It’s an age-old argument online. Well okay, it’s not, but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen people argue film vs digital before. At least once, I think.
So which should you be shooting? I’ll go ahead and spoil the answer up front before I get into the details: both!
So let’s look at some metrics by which film and digital might be compared.
Convenience
This one goes to digital. Not only do you entirely bypass the need for a darkroom, chemistry, developing tank, scanning, etc., you also gain some nice features like the ability to switch ISO on the fly without changing out to a different film. Your photos can been seen instantly on the back of your LCD, with a histogram that tells you how you did on exposure. Photos go from camera to computer easily, and when you’re done editing, they are ready to export and share online. The victor here isn’t surprising. Film shooters aren’t shooting film because it’s convenient.
Resolution
This is going to be a little more complicated than simply “film is better” or “digital is better.” Digital cameras from the last decade range in resolution from around 12 megapixels to upwards of 50. On the film side, there’s some variability depending on which type of film you use, your scanner, etc. But a little back of the napkin math gives me some rough estimates for film resolution in megapixels (assuming a 2400 DPI scan, which is about the best you can do on a flatbed scanner of any kind)
35mm film: ~7.5 megapixels
120 film (645): ~24 megapixels
120 film (6x6): ~32 megapixels (if you don’t crop from square format)
120 film (6x7): ~37.5 megapixels
120 film (6x9): ~48 megapixels
4x5 sheet film: ~115 megapixels
As you can see, digital cameras have been ahead of 35mm film for quite a while, and in some cases offer more resolution than some of the smaller medium format types. But at the time of writing this in early 2020, no digital camera within your average hobbyist’s price range can touch large format film for resolution, and even 6x7 and 6x9 are ahead of the majority of consumer and prosumer digital cameras.
6x6 cropped to 6x4.5. Never underestimate the ability of a ~24 megapixel equivalent negative to make gorgeous large prints.
One caveat here is the multi-row panorama. It’s a technique I covered extensively in last week’s post, and an easy way to increase your resolution, as long as you don’t have moving elements in your composition that won’t be in the same place while you’re shooting your grid of frames. I have a few images in my portfolio shot on my tiny, 12 megapixel Canon PowerShot S100 that are upwards of 80 megapixels because they’re stitched together from several frames.
Ultimately, if you’re looking for the absolute best resolution you can get in a single exposure, large format sheet film in 4x5 and larger sizes is the clear winner. I’m going to give this one to film.
Aesthetic
Film purists would argue that emulating the look of film using a digital camera is impossible, and that there’s simply no substitute for the real thing. I’m not 100% convinced by that argument personally, although if you’re dead set on getting your images to look like they were shot on film, I’d argue that alone is a good enough reason to just, you know, shoot film.
There is no question to me that both digital and film can produce outstandingly beautiful prints. But I have a special place in my heart for the look and feel of a silver gelatin print made in the darkroom. And while I’ve seen some wonderful B&W inket prints in my day, given the same photo printed on an inket vs printed from a large negative in the darkroom, I’ll take the darkroom print for my wall 10 times out of 10.
Since that preference of mine is 100% subjective, I will say film and digital are tied here. Film doesn’t have any kind of inherently, objectively better “look” to it than digital as the hipsters would have you think. It’s just a personal preference thing. And frankly, I’m guessing 99% of the purists would have a difficult time telling apart a real film scan from a digital photo edited to look like a film photo anyway.
Dynamic Range
Here’s another one where there’s no clear and obvious winner. Film enthusiasts love to brag about the incredible dynamic range of their B&W and color negative emulsions (nobody brags about the dynamic range of slide film). My experience is that B&W film can fit around 15-16 stops on it before it actually stops recording detail in the highlights. Which is great, because you can often burn in stuff in a print that you didn’t know was there in the negative. Digital cameras vary pretty wildly in dynamic range capabilities. But here’s the thing. If you’re faced with a scene that exceeds the dynamic range of your digital camera, and you actually need to have detail in the extreme shadows and extreme highlights of the photo at the same time, you can bracket. It’s so easy. Lightroom and Photoshop can easily auto-align images and combine them into an HDR for you, and you have the whole wide world of editing potential, just like that. I’ve even gotten away with bracketing handheld before, the software has gotten that good.
You can bracket film too, but if you want to actually make a darkroom print from multiple negatives, you need to be a darkroom necromancer of some sort to pull it off. Not that I’ve ever encountered a scene I couldn’t fit into the dynamic range of my film anyway, but there you go.
So in short, both digital and film have plenty of dynamic range. More than you need. If you’re consistently shooting insanely high-contrast scenes (ones that include more than 16 stops of dynamic range), bracketing with digital is going to be a lot easier and probably offer better results, compared to using film.
