Film Photography: a euglogy

With the news of the near death of Eastman Kodak last month, it looks like photographic film is on its last legs. Kodak were responsible for a great many industry developments in photography, not least giving the freedom of cheap, personal photography to the consumer. The Kodak story is both important and fascinating, you can see a pictoral representation here, but I extrapolate to consider the mortality of film as a whole.

Young Hipsters live for the moment with a broken fire hydrant during a block-party in Bushwick, Brooklyn

Pixel vs. Grain

This is one of the key debates in the question of film: which is of a higher quality and which is more appealing. Digital cameras are indisputably more powerful in their range of ISO (allowing them to take better pictures in the dark), more adaptable, lending their images far more easily to modulation, and more economic. The latter is one of the most effective arguments for consumers, who feel liberated by their option to take as many photos as they desire without having to pay for the development of unsuccessful shots.

A photo of my father, taken in Yosemite National Park by my mother

What film does have that digital can never imitate is the grain, or the small particles of silver on the negative. The digital pixel forms a square of colour representing what it has detected, whereas film grain is caused by the chemical reaction of the reflected light bouncing off your subject and onto the negative strip. As grain is miniscule and randomly aligned it can often appear more natural and visually pleasing. Whilst a photo can be dismissed as ‘grainy’, it will still be far more aesthetically satisfying than an image that is ‘pixelated’.

It is hard to argue that photographic film is of a better quality than the digital image, given the great many pixels that cameras are capable of using nowadays, but high definition digital images are often distorted if not viewed at their original, large format, often having to be downgraded. This is rarely the case with film, as the grains are interwoven and affect each other to the extent that, viewed at many different sizes, the image looks natural.

LOMO

Timing is everything: I shoot Jack's kick-flip

The Lomography company are at the forefront of the toy camera fad. Inspired in the 1990s by cheap Russian point-and-shoot cameras, their company now has branches in most major cities and have an impressive catalogue of quirky and kitsch cameras offering a range of analogue effects. Their love for Lo-Fi photography has been fully embraced by hipster culture, with many of their products available in that trendy staple Urban Outfitters. It is probably thanks to them that the Polaroid company (whose instant gratification was usurped by the digital age) have seen a small resurgence as The Impossible Project.

This has had a knock on effect in the digital realm too, as ‘hipstamatic’ iPhone apps cleverly glorify their poor resolution by imitating the old and iconic film styles.

However, this has done little to support the argument for keeping film alive. Whilst providing a faithful cult following, the amateur pictures filling sites such as Flikr have yet to convince the average consumer. Meanwhile, the number of photo developing services steadily sinks.

The decline of the ‘Film’ Industry

A coffee-shop view from Nolita, New York

One of the most effective uses of 35mm film has been its use in the movie industry. As a cinema fan, I can’t begin to tell you my admiration for a great mise en scène, or the effect of the silver screen, with its gigantic figures and graceful, sweeping shots. Yet the industry’s use of film, as with Ford’s panoramic epics or Allen’s apologetic nervous tales, is also in decline. This is also reflected in the increasing rarity of the projected film. Some have predicted that by Summer 2012, cinematic film will have been ‘eclipsed’ by digital, as more projectionists lose their jobs to comprehensive projection machines, capable of starting multiple films in different theatres at set times. This would be a lot easier to swallow were it merely the success of a new format phasing out the old, yet this is not the case. Digital movie cameras and projectors have been pushed by the industry since the early 2000s, yet have only just become comparably high in quality.

In the past, amateur and beginner filmmakers have been great champions of the 35mm film, often pushing cheap consumer cameras to their artistic limits, but this is also a thing of the past. Following the photographic consumers, independent cinematographers are also using digital as a cheaper alternative. Other than pixel/grain argument, which does play a part in this area of discussion, it’s hard to criticize analogue film’s shrinking influence in the independent industry.

It appears that these truly are the dying days of film. There will always be at least some cult following, especially for artists who always love the image of decaying industries and redundant formats, but with fewer photo stores offering development services, more photographers developing their film at home and (like Kodak) fewer companies producing film it looks as though this may just be film’s last gasp. My lament for this is not born of a pedantic desire for photographers to be more involved in the production of their images at an early stage, or for the ritual of film loading and winding - with its satisfying clicks and whirs -but for the abandonment of the real and tangible. 
Slowly everything is being lost to the digital age, where it can be more easily shared and enjoyed but equally lost and corrupted. Instead of the charismatic cameras and well produced films that were responsible for the iconic images and movies that western culture has heralded as its great art of the people for the past century, we are opting for an illusion: iPhone apps have replaced Polaroids. We are throwing away the old tools of great artists for imitators.

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