Last year I took a deep dive into film photography.

After spending years with digital cameras, I was curious. I wanted to know what the “buzz” was about. Why is everyone talking about film, shooting film, loving film, etc?

I’ve tried everything from 35mm to medium format, to scanning and converting my own photos - the whole schbang.

Eventually, I came to the heavily realization: that lowkey…maybe…just possibly…I don’t really like shooting film.

And this is not a knock on film photography at all. I’m just one guy. With one opinion. But after shooting film and trying to justify the means for a “novel experience” and the “manual handling” and all of that bullsh*t, I found it to be more of a pain in the ass than anything.

So, not to ruffle any feathers, but here’s why I stopped shooting film.

It doesn’t mean you can’t shoot film. It just means I wont be.

Film is Inconvenient

It’s a bit sad to say because there are aspects about film that I do like. The manual controls are a favorite (one I quite like on my Fujifilm cameras as well). The loading of the film roll, developing, scanning. All neat, but something I could never fully appreciate.

It felt like such a roundabout way of doing things, especially when I could just pick up one of my digital cameras, snap the picture in a fraction of a second, and then be on my way. Plus, I wasn’t limited in the amount of photos I could take. I could snap away to my heart’s pleasure.

Now I know, there are positives towards the limited number of exposures. But on days where I’d go out during golden hour and snap away for hundreds and hundreds of photos, the difference was immense. And I could just return home, plop the sd card into my computer and have all of my raws ready to go with basically unlimited flexibility and dynamic range to do whatever I wanted?

It seemed like a no brainer.

Film is Expensive

What seems to get passed off often as an “oh it’s worth it” became a knife in my wallet.

Film is expensive. It may not have costed much back in the day when production was high, but nowadays, the costs really add up. You have to pay for the film stock itself (~10$), developing (8-10$), and scanning (8-10$), all for just 36 exposures?? (12 for my medium format camera). It’s ridiculous. I end up spending about a dollar per photo. And I know you can develop and scan yourself, but unless you enjoy that process it ends up adding up to that much in both costs and labor.

Whereas with digital cameras the costs are more upfront. You pay a higher price for most digital cameras but then you can snap away to your heart’s desire.

Film hurt me more than it helped me.

Do I want to be a “good photographer” or a “photographer that shoots film”?

For me, I ultimately had to ask myself an important question: do I want to be a “good photographer” or a “photographer that shoots film”? Because film has become such a buzz, a novel thing, that people will even have it in their bios: “shoots on film”, “film photographer”. Whatever. Just because one shoots on film doesn’t mean they’re a good photographer.

And I realize that these things don’t necessarily come at the expense of one another. There are plenty of good photographers that shoot on film. But I believe digital was the best medium to accelerate my growth by way of endless iterations and quick feedback. The more photos I take, the more mistakes I make, the more things I try, the better of a photographer I would become. And I could feel that happening in the process.

So it wasn’t a one or another thing in the end. Rather it was more of an objective question. Which is the better medium for me in terms of : accelerating my growth, allowing me the flexibility and adaptability to create what I wanted visually, and would be the least inconvenience or most enjoyable experience to my life?

So, here we are. I’m negligent to say I’ll stop shooting film forever, because I don’t think of it as “closing the door” persay. But for the past half year or more, I really haven’t touched a film camera at all. So, if I do feel like shooting film, I’ll shoot film. But where it stands right now is that film is not the medium for me to express myself creatively, and I’m okay with that.

I would say to still try film if you’re interested. And if you love to shoot film, of course do that. But just note that the internet and social has (in my opinion) over glorified the aspect of shooting film and I’ve experienced that first hand. But at the very least, I can say I have learned a lot of things from shooting film. Probably the most notable one being that I don’t actually like film and much and I don’t have to shoot it.