Analogue photography possess ‘a certain quality’ that can’t be achieved with digital photography
With the photo series, I wanted to explore what exactly it is about analogue photography that people feel cannot be reproduced with digital cameras. To do this, I found photos I took a few years back on an SLR film camera of Melbourne landmarks and tried to reproduce the photos with my digital SLR camera. I also took two photos, one analogue and one digital, of the same railway crossing on the same day within a few seconds of one another. The idea was that by taking photos of the same things with different cameras, it would be easier to compare the technologies rather than the content of the photos. As you look through the photos, particularly the last two images of the railway crossing, you can see how each camera has rendered the colours and textures in the frame differently.
In Lucy Battersby’s article for The Age, Film Photography Makes a Comeback, she explains how “lovers of film say the slow and careful process of composing every shot gives them a sense of quality over quantity in a world where people can take thousands of digital photographs that never get looked at.” Because of the limited number of photos on a single roll of film, people shooting on analogue tend to put more planning and thought into their photographs. Some may argue this leads to better photos, but at the same time, being able to take more photographs may increase the chances of taking an amazing photo at a precise moment that couldn’t be planned.
What is clear from these photographs is that analogue and digital camera indeed produce very different types of images. There are many photographers and film enthusiast who claim that the look that film photography produces is more ‘aesthetically pleasing’. Walter Rothwell claims that “film has a quality that is unique; a beauty and tonal warmth that digital cannot match.” Others such as Joseph Cha claim that “one of the worst things about digital cameras is also one of the best things about film, the grain.” Of course it’s not possible to be objective about aesthetics, because at the end of the day it’s a matter of personal taste. But there is no denying that analogue and digital photography each achieve very distinct looks that can’t be reproduced by the other.
While we can’t truly say that one method of photography looks better than the other, we can say that one method may be more suitable for a particular subject, depending on what you want the image to achieve. If you’re after a higher definition of image, then digital is obviously going to produce better results, while analogue may be more suitable for photographing warmer tones. Regardless of which method you end up using, this photo series demonstrate why it is so important to consider how you want the final image to appear before choosing a camera.
Bibliography
Battersby, L. (2016). Film Photography Makes a Comeback. The Age. [online] Available at: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/film-photography-makes-a-comeback-20160225-gn3edc.html [Accessed 24 Mar. 2017].
Cha, J. (2017). Why Film Is Still Better Than Digital. [online] SLR Lounge. Available at: https://www.slrlounge.com/film-still-better-digital/ [Accessed 24 Mar. 2017].
PetaPixel. (2017). Film Photography is Making a Stunning Comeback. [online] Available at: https://petapixel.com/2016/08/19/film-photography-making-stunning-comeback/ [Accessed 24 Mar. 2017].