Depth of Field
Film is a clear winner on this battlefield. 35mm film DoF is identical to full frame digital (indeed, that’s where “full frame” got its name). The next step up in film (without getting into weird formats like 127) is 645. You can go up to medium format with digital too, but the dirty little secret here is that most medium format digital sensors are actually physically smaller than a 645 negative, and barring hyper-expensive specialty digital backs, all of them are smaller than 6x6, 6x7, 6x9, and 4x5. Without getting too technical about it, physical sensor (or film) size equates to a shallower depth of field, given the same field of view and aperture. So by the time you’ve taken one step up from 35mm, you already have more creative options for shallow DoF compared to really any digital camera in a reasonable price range.
This is actually what a lot of people are referring to when they talk about the “medium format look,” whether they know it or not: a razor thin depth of field paired with what looks like a somewhat wide field of view, where the out of focus areas fade off gracefully into a deep, creamy blur. Impossible to achieve on a full frame, APS-C, or Micro 4/3 camera sensor without resorting to something tedious like the Brenizer method. Incredibly easy to get with 645 and larger film.
Process Enjoyment
This is the lynchpin of my pro-film leanings. I love digital photography. But the process of choosing film, loading it into an analog camera, setting up and taking photos with a mechanical device like that, and then developing the film in a tank, seeing your negatives come out of the rinse for the first time… that’s a whole heap of fun. Even more so than shooting and developing film, I will never get tired of darkroom printing. Hearing the fans in the darkroom humming, smelling the chemicals, seeing the image projected onto the baseboard of the enlarger, focusing and cropping it, running test strips, playing with dodging and burning, and above all, watching that final perfect print come to life before your eyes in the developer tray… that’s not just fun, it’s bordering on euphoric for me.
There are lots of times when I’m not in the mood to go through all the work required to get a darkroom print in a frame on the wall. And often I don’t have time to do that, particularly when I’m shooting for clients. But when I do get to take the entire image making process from start to finish in a totally analog workflow, I really love it, and I think it’s a lot more enjoyable than the computer-based workflow I use with my digital cameras. I think everyone should try darkroom printing at least once.
Lowlight Performance
Digital wins here hands down. Film can reasonably be pushed to around 3200 ISO. 6400 at a stretch. At those values, no matter what film stock or developer you’re using, expect harsh contrast and ridiculous grain. Modern DSLR and mirrorless cameras barely even break a sweat shooting at 3200 and 6400, and a lot of the higher end ones can get you usable images a few stops beyond 6400 as well.
Cost
Here’s the lowdown on cost. You can find a really great value in a digital or a film camera, and you can spend a huge amount of money on either digital or film.
If you’re brand spanking new to photography and want something a step up from your phone camera, there are very capable compact and bridge-style digital cameras that can be had for under $100. Yes, they’ll be a few generations behind, and almost certainly well-loved out of the used market. But they can still produce beautiful images.
If you’re dead set on interchangeable lenses on a shoestring budget, you’re going to get off the ground a lot cheaper with film. There are tons of 80s-era 35mm SLR cameras that go for pennies on local classifieds, at estate sales, etc. You’ve probably heard of some of the really popular ones like the Canon AE-1, the Pentax K1000, and the Olympus OM-2. Name recognition has artificially inflated the prices of these cameras, and they often go for over $100 now. But look at some of the lesser-known models. The Canon AT-1 has the exact same manual mode and mechanically, it’s virtually identical to the AE-1. I got mine for $15 a few years ago. The FTb is another lesser-known and therefore inexpensive SLR by Canon, and it’s arguably a superior camera to the AE-1. The Olympus OM-G is pretty much a less expensive version of the OM-2 without making compromises anywhere that matters. The list goes on. With a little patience, you could have a nice 35mm SLR with a lens or three, a few rolls of film, a developing tank, a thermometer, and enough developer, stop bath, and fixer to last for months, all for around the $100 mark.
Of course, film/development costs are a recurring expense, whereas digital just has a larger up-front investment for an interchangeable lens camera, and then costs basically nothing to shoot as much as you want. I’ll declare it a tie here.
So what should you shoot? Let’s recap.
If you don’t have the time for developing your own film (or waiting for a lab to do it), shoot digital.
If you don’t have an interest in playing with analog and chemical processes, shoot digital.
If you want to shoot in the dark, shoot digital.
If you need a super fast turnaround time, shoot digital.
If you need the absolute highest resolution possible, shoot large format film.
If you want extreme control over your depth of field, shoot film.
If you love using mechanical devices or tinkering with chemical processes, shoot film.
If you love you a good silver gelatin print, shoot film and print it yourself!
If you’re on a tight budget to get gear, you can make it work with either medium.
And if you, like me, find that all of these factors (and more) are in a constant state of flux, shoot both!
Questions or thoughts about film vs digital that I didn’t cover here? Leave me a comment.