A (Brief) Case For Film

Jon Kreisler
Jul 27, 2017 · 2 min read

So I am sure many people ask themselves “Why do these lunatics still spend the money and time on film photography?”. So, here are some possible answers, more so observations, that I have drawn from my experience with the medium.

  1. It is cheaper in some ways….

First of all, not everything about film is more expensive. For instance, when I google “DSLR” (Digital Single Lens Reflex) the average camera price is around 500 dollars! However, a old style SLR camera, can be bought in perfect condition from your local camera shop or perhaps even a antique store for as little as 9 dollars (my cheapest) and usually averages around 20–35 dollars. By that math I could buy 25 film SLR cameras for the price of one low end digital SLR camera.

2. It is also more expensive in some ways….

So, standard fuji film 400 ISO 24 exposure rolls go for 3.69 a roll. Lets round up to 4 dollars. That comes to roughly 16 cents per picture you take. Now, when I took my digital camera to shoot sports at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, I took around 200–250 pictures an hour for 4 hours. That’s 32 dollars of film per hour, not including development cost. Development cost at the lab I go to is the same price as a roll, so that doubles it to 64 dollars an hour! or a grand total of 256 dollars if those pictures had been film.

3. Does it make you a better photographer?

Now, obviously if i was shooting film at the stadium, it wouldn’t have been 200 pictures an hour because film cameras typically use a mechanical mechanism to advance the film, costing time. But does this cost of time improve your skills? Some film fanatics (including me) argue that due to the cost and time involved in shooting film, it really makes you think about each and every exposure. Plan it, see it, capture it.

4. So is it worth it?

Short answer, I believe so. It sharpens your skills, cheap camera bodies allow you to try a multitude of camera types. and yes the film can be expensive, but if you have a real passion for photography as a documentation medium, it is far worth it.

Jon Kreisler

Written by

Photographer, techie, Linux master race.

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