There was a time that nobody asked whether you were an analogue or digital photographer. Photography was simply photography. You bought a camera, put a roll of film into it, tried not to forget what ISO you had loaded, and went out to take pictures. Digital photography did not yet exist, so there was no need to defend film, celebrate film, rediscover film or put the word analogue on a canvas bag. Film was just what cameras ate.
Then digital photography arrived, and within a remarkably short period of time the photographic world changed almost completely. Film counters disappeared from shops. Darkrooms were dismantled. Camera manufacturers stopped making some of their most famous film cameras. Professional photographers moved to digital systems, newspapers abandoned film, and millions of people discovered the enormous convenience of seeing a photograph immediately after pressing the shutter. Film suddenly looked old. And perhaps that is where its slightly dusty reputation comes from. But dusty and dead are two very different things.
The Revolution Was Faster Than We Remember
Photography had already survived several technological revolutions before digital arrived. Glass plates gave way to flexible roll film. Large cameras became smaller. The 35mm format transformed photography during the twentieth century. Automatic exposure arrived, followed by autofocus and increasingly sophisticated electronics. But digital photography was different. It did not merely improve the camera. It removed the film. That was rather fundamental.
The first practical digital cameras were expensive, limited and not particularly threatening to serious film photographers. Early digital images often looked distinctly digital, and not necessarily in a flattering way. Film still offered better resolution, better tonal behaviour and a mature photographic infrastructure. Then digital technology improved at extraordinary speed. By the early twenty-first century, professional digital cameras had become genuinely competitive. A few years later they were dominant. Sensors improved, memory became cheaper, computers became faster and software increasingly sophisticated.
For working photographers, the advantages were overwhelming. There was no film to buy, no development to wait for and no uncertainty about whether the exposure had worked. Hundreds or thousands of photographs could be made during an assignment and delivered almost immediately. Eventually, even the mobile telephone became a very capable camera. Film, meanwhile, still expected me to finish my roll before showing me anything. Rather unreasonable of it, really.
Why Film Began to Look Old-Fashioned
Digital photography fitted perfectly into a world becoming increasingly digital. Photographs could be made quickly, edited quickly, transmitted quickly and published quickly. News photography, sports photography, commercial photography, weddings and countless other professional applications benefited enormously. Digital photography also became technically astonishing. Modern cameras can focus on an eye, recognise subjects, track moving animals, photograph in near darkness and produce images at sensitivities that would once have required a conversation with the laws of physics.
Film cannot compete with that and I don’t think it needs to. The mistake is to assume that because one technology is more efficient, the other has therefore become useless. A fountain pen is technologically inferior to a laptop. A vinyl record is less convenient than streaming. A mechanical watch is remarkably bad at doing many of the things a smartwatch can do. Yet people continue to use them. Not because they have misunderstood progress, but because usefulness is not the only reason we choose an object. Photography is no different.
Film Is Surprisingly