And how shooting film has made me better at shooting digital
This is my Canon 10QD SLR Camera. despite having D at the end of the model name, it is NOT a digital camera, It takes photos on film. I wanted to try out film photography not because it was old (as evident by my choice of camera, which basically looks like a oversize canon DSLR) but because of the advantages such as the extremely high dynamic range and tolerance to over and under exposure. I am not going to switch to using my film camera full time as film is stupid and expensive. but I will occasionally take a film photo.
Taking photos with film forces you to think about each shot, you are unable to just hold the shutter button and take 20 photos and pick out the best one (You can actually do this with the 10QD as it has 5FPS shooting, but that’s a really really easy way to blow a roll of film in like 7 seconds). Every shot must be carefully thought out, ensuring that your F stop and exposure are set correctly so you get a correctly exposed shot and not just a white or black mess. you also don’t get to see what you took until you have spent even more money on developing the film. I believe that shooting with film has taught me to be a better photographer on my digital camera. I think about what I am taking before I take it. getting the framing just right and ensuring that my settings are correct. I no longer use program auto at all and mostly shot in full manual instead of aperture priority.
When shooting on film I find that you don’t really need to edit the photos afterwards and you can just upload them to social media or your website. I find I am now doing even less editing with my digital camera and have on occasion uploaded to Instagram whilst still out by sending the photos over WiFi to my smartphone and putting it straight up. I no longer use editing software as a crutch. I still edit my photos, every photo shot on my Sony digital is put through affinity photo and adjusted a bit. At night I will underexpose on purpose so that I can dodge certain parts of the image up a stop, but that is done intentionally and not me trying to save a photo I shot without thinking.
I believe that shooting on film helps you become a better photographer as you are forced to ensure that every shot you take is correctly exposed and framed correctly otherwise it costs you (literally).