> Also I cannot understand the nostalgia for film.
Why even put it in terms of ‘nostalgia’?
When someone takes up watercolor painting, do you also dismiss this as ‘nostalgia’? Why is film photography as a hobby any less interesting or legitimate on its own merits than making pottery the way it was made 10.000 years ago?
I often find it’s an older (even elderly) crowd that dismisses film-photography in this way. They maybe shot film when they were younger, discovered digital (which they always describe as being “objectively superior” - as though two totally different media can be compared this way), and then dismiss film users as somehow deluded ‘hipsters’ or as people merely indulging in nostalgia.
In my case, as someone who took up film photography 15 years ago, and shoot it alongside digital, I find film not only a more satisfying and thoughtful process, but also a superior artistic artifact: I prefer film’s color, the subtle ways that film handles highlight falloff, and even the ‘accidents’ that happen when chemical and light fuse to create an image.
Incidentally there are more and more ways to enjoy the entire process without a darkroom nowadays: a changing bag and a unit like the AGO film processor from Vintage Visual [0] make it simple to just take out and pack away all that’s needed to go from photograph to scan and print without a lot of space or mass of hassle.
[0] https://vintagevisual.eu/products/ago-film-processor
Why even put it in terms of ‘nostalgia’? When someone takes up watercolor painting, do you also dismiss this as ‘nostalgia’? Why is film photography as a hobby any less interesting or legitimate on its own merits than making pottery the way it was made 10.000 years ago?
I often find it’s an older (even elderly) crowd that dismisses film-photography in this way. They maybe shot film when they were younger, discovered digital (which they always describe as being “objectively superior” - as though two totally different media can be compared this way), and then dismiss film users as somehow deluded ‘hipsters’ or as people merely indulging in nostalgia.
In my case, as someone who took up film photography 15 years ago, and shoot it alongside digital, I find film not only a more satisfying and thoughtful process, but also a superior artistic artifact: I prefer film’s color, the subtle ways that film handles highlight falloff, and even the ‘accidents’ that happen when chemical and light fuse to create an image.
Incidentally there are more and more ways to enjoy the entire process without a darkroom nowadays: a changing bag and a unit like the AGO film processor from Vintage Visual [0] make it simple to just take out and pack away all that’s needed to go from photograph to scan and print without a lot of space or mass of hassle.
[0] https://vintagevisual.eu/products/ago-film-processor