Digital vs Film Photography
I am constantly going backwards and forwards in my head whether I prefer to work with digital or analogue film photography. For the last three years, all my own work has been on film. It’s expensive, it’s a longer process, it’s less versatile. For some reason though, I can’t seem to go back to digital photography. Each time I start to convince myself I’m done with film photography, I do fashion photoshoot and work with both film and digital cameras.
And once I start to process both images, I start to lean towards analogue again. The digital images always come out crisp and reliable. All good. And then I start to develop the analogue photographs. It can be fiddly, the colours are less flexible and there’s dust to remove.
But then I compare them and the digital photographs just don’t seem to get that warmth. I can’t describe it well. I sometimes have to fight with the film photographs. Fight against the grain, fight against the highlight colouring. But the digital images lean towards a more commercial feel. And of course, this is good when it comes to commercial photography or a fashion shoot which is for a high street campaign. But for my own work, I just can’t say no to film yet!
I’m grateful that I was brought up in a time when it was only film photography. I still had darkroom classes when I was a photography student at sixteen. But I also witnessed digital photography replacing film, starting as 8 low res images on a floppy disk and becoming 40 Megapixel resolution cameras, saving high speed to SD Cards. You could see how digital went from being a novelty to a requirement for most jobs.
Comparing analogue and digital portrait photography in the studio
Admittedly, from my portrait photography shoot with Jadesola, I haven’t tried to match the colourings of my digital photographs with my film photographs - I’ve just tried to edit them to my own standard. With Portra, the colourings have their own special look - I would never think about trying to make the photographs look like a digital camera took it - why would I? And much the same, no matter how much I try, I can’t make a digital photograph look like a film photograph. When I try, I am never happy with them.
I shot the digital photo on a Canon 6D. The photograph is RAW and let’s you push and pull it a lot further than you could a scanned film photograph. However, the film photograph has a huge amount of dynamic range naturally. It feels softer. I think that is partially due to the lenses too. My Bronica ETRS has a very soft lens. When you use it outside you truly feel the softness of the lens.
Digital cameras are obsessed with sharpness. They have a very practical use too, taking photographs for corporate and commercial gigs. So Canon and Sony etc focus on making the digital cameras produce a good image close to real life, crisp. But people love film because it isn’t true to life. It’s a chemical representation; pigments forming on material. Each film stock has it’s own look - you can colour it different ways, but you are messing around with the film’s natural information.
So yes, I haven’t tried to make them lie for like. I can see why people like digital photography. It has it’s purpose. I like it too when it comes out well. But when I go through the photos, I just feel a little less soul as I edit them. I like a bit of soul. I’m sure I will do more photography shoots on digital soon. Film has become much harder to get as it has become more popular, so I may well be forced to - I feel I am shooting more half and half these days.
Portrait photography of Jadesola Odunjo on Portra Medium Format Film
Portrait photography of Jadesola Odunjo on Digital in my London photography studio