One of the more common questions we are asked when we are out taking scenic photos is "what is that?", always in reference to the camera that I am carrying. More often than not, as we hike along the East Coast Trail or through the streets of one of Newfoundland's numerous coastal towns, Amber will be carrying out Nikon D90: often called Nikon's most popular digital SLR, it is instantly recognizable by many who pass by. I, on the other hand, am usually carrying a small, silver and black contraption with 'Minolta' engraved across its front.
It's the title that throws most off; Minolta stopped making cameras in 2006, and stopped making my model X-370 sometime in the 1990s. For those of you keeping track of when technology changed, you may have noticed that ending a production run in the 90s means my camera predates affordable digital cameras.
Yes, my Minolta is a film camera. Yes, I still sometimes shoot with film.
I'll start off with the disclaimer that shooting with film is not for everyone. Someone keen to take a high volume of pictures would quickly feel the heat from a hole burning in their wallet. Nor is film shooting for the impatient (Amber is calling me a hypocrite right now...); one cannot point and shoot and hope for the best - at least not with any great hope of getting a good picture. The shot must be composed, thought of, and weighed against a limited number of shots available (the 64GB SD cards we purchased on Boxing Day give the D90 4200 available pictures; a roll of film gives 36).
Just as film isn't for everyone, film isn't for every situation. I love shooting film when I'm walking through the streets taking pictures of the landscape or buildings; I would never dare try to photograph the dances at a wedding with a film camera. This is much for the reasons listed above. At the last wedding we photographed, Amber and I together took about 200 pictures of the bride and groom's first dance; around 50 of those were suitable for print. Film is not as forgiving as digital, and I would never want to take a chance with such a special moment.
At this moment, you're probably thinking to yourself, "my God, if it's really that bad why do you bother using it?" And, given my warnings above, I guess that's probably a fair statement.
The truth is, there are a lot of very good reasons to shoot with film.
The first reason is quality. Has the following every happened to you? Let's say you take a picture (how about a shed, because there's one conveniently in my backyard). You compose your shot, line everything up, make sure the settings are right and you take the picture. You go home, look at it, and probably put it in Instagram (no filters though - that would be cheating). You're pleased with your #shedpic...that is, until you notice someone else has a picture of the exact same shed up. Their reds are more vibrant, there's more detail in the wood AND...they used the hashtag 'no filters'! Why are your pictures so different??
Either the person lied with their no filter claim or, more likely, they used photoshop/Lightroom. Now, photoshop isn't cheating: in fact, it's what you're supposed to use for digital pictures. Film (well, good film, which we'll get more into next blog post) captures all of that detail and colour vibrancy automatically. The difference in quality is especially true with black and white film, which is what we use the most. Photoshop does a decent job at converting colour pictures to black and white, but it's nowhere near as good at capturing lighting or tonal differences than your basic, century old silver black and white film.
The other benefit is film's enlarging capabilities. Let's say Cranberry takes a picture of St. John's from the top of Signal Hill. With our Nikon D90, the largest quality print we could make from this picture would be 14x9 (inches). If we took the same picture with film, 24x16 would be more than reasonable, with every larger sizes more than possible without sacrificing quality. To achieve the same results digitally would require a Nikon D800, which you can buy for about $3,000 locally (without a lens)...or, I could take my grandparent's Minolta X370 that they bought before I was born, and a roll of film.
Those are the two main reasons that we still use film. Obviously, there's so much more to talk about - like how to actually shoot the film, or what we do with it once we've finished a roll. For that reason, this will be the first in a three-part Cranberry blog series on shooting with film. I hope you enjoyed it. Until next time.
-Christopher
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