Photography of Simon Galbally - f8Vision

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Why Film Today?

The presumption by many that experienced, dedicated, professional and capable photographers would or should have converted to digital imaging by now shows how they miss the point.

Of course digital imaging has many wonderful benefits for all photographers. But to "move forward" in the digital imaging arena still means one may be taking a number of backward steps too. For me that is the issue.

I have 3 reasons for staying with film and having even recently bought a brand new film camera in the past 9 months (Hasselblad XPan II):

1. better quality pictures - in most cases film resolves more detail in ways that appeal to me more than digital high resolution images;

2. lower overall cost - even with regular costs of film and processing, I remain way ahead of the full cost of converting to digital imaging;

3. no desire to complicate my photography - there are a myriad of complications that arise when changing to digital even if the chosen camera has a "full frame" sensor.

That 3rd reason is about (like many others have said):
Full frame photography is a 100% MUST for me - over the past 50 years we have seen that anything less than a full frame 35mm image is a backward step. The same applied to 35mm film photography where any smaller than 35mm frame was next to useless - such as 110 and APS. Of course digital technology has enabled quite capable "cropped" frame imaging but like the manufacturers are now saying, it has its limits. As a matter of physics and fact 2 elements are critical to image quality - size and quantity! 35mm is the SMALL format - small enough in the first place.

I shoot 6x6 Hasselblad too because I value full frame 6x6 120 roll film images - cropped digital defeats that purpose.

I shoot 4x5 Linhof too because I value huge trannies requiring very little enlargement (as well as the technical lens board and film back movements for certain genres) - digital is not even in the ball park.

Also I want my 28mm lens (and every other lens I own) to retain 100% of its attributes and not become a 42mm angle of view with a 28mm DOF............. the list goes on an on.

I certainly want my Hasselblad 50mm FLE lens to remain a 50mm lens AOV and DOF and not have a digi back deprive me of wide angle shooting in 6x6.

Although lens makers are madly releasing a myriad of very and ultra wide angle prime and zoom lenses for the "cropped" sensor camera market - not one possesses the resolving power or aberration correction characteristics of the best full frame lenses available now. So to say one can deal with a cropped image buy buying the new digital lenses if just wrong. Additionally one still then finds the "new" lenses having such a short focal length offer very little creativity associated with depth of field.



I value shooting at 50asa, 100asa, 400 asa, 800asa, 1600asa, 3200 asa and rarely even 6400asa. Few digital cameras offer film quality fast ISO speeds yet - noise and artefacts remain an issue.

And finally when I look at my landscape and see the tiny little autumn leaves in the foreground of a lake and mountain scene I want that leaf to show its veins and craggy edges and not look like a rubber glove left on the grass because all the detail can't be resolved.

Because I am not a full-time professional photographer, I have no issues about waiting a day or two for my films to come back; I don't need to transmit my images across the world in 15 seconds; nor do I have clients insisting on same day availability. So, all those advantages are irrelevant to me. I can't save $40k a year in outside 6x6 trannie scanning that makes my top end Imacon back a good business decision at $25k.

But I also take family happy snaps and every time the 5x7 prints get passed around 3 generations of family members mine are the ones framed (even though other family members' compositions are often every bit as good as mine) and sitting in pride of place at their homes - because as they tell me: "your lenses and cameras are more expensive than ours and you get much nicer photos than we do" - what a joke. Well my gear (some of it at least) was cheap compared to the money they paid for digi mania which produces bits and bytes that fall apart once enlarged more than 5x7 - babies with orange faces and plastic skin, no eyelashes and seemingly painted on hair!
Yes, I exaggerate - but to make a point.



Finally, I do tinker with digi files, I have all my films scanned at time of processing because one great digital benefit is the ability to share and conveniently show on the home TV. And any fixes are much easier for large printing at my processing lab.
And yes I will one day but a DSLR - a sensible replacement for my "machine gun tool" - EOS 1vHS; but not a replacement for my Leica M7, nor my XPan, nor my Hasselblad 501cm/503cw and certainly not my Linhof Technika. My DSLR will have to be full frame and way, way lower cost than the current benchmark 1DS MkII - I doubt it is that far away either.


But funnily, a few weeks ago I took my battered $10 1932 Zeiss Ikon Ikonta 120 roll film 6x9 folding camera out for a walk - shot some frames and one got printed to 60x90cm - friends were amazed and asked what new digicam I bought - I said a 400MP digi cam which blew them away. Then I explained it was made in 1932 and scanned images are about 400MB files making such magnificent prints!

Enjoy whatever you own, film or digital - my point here is that some very cold water needs to be poured on some of the manic "kill film" digital propaganda that makes so many people think film is dead and digi is superior - it's not. “Different horses for different courses”.

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