ArtBistro

The real beauty of film cameras is that they force you to PRE-VISUALIZE and THINK about what you're trying to create and HOW you're going to create it. You have to understand the relationships that exist between aperture and shutter speed, for example. You have to consider the differences in shooting black & white vs color, and which filter(-s) need to be used to achieve a specific effect. Even something as ostensibly simple as composing the image becomes more important because, unlike digital, you only have 12, 24, or 36 frames to 'capture the moment'. There's also no built-in stabilization, so use of a tripod becomes ingrained (which allows you to achieve: Better composition). Film cameras impose on people who would be photographers a discipline they'll never know if they learn using a digital camera. The other thing they'll never know is the thrill of waiting to get the developed images back and seeing if you managed to get what you THOUGHT you were going to get. Like a friend told me years ago: "Experience is what we get when we don't get what we want." True dat, and never more true than when shooting film.

That's interesting. Keep us posted. But about film having no retry, a lot of photographers didn't really think that way. Not everyone now gets contact sheets, because it's become cheaper with many shops just to get prints. But if you do get contact sheets, you may find yourself, too, amazed at how you've rattled off some fascinating permutations that create the germ of ideas. A photographer named Jan Dibbets exhibited contact sheets, as a kind of serialism that went with the generation of Warhol, Minimalism, and geometric painting. Tracey Moffatt has simulated them more recently, to suggest her project of trying on women's roles. But anyhow, another way to look at it: only really fancy digital cameras let you shoot as fast as film. That makes "retry" in a way harder!