Why people shoot film

[amolitor]

Just to extend my sailing parable a little bit.

If you're not a very good racing sailor, then sanding the bottom of your boat to a mirror finish isn't going to help you. You're not going to win races until you get to be better at a lot of different things. When you do become a good racing sailor, one of the things you have internalized is that everything -- absolutely everything -- should be done right. Competing at a high level is about doing everything right, and taking every edge you can, no matter how small. Why? Because there are other blokes out there who are just as good.

Sanding the bottom of your boat to a mirror is a psychological trick, which is one of 10,000 things you do when you're winning a lot of races, to make those wins happen.

Shooting film is going to make you work differently. There's simply no getting around that. If you're sufficiently manly you can maybe reduce the effect to a very very small one, by controlling your tools and not letting them control you, but the fact that you're carrying this camera with these limitations is going to change the way you work.

If this change, however small, is in the right direction, why wouldn't you take it? If you want to make the best pictures you can, you need to take every edge offered to you, you need to use every trick, you have to do every single thing the best you can, otherwise you're taking pictures that are, at best, almost but not quite the best pictures you can. You're not competing against other blokes here, you're competing against an idealized notional version of yourself, one who makes literally no mistakes.

 

[SoulfulRecover]

It was a pretty fun film but they all said the same thing over and over which got old. They should have had the photographers expand more on it, spent more time with them maybe. It just didnt seem to go in depth enough for me.

It also felt very short. Seems like they could have had the camera crew who was traveling take film photos along the way between the meetings with the photographers to show case their travels more. Even if they werent photographers, it would have been cool to see what they did.

 

[timor]

Whisky will be needed. Especially if someone will ask me to polish the boat bottom without the use of digital technology. Brrr... However at the end the question is, if polishing the boat by hand is an exercise in concentration and attention, which might have benefits somewhere else. Uh.. one more shot. Gulp.... Better. Yeah, this protracted funeral of film technology is depressing. Eventually we will loose original technology and substitute it with computerized simulation of it. That will make us poorer. But then who cares ? Aren't we already substituting real contacts with texting and Facebook gossiping ? Aren't we going to be a simulated society ?

 

[runnah]

I wish bad things upon the guy in the yellow hat.

 

[Ysarex]

I wish bad things upon the guy in the yellow hat.

Isn't the hat already bad enough?

 

[gsgary]

The early clips I saw of this put me off and now this totally puts me off. Why does it have to look so much like an Apple ad?

For me, this short CNN video makes a far more convincing and eloquent case for film:

What film photography still has to offer - CNN.com

Only good things i saw in the video were Elliot Erwitt, same cameras as mine Mamiya C330, Leica M and the camera shop in NY

 

[amolitor]

It's interesting to contrast Erwitt to the hipsters.

Erwitt: I'm a photographer, have been for a long time. I think it's important to do some work with film.

Hipsters: Well, there's just this.. it's... the light... and... you see and there's this perfect ... and... you just .. and ... um .. the light..

The hipsters clearly have no idea why they're doing any of this, but they've mastered a certain collection of words and jargon that sounds vaguely artistic and sensitive. They can reel off this content-free jibba-jabba by the yard. How big of a soundbite do you want? I think someone should take a 4 hour film of just one of these dolts droning on in his little cycle of indefinable/light/you just/and it's/indefinable/light/you just/it's... Now there's some effing ART for ya.

 

[compur]

It's just a commercial made by ad agency types for a big corporation (Kodak). It's no better or worse than a thousand other ads broadcast daily on boob tubes around the world.

I only watched a bit of it. Was it shot on film?

But, anyway, if something promotes film, I'm for it. The more people who use film the more film will be sold and the more film will be made. Fine with me.

 

[Derrel]

It's interesting to contrast Erwitt to the hipsters.

Erwitt: I'm a photographer, have been for a long time. I think it's important to do some work with film.

Hipsters: Well, there's just this.. it's... the light... and... you see and there's this perfect ... and... you just .. and ... um .. the light..

The hipsters clearly have no idea why they're doing any of this, but they've mastered a certain collection of words and jargon that sounds vaguely artistic and sensitive. They can reel off this content-free jibba-jabba by the yard. How big of a soundbite do you want? I think someone should take a 4 hour film of just one of these dolts droning on in his little cycle of indefinable/light/you just/and it's/indefinable/light/you just/it's... Now there's some effing ART for ya.

