It reminds me of people buying vinyl, using VHS filters on social media, etc. I think it's more about signaling some cultural identity than any objective benefits of the "retro" process. It's not like digital cameras make you give up creative control. If you want to limit yourself to 36 unreviewed shots, you can do that with digital too.
That said, I agree with one thing: you shouldn't be paying for an Adobe subscription. Use Darktable, Capture One, or some other equivalent that you're not just renting for life.
Last year, though, I got back into film, and I'm having a ball! The point of the retro process is not that it's better, it's that I'm enjoying the time I spend with it. The constraints are interesting. The technique is challenging. It's not so much about the photos as it is the photography: I enjoy the practice of making images, and dealing with the challenges of vintage equipment is part of the skill I'm practicing.
It doesn't actually matter whether I take any of these photos or not, you know? I'm not a professional; I'm not making unique art, or documenting historic events. I'm doing this because I enjoy watching the light, looking for interesting frames, and trying to capture them. Right now, the most enjoyable equipment for that purpose happens to be an all-mechanical, medium-format film camera.
This is a very important part of your message. You did have the opportunity of "being thought by the slow medium" simply by those being the default. Taking the "teachings" of more limiting, analog (in these cases) technologies became part of your process, your underastanding of the core principles, your motivation, your subjects and something deeper about photography.
In a time where basicaly limitless technologies are the default, for generations that were born into a world where decision fatigue is a bigger issue than scarcity artificial limitations are still a great path to learning something meaningful and having fun.
There is zero intrinsic value to taking pictures, listening to or making music or any of the activities that see a revival of their "retro" versions - analog or otherwise.
I was born when digital photography was the default and my first cameras were digital. I have had way more fun taking my <1000 analog photos, have way more connection to them (partly because I physically had to touch those photos developing and retouching them) than my 100k+ digital photos sitting on some zfs pool. Sure, digital photography is more efficient in every way but -eapecially as commercial photography is dying out to AI - if we strip the commercial element of things that humans are doing for shits and giggles - the analog/retro/slow/whatever version of these activities might prove to be better at serving the basic human needs (the shits and the giggles).
Reducing people's interest to "social signalling" comes off as dismissive.
It isn't easier. Film is pain. Pain can be good, but this is selling a mirage.
Consumer film is designed to be developed and scanned/printed by your lab. You then get a finished image.
Most modern interchangeable-lens digital cameras are designed for you to shoot RAW and edit in software like Lightroom.
Because I first started photography around 2010, I was taught at school to take pictures, then edit them on a computer.
Shooting film for the first time was originally about trying something new in a hobby I enjoy. As stated, it removed the need to sit in front of a computer. “Easier”.
I wish I’d stopped shooting RAW sooner. Trying film led to that realisation.
(And I agree film can be a pain. I’ve ruined several rolls through both stupidity and cameras breaking. I still enjoy it.)
And I completely agree with your point about touting film as "easier" than digital. That's a stretch.
But as said needs are mostly general curve + highlights down + shadows up, it's possible they could simply be a jpeg preset in camera.
This line made me chuckle as well:
> Since I was a teenager I’ve used digital cameras
Digital cameras didn't exist when I was a teenager; and they cost about as much as a car when I was in my twenties. Overall I don't miss film cameras, although the scarcity was interesting. Taking a picture was an actual decision, unlike today.
The OP didn't go "the old way". They made it even more about "hassle-free simplicity", with a digital Fuji that shoots great out-of-the-box colors that they don't correct.
That said, the problem with the "hassle-free simplicity and dependability of digital photography" is that it cheapens everything and takes the fun and skill out of it.
Takes the skill out? Kind of. Accessible cameras make it easy for people to take acceptable photographs. Most people cannot take a great photograph with any camera.
I do think accessible cameras have made it harder for mediocre photographers to pass as good. The days when simply carrying an SLR gave an aura of competence are gone. Democratization of quality cameras closed the hardware gap for a lot of photography.
Digital music is neat for listening to music, but it also feels like it lowers the value of it.
Smaller, yes, but fragile? Certainly not more fragile than Vinyl.
With vinyl, album artwork and the case are the same thing and damaging or destroying the case also damages or destroys the album art - you can’t really replace the case without repurchasing the record if the art matters to you.
CD cases more easily break catastrophically but I think that, for most kinds of impacts, CD cases are less easily damaged than vinyl sleeves.
Water damages them less easily, they’re less susceptible to smudges, corners don’t get creased, etc.
I very rarely listen to them in that form, but I honestly like the idea that in a post-Carrington event, zombie apocalypse or mad-max style future where electricity or electronics become scarce, I can (if desperate enough) listen to them with a nail and a cone.
