of $37.46 for, at best, 16 4x6 prints that I would have wanted to keep and print. That works out to $2.46 per 4x6 print. At that price, expensive ink jet printed pictures seem a bargain.

Staples had their photo basic glossy 4x6 paper on for $5.99. I bought two packs for a total of $13.54. That works out to 6.77 cents per picture, plus my ink costs. The ink costs may vary, but I estimate it won't be greater than 20 cents per 4x6 print. If I wanted to, I could get a local "Dry" lab to produce 4x6 prints for me for around 10 cents a print. That's 6 and a half times cheaper than film, which can really add up. If I wanted to be really frugal and only shot a single roll of film for each birthday, holiday, and vacation, that would easily add up to 480 pictures a year. The expense would be $312 per year. If I wanted to be less conservative and chose, on average, 15 of my most favourite pictures from digital to print from each birthday, holiday, and vacation, I would end up with 300 pictures a year and have paid $30 for all of them. If I wanted to do all of them myself on my inkjet, my cost would still be well under $100. Over 5 years, I would save between $1,060 and $1,410 - enough to buy a really nice brand new digital camera with money to spare. Realistically, the savings are even more significant, as the majority of my pictures end up on a digital picture frame, virtually eliminating the need for traditional photo albums.

Unretouched negative film scan left, unretouched digital image from RAW file right

I did a side-by-side comparison of two similar pictures, one taken with my film Pentax, and the other with my digital Pentax. I printed a digital 4x6 off of my printer, which was rated "Mediocre" for photo printing (but has fantastic ink costs and overall functionality). At first glance, the digital picture had colours that were brighter, more vibrant...but as I looked deeper, I could see the print that came from the negative had a greater dynamic range and offered greater clarity in the detailed parts of the image. This proved to me that the people who still prefer film weren't crackpots. I could see exactly what they were talking about. Then I realized something. All of my pictures were JPEGs. This meant they were compressed; how could I expect the same level of detail and dynamic range from a JPEG as a film negative? I remembered that my camera offered High Dynamic Range (HDR) capture, as well as RAW mode. I also had to remember that my inexpensive inkjet printer was probably no match for the high priced professional lab machine at Wal-Mart. I tested again, this time shooting first in HDR capture and then  in RAW, and discovered that the dynamic range came back better than 200 ISO film in both HDR and RAW, but RAW alone not only delivered the dynamic range, but also clarity beyond 200 ISO 35mm film in the detailed parts of the image.

Conclusion

The days of mass consumer film use are long gone

I found this exploration and experimentation enlightening. Without the film comparison, I might not have bothered to discover the world of RAW digital photography; now I understand what digital photographers mean when they describe a RAW image file as a digital negative. I still shoot JPEG for quick shots that are going to be further reduced and posted on-line, but I make a conscious choice to switch to RAW for finer photography. I also learned that those who choose film for its aesthetics and the feel of the equipment are legitimate in their choice. There is no doubt in my mind that medium and large format film is significantly better than 35mm film, but that film has always existed in the realm of the fine arts world. For me as well as the majority of consumers, film is no more; it's just not a frugal choice given the latitude offered by RAW and the exceptional image quality of modern digital cameras. I'll probably hang on to the K1000 body as a keepsakes, but the family heirloom may very well be that fast 50mm lens. It still produces beautiful images with the latest digital Pentax cameras.