Some interesting points of view have been stated in regard to the Kodak mini-movie about why people shoot film. I myself noticed that the people interviewed were mostly under 35 in appearance, all the way through, until late in the film when they introduced the 40-something fellow. As a person who is 50 years old this year, I found the hipsters in the film somewhat amusing in the vague artsy-fartsy praise of film; none of them could really define what it was they liked. In some cases, there seemed to be a sort of nostalgia, a sort of feeling of being in love with old machines, old cameras. Which is fine. Steampunk is also a HUGE thing among this same hipster age bracket, and it's basically a nostalgia, a love-of-fantasy-and-old-timey stuff. But hey, the film was produced by Kodak, which means Kodak ponied up the money to make this short movie, and Kodak has a big involvement in imaging, film, paper, and photo chemicals. Or at least Kodak used to have such involvements, before they went bankrupt. I'm not sure what, exactly, Kodak is doing these days, but if younger hipsters love old cameras, and love wet darkroom work, and love shooting film, hey, that's cool. But I agree, the same old repeated inarticulate praise of "depth", and the ridiculous assertion by the darkroom printer guy that 35mm film negatives are "better" than digital was amusing. I suppose we all have our self-delusions though. But I agree, all of the "indefinable/light/depth/the depth/indefinable quality" B.S. was tedious.

Next up: Why Hipster Engineers Love the Ancient Abacus. Followed by a short film: Slide Rule or Scientific Calculator? You Make The Call !(produced by the Flat Earth Society, Cincinnatti,Ohio chapter)

 

[amolitor]

I think there are excellent reasons to shoot film, and I have spent quite a lot of effort articulating those reasons.

And since I have, I naturally assume that everyone else's reasons are suspect, and probably stupid

 

[pixmedic]

If you feel the unrelenting need to justify to other people why you shoot a certain format, and why it is better.... then maybe it isn't really those people you are trying to convince.

 

[Derrel]

I think there are excellent reasons to shoot film, and I have spent quite a lot of effort articulating those reasons.

And since I have, I naturally assume that everyone else's reasons are suspect, and probably stupid

If a guy wants to limber up a Mamiya C330, or an old Rolleiflex TLR, or a cheap, 1970's Sears 35mm SLR...then a guy needs to shoot film. Last summer I bought 25 rolls of expensive 120 color film for my Yashica 635, and I had a blast taking the old 635 over to the Oregon Coast. Despite carring a big, black pro Nikon d-slr, the old Yashica TLR drew TONS of comments from total strangers, ALL DAY LONG. Literally, I had 30+ people ask me about my second camera, which I had slung over my shoulder much of the day, as I shot for real with the Nikon, and shot for fun and posterity with the twin lens reflex. One woman even posed with my camera!!!



I can say one thing: now that we are into the 21st century, and 35mm film camera manufacture has been discontinued by almost every company that ever made 35mm cameras, using a film camera, and especially an old-fashioned type, like a twin-lens reflex, or a waist-level 120 rollfilm camera, or a Graphic or Technika,etc., draws a HUGE amount of interest and attention. And I think subconsciously, Kodak played up on that in the selection of central casting hipster-type people in their film.I personally think, among the younger, under-40 hipster demographic, that appearances are a big issue. Being "noticed" is a big deal. An old-timey styled camera, as I found out, literally makes people come up to you, and ask about the camera.

The degree of "cool factor" of carrying an old TLR on a weekend at the beach startled me. I thought it was unfortunate that the film focused so much on the hipster, desires-to-get-attention crowd. But as compur said the film is basically a commercial, an advertisement, a promotion of FILM, which was aimed at the, "I have never shot film before" crowd, the people who LEARNED on digital, but who are now desirous of learning the old way of doing things. I thought that the Kodak film was somewhat pandering to the hipster generation, and that they neglected to show a balanced view of film shooters as a whole. I think that people who have been shooting film for the past 15,20,25,30, 40+ years have an utterly different point of view than the bearded hipster NYC set of people, and I thought the film needed more people like Elliott Erwitt [he's in my sig file...see that?] and one or two less bearded, 32 year old men...

 

[limr]

If you feel the unrelenting need to justify to other people why you shoot a certain format, and why it is better.... then maybe it isn't really those people you are trying to convince.

Explain does not mean justify, and though some of those folks sounded like they didn't quite know what they were talking about, that doesn't mean they are trying to talk themselves into anything.

Note: Not all people who still shoot film are hipsters.

On a completely different topic, what bugged the holy hell out of me about that video was the auto correct subtitles that kept getting words completely wrong.
What someone said: "To me, they're both just tools that both have their uses."
What the subtitle said: "To me, they're both tools that having uses Batman films just."

 

[runnah]

If you feel the unrelenting need to justify to other people why you shoot a certain format, and why it is better.... then maybe it isn't really those people you are trying to convince.

Could not agree more.

I also think that the people who think that just because they shot something on film somehow makes a sub-par image great are very deluded.

 

[timor]

Note: Not all people who still shoot film are hipsters.

Thank you, Leonore.