I hate opening my phone/laptop to put music on, inadvertently opening HN/lichess, and watching the next few hours vanish in silence.
Also deeper engagement, and a big second hand and artist-driven markets keeping my money out of the hands of NastyCorp.
Vinyl is just the nicest.
It's absolutely partly this.
But, for me today, as a sometimes hobbyist, it's also about the process...
Digital is too good. The cameras are too good. The results are too good. There's no anticipation.
The analog experience is, to be trite, so much more analog. A good vintage film camera (and probably new Leica too) feels so good in the hand. Like a nice watch, it's a piece of mechanical art. It takes time to focus and set exposure. Sometimes is goes horribly wrong, but sometimes whatever went wrong produces an unexpectedly delightful result. There's also something to be said about receiving the negatives and scans weeks or months after shooting the film - the delayed gratification is something that's lacking in today's instant-everything world. Plus, the cost of film and processing makes me slow down a beat and think about what I'm doing - no spray and pray when a roll of Portra 400 + processing is $25 or more.
Film is absolutely a cultural experience for many people shooting it today. The main argument I have to confirm this is to consider that most people's photos are not good, to start with. (Talking about the average joe, not pro photographers.) So any comment about film's technical capabilities is moot. You can take bad photos on film or digital. Also you can take good photos on film or digital! Unless you're really doing some good experimental photography, you gotta admit that the film motivation is vibes.
Also on editing applications, Lightroom does have pretty good all round features , which is hard to find elsewhere. For example Darktable technically works, but the UI is poor, the performance is poor, and it's generally slower to achieve the same results. If someone wants to make an open source Lightroom clone, I'll be all for it!
It is not in raw "quality". But what are we trying to capture when we take a picture? Is it raw pixels? or is it some emotion that we originally got when we were looking at something.
For some reason, I think film captures and regenerate that emotion when you look at the photograph in a way that a digital capture cannot.
I cannot explain it, but the the closest thing that I have found that could explain it is..It is in the context of b/w but I think the same applies to color as well..
https://leicaphilia.com/the-difference-between-black-and-whi...
Absolutely. One of my prized possessions is a book I had made from digital pictures I took on a family trip when my kids were 3 & 4 years old. The pictures are of single-digit megapixel quality, but are perfect for what they needed to be: a reminder of that trip, and the memories contained within.
It seems to me that the slightly fuzzy aspect of old pictures better matches our fuzzy memories of that time.
I think it could be that, or simply that people want to try a different experience. Digital photography started out as the easier, faster, and cheaper option, but the experience of using it and even the culture around photography itself has changed over time. Going back to the roots once in a while can feel refreshing. And paying for a monthly subscription is probably overkill for most casual photographers.
But film (the actual roll + development + scan) is very expensive, at least in my parts. Sure, you may mean "casual" as in "maybe shoots a roll a film a year", in which case I guess it's quite cheaper than an Adobe LR subscription. But if you shoot a roll a month or more? Then Adobe wins hands down (I'm talking the photography plan here, not the whole thing).
The cheapest stock I could find is a C-41 negative, b&w Agfa APX 400 iso, 36 pictures for 7.90 €. Color C-41 starts at 11 € with a 24 picture Kodak Ultra Max, bought as a set of 3 rolls. Developing and scanning costs 12 € for 2000x3000 px or 20 € for 4500x6700 px. That's 19.90 €, or the price of the base Adobe Photography plan.
I'm not into photography anymore and will stick to cheap digital photography for convenience (smart phone) but I could see how this works out for these folks and I believe it's not just a fad or signaling. Similarly, for music, analog instruments could be replicated and enhanced digitally/electronically and yet they're what you're after sometimes.
It’s a very different experience. Whether you enjoy that depends a lot on why you are engaging in photography. Do you prize the ritual, the act of taking photographs in the moment? Then you might love film. Might also love working in a dark room and doing your own development and prints.
Personally I don’t care about any of that. I care about the resulting photo. I’ll take upwards of 800 photos when I’m shooting one of my kids’ soccer games. I’ll get 100 photos max that are worth keeping, and a much smaller number I’m really happy with. Some will miss focus. Some will miss the moment. But I’ll have a few great photos for the trouble.
There’s nothing wrong with enjoying the ritual. Also nothing wrong with just enjoying the product.
I do agree that going through hundreds of photos is not a process I enjoy. I’ve been trying to train myself to weed out more efficiently. The newer AI tools help some, though I still go through the AI rejects to make sure it didn’t cull something I would keep.
I’m not sure that’s true. At least, not nearly as hard-constrained as with film.
I agree with your broader point, but let’s be completely honest. Digital is not a free lunch. You do lose something somewhere.
The medium you use “leaks” deeply into the whole experience of life (be it a vacation trip or something else). So all of this is a big deal.
