An Expensive Way to Be Wrong About Most of My Shots

Let me take my undersized beanie off and set the Pentax 6x7 with Cinestill 800T to the side for a moment. It’s all the rage these days, photographers moving from digital to analog, for those sweet sweet film vibes. But why spend all that hard earned money on film, development and scans when you can just buy a FujiFilm digital camera with built in film simulation and endless film recipes? I feel these days there is a legitimate reason to make a move to analog photography even when the most basic digital cameras out perform film options.

We are surrounded by the latest technology, constantly bombarded by the need to keep up with the newest releases of everything in our lives. I work in IT on top of all this, making it difficult to be motivated to bust out the digital camera, update Adobe Lightroom with the lastest AI features and process a million photos. Moving over analog allows me to break away from all the technology. While I still love all the cool gadgets and whatnot, spending time slowing down to work with film is a great counterbalance.

When I first started using film, I would only take it out once in a while due to unfamiliarity. Now the digital camera only comes with me in specific situations. It has its place for sure, but it is so difficult to overcome the need to perfect the analog craft. Imagine you took that one photo on a digital camera that makes your pause every time you see it, the holy grail photo. I just recently took mine in Yosemite and it is truly amazing to look at. Now if I could have taken that in film, I would pass out from excitement and probably chase that high for the rest of life. Achieving those type of shots on film is just that much more satisfying knowing the difference in the learning curve.

While those perfect shots on film are great, it has also made me appreciate the not perfect shots as well. Missed focus, bad composition, poor lighting and issues like that on digital usually means the photo gets trashed. With film, it’s made me rethink how I can make this into more unique art and look at the shot from a different angle. I still slow way down to reduce the dumpster fire of a money pit my film skills are, but I have also developed tastes I wouldn’t have if I didn’t shoot analog cameras as well. It’s lead to some amazing opportunities and you never know where that will take you.