[Leica] Reasons to use film

["David Rodgers" <davrodgers@msn.com>]

I'm tired of contemplating "digital -- film, which is best". The debate has 
darkened the farthest reaches of my cranium. The nice midtone gray matter 
therein has been so overexposed it's now black (although not Gallerie black 
because if you zoom in you'll see artifacts). I give up. Film is dead. 
Digital wins. But while it's being embalmed, here are some reasons to still 
use film..

1) Film is underhyped. At this point it's absolutely devoid of hype. I hate 
hype with a passion. It's the carrot in front of the cart. Digital is the 
mother-of-all-hype at the moment. If you want to know what's behind the 
hype, follow the money trail. It says follow me, again and again. Ask any 
leming where that'll get ya. Reminds me of the days when autofocus arrived 
on the scene. I jumped on board early. Not Nikon AF3 early, but not long 
after that. After buying 4 new bodies in 4 years I gave up and returned to 
my trusty Leica. Took me a couple of rolls to get back into the focusing 
swing of things. Hey, this manual stuff works!!!. I never looked back. I was 
too busy looking into the viewfinder making sure I was in focus. In the back 
of my mind I thought, "someday when the technology matures I'll buy AF." 
Well, that day came around last year. I bought an AF Nikon body because, as 
everyone knows, film cameras are cheap these days. Just like an aging, well 
you know, the worlds oldest profession....mature means inexpensive. I 
quickly discovered that I wasn't disillusioned because the technology wasn't 
mature. I was disillusioned because I don't like AF. I've come to realize 
that moments spent autofocusing are moments wasted.

2) Film is bigger. And when it comes to the surface area of capture, size 
matters. It matters even in those little unimportant areas like rendering 
backgrounds out of focus. Affordable chip size isn't going to get any bigger 
until there's a huge technological advancement. So the hypesters have 
convinced us that smaller is better. They refer to the chip as a 1.5 or a 
1.6 to 1. Oh, that's the lens-focal-length-improvement-ration. And to think 
all these years I could have been using Minox film with my 600mm Nikkor 
making it into a Saturn Rocket. What everyone tries to avoid is saying that 
the actual surface area is s-m-a-l-l-e-r. They finally got serious 
professionals to accept APS as a viable surface size.

3) Film works. Finally, a totally rational reason. I know all the marketing 
people (a few of whom I'm certain reside on the LUG in disguise) would have 
us believe overwise, but film really does work for taking pictures. And it 
works pretty darn well. It's so mature it's boring. Digital isn't film. It's 
an alternative to film for some things. For instance, you can never make a 
fully analog image if digital is anywhere in the workflow. At somewhere 
along the way you've incrementalize the sine wave. You've lost information. 
You can drawn a line in the sand with film. With digital you draw points 
along a line. Which is better? Ooops, that's not what this is about.

DaveR


 
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