> I’m not sure that’s true. At least, not nearly as hard-constrained as with film.
Just grab your camera of choice, look at the average file size, multiply it by 36, and format a partition on your memory card of that size. Bonus points if your camera uses adaptive compression, so maybe you'll get a bit fewer or a bit more photos per card depending on what you shot! Isn't that even more interesting than film? You know exactly how many exposures you get up front with a roll, now you'll have to wait and find out!
> Digital is not a free lunch. You do lose something somewhere.
Right. But I bet that, just like the OP, most people will outsource development and scanning of their film rolls, meaning they don't control the process. That's just digital with extra steps.
Myself - I do not use vinyl but being close to start using it again. Not like every day but when in a mood. The whole process is like coming back to a better and forgotten times. Definitely touches some strings.
You get a clean, basic look, no weird colors or overly creative "looks", but with adjustability and great highlight handling that JPEG doesn't get you.
The current builds there are quite old but we've got new ones coming.
I didn't know such firmware hacking was available. I'd been waiting for the GR Monochrome for years but it's a bit expensive for me.
Capture One with the same back is fine/the back went to Japan to get repaired only a few months ago and has a brand new main controller board/calibration...
Edit: oh wow, this is much older than I thought. Never mind. :)
33 megapixels is not a lot. I'd consider that fast on my 9800X3D gaming machine but moderate on my older 2700X dev machine. But of course, what you consider fast depends on your computer and your expectations.
Zooming and panning is much faster on Filmulator than most other software because it caches full-res images throughout much of the pipeline. On my gaming monitor I can rapidly zoom in and out at a buttery-smooth 240Hz refresh rate.
But actually changing settings is a bit slower.
The earliest settings are the slowest to respond since they only operate on full resolution raw data, but they're non-creative, technical decisions on highlight recovery and demosaicing and such that do not need tweaking. Additionally, you get early feedback from these in the form of early-pipeline histograms interspersed among the tools, helping you tune these settings quickly.
Noise reduction adds a lot of processing time but once you figure that out the full-res image gets cached and doesn't interfere with later steps.
It has fast (~100ms) screen-resolution response to sliders in the filmulation tools mid-pipeline but it'll take a second or two for the full resolution image to process.
Late pipeline editing (post-filmulation) is near instant even for the full resolution.
So is it fast? Yes and no. But it tries to always be responsive and provide useful information as quickly as possible.
Even back to film/analog era, taking a photo is just the 1st step. Then apply some darkroom work (dodge/burn/use some filters to adjust the highlight/shadow etc etc). Image editing softwares like Photoshop simplify the process.
I mostly shoot in black & white (both film and digital). Since once of my biggest inspirations is Ansel Adams, then no I don't adhere to "SOOC" (straight out of camera) philosophy. Fine tuning in Photoshop is a must.
(I also plan to try platinum/palladium prints. They look gorgeous. But first I need to get better at shooting for B/W)
I feel a lot of them would benefit more from just processing all their photos through some basic profile that ends with running it through a film simulator.
With good printing software like imageprint RED/Black (NB very expensive and overkill for most) you can actually see the effect different papers, settings, and lighting will have before the print. Very fun!
:D
But anyway, yes print making is both art and science on its own. Finding local labs to develop and scan films is pretty easy. But darkroom to print your photos the old school way? Happy to find a new one (I'm on Jakarta, btw).
Perfect is the enemy of good: Don't obsessively edit. Cull obviously bad photos. Find a few pretty good ones. Pick one at random. Edit lightly.
Photography can focus on captures or edits: analog photography necessitates a focus on the capture. Be in that moment, frame the shot you want, and your only edit might be some color correction.
While the above might not make you a 99th percentile photographer, that probably isn't a goal you need concern yourself with. I always find photos online that blow me away. Artists with the patience to plan and wait for the perfect shot, possibly for hours. Artists that meticulously cull until they find an exceptional photo. Artists that spend a half hour editing a single photo adjusting sliders.
If that's not you, you still don't have to give up editing photos if you like the result better than the camera's JPG. You just have to focus on the parts you enjoy, and find balance in the quality of the end results.
(And personally I love DxO PhotoLab. Purchased once on sale, no subscription. Fun to use, and I love the results!)
I usually keep around 10% of the total photos for editing. After that, I do another round of culling and keep only the best.
I also follow a philosophy of "good enough". If left to my own devices, I would probably endlessly edit photos.
I edit a single photo for around 3 minutes. That way, I will not feel stuck.
After a lot of practice, I became better at culling in my head, before even taking the photos. This has shifted my relationship with photography to more of a cognitive exercise, with a different set of enjoyments. I take far fewer photos overall - often I go out with a camera and don't even take a single shot. Editing is more enjoyable because there's less to do and I already know what edits I want. It's less naively fun but more contently fulfilling.
