Can film photography help improve your digital photography?

Can film photography help improve your digital photography? The short answer is yes. It all depends on how you apply yourself, but here are a few factors to take into consideration.

For those of us old enough to remember the pre-digital era, the recent resurgence in the popularity of film photography is a truly welcome development. Despite their similarities, the differences between the old and the new technologies are considerable, but despite its advanced age and potential drawbacks, the older method can have a positive impact on your use of the newer one.

Take your time
If you’ve grown up with digital, you’ll know just how disposable and inexpensive a jpeg is. By contrast, the cost of film, along with getting it developed and having your shots printed, can make this hobby less convenient and much costlier over time.

That said, each frame is therefore all the more precious and it forces you to take your time and consider each shot with more thought and care. Pay extra attention to your use of available light and its effects, to your settings and the results you can achieve, and – perhaps most important – the overall composition of your shot.

A wasted shot isn’t just a wasted opportunity. It’s also a waste of money. It’ll cost you to get it processed, but once you’ve taught yourself to slow down, you’ll benefit doubly by transferring this skill to your digital craft. You might find yourself taking fewer photos, but you’ll probably also find more worthwhile keepers in your total daily output.

Practice makes perfect
With practice and learning the hard lessons of mistakes, shooting film lends itself to a more organic experience and the camera begins to feel more like a natural extension of yourself. By paying more attention to your surroundings, you’ll also feel more connected to your subject.

Vintage manual-focus lenses offer another effective way to train yourself to be more patient and perceptive – and less reliant on a modern digital camera’s split-second AF and rapid-fire burst mode. It’s not just a transferrable skill but also a transferrable technology. Mounted onto a digital camera, vintage glass gives your shots a film-era aura, not necessarily with the same razor-sharp resolution, for sure, but it can be fun to swap that clinical clarity for the unique character that certain legacy lenses are known to impart.

Embrace the nostalgia factor
It’s easy to achieve all kinds of filmic looks with your digital camera using simulations and other post-processing techniques, but nothing really surpasses the look of real film photography.

Familiarize yourself with the various film brands on the market today and the range of products within each brand. They all produce different results and some are more suited to certain shooting styles than others. With practice, you’ll find yourself gravitating toward one or a small handful of go-to film stock. Everyone has their favourites.

Master the camera to master your craft
A film camera forces you to return to square one and familiarize yourself with the basics of photography. Yes, the technology is way simpler than a fully featured digital camera, but it’s helpful to be reminded where it all started. If you’ve never used a film camera before, here a few additional tips for the uninitiated.

1. You don’t have to load a camera in total darkness, but it’s also smart not to do this in an overly brightly lit space. Not all cameras are alike, so read the manual beforehand to make sure you’re doing it right. The only thing worse than a wasted frame is an entire wasted roll of film because it wasn’t properly anchored and/or got totally shredded upon rewinding.
2. When it comes time to start shooting, be sure to set your camera to the correct ISO and remember that you can’t change it. A film’s sensitivity to light is baked in. But here’s another plus to film photography: the granular-looking effect derived from high ISOs is attractive and desirable, unlike the noise that sometimes accompanies digital output.
3. This probably goes without saying, but it bears repeating: once you’ve loaded your film, don’t open the back of your camera till you’ve shot the whole roll and rewound it. Otherwise, the frames on that stretch of strip will be exposed and ruined, and light can even seep into edge of the canister and spoil the next frame on the spool.
4. Once you’ve shot the entire roll of film, follow your camera’s instructions to release it for rerolling (you usually press a small red button on the bottom of the camera but there are variations). Don’t open the camera till the film has been completely wound back into the canister – you’ll feel a slight tug on it before it’s completely released and ready to be ejected, developed, processed and printed.

Cover Image Credit: Photo by Pixabay