* Shooting intentionally for further processing is not the same as shooting for the best out-of-camera look.
* One needs to critique a photo before editing it. This YouTube video comes with a good-enough checklist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0tQB6BVpc4
* ART (https://artraweditor.github.io/) at this point, if the AI masking and denoising one-time setup has been done (see https://artraweditor.github.io/AItools), is so good that many Lightroom courses apply almost 1:1 to it.
I guess the thing you have discovered shooting analog is that each click is a finite resource so you spend more time composing and being aware of the scene before you take the photo.
Saving £20 is nice.
Having your 36 snapshots developed at a decent lab will cost you more.
In you are paying them additionally for edits as well you are on longer saving money. You just pay someone else.
Or are you giving it to a company that runs it through an automated usually digital these days sometimes analog machine that develops them automatically? Those machines usually do edits as well. But highly automated ones. (I am not sure they make them anymore)
Having my medium format film developed is far from cheap.
Lightroom is far from the only editor out there and it is not a great editor to start with. Lightroom is a Frankenstein combination of of a DAM and an editor.
You probably will want some form of DAM to organize your photos regardless.
I've found that if I apply "recipes" or "presets" to my camera and shoot jpg I get roughly what I want straight out of camera. In fact, I find that shooting jpg exclusively with a preset _almost_ scratches that film itch: there is a kind of permanency to the rendered output, and that forces me to slow down and think about what I want to render with this subject like one does with film.
Once I'm done shooting I simply import to Apple photos and make very light edits from there if any before sharing.
It's liberating to embrace constraints and reduce tooling. You might even have fun.
My Fuji is set to JPEG + RAW. I will apply the sim most suited to the occasion, and only edit the RAWs when I've got a shot that I think is worthy of editing - i.e. something that will end up as a wallpaper/printed out/a feature shot.
I got tired of editing photos, and I ended up editing them sometimes years after the photos were shot.
As for my phone, I just use an app called Analogue on my iPhone for everyday shots (the built in LUTs are beautiful), and then for shots I think may warrant some editing later, I'll use the new Moment cam app.
I shoot with post-processing in mind because I have years of experience with the cameras I use, so I know how they work. I rarely do that much more than just "normalizing" the pictures to what I wanted to capture (fix one, apply to whole batch) and apply some look that I've saved as a preset. Perhaps 1-5 seconds of tweaks per photo. If you need more, you probably didn't get the shot in the first place and you'll do better next time.
For me the time spent "editing" photos is marginal compared to the time I spend looking at the photos to decide which ones are keepers.
I can't understand what the youtubers who edit photos are doing. Most of them take mediocre to bad shots and then somehow manage to make them worse. And then people believe that this is what they're supposed to be doing
Then again, most photo-influencers don't actually understand even something as basic as focal length (no, a 105mm is a 105mm regardless of whether you put it in front of a tiny sensor or a big honking medium format)
Examples of this? What do you consider mediocre, but is still hugely popular?
As for what I mean by mediocre: let's say you are looking at a portrait of someone you don't know. If you can't remember it 10-30 minutes later, it was probably mediocre or worse. Would you recognize the subject if you met them on the a street one day later?
Most portraits tend to be bad because they completely fail to capture the subject. People fuss over lighting and editing and color grading and whatnot, but they don't actually pay attention to the person they are shooting. I see quite a few of these people with huge social media followings who can't, for the life of them, take pictures of humans. And yet, they teach their inability to make portraits to others.
I also know professional photographers who are genuinely bad at taking portraits. And then there are those rare people who just nail it most of the time. Notice this when looking at a portrait of someone you know. Is it "them"?
Another category where you see a lot of bad photos is wildlife photography. You will see endless pictures of birds that possibly could go in a bird-spotting book purely for identification purposes. But, to steal a line from my wife after looking at a certain facebook group "it's just a bunch of tack sharp ducks set against blurred out sky". And my wife spends an inordinate amount of time looking at birds.
All you need to make bad nature photography is a big lens, a location and some time. It takes no talent. All you need to make technically good, but completely pointless nature photos is a big lens, a location, time and a decent modern camera. Then turn on 3D tracking and spray whenever something moves. Animals live in nature -- they belong in context -- they do things. Good nature photographers manage to communicate this.
(I was actually tempted to name the "it's just a bunch of tack sharp ducks..."-group, but I'm not going to. Though it isn't that hard to guess).
We drown in technically excellent images that are dull as crap.
(To be clear: I'm a mediocre photographer. I'm very aware of it. I occasionally shoot something that may be worth looking at -- but still rarely something you'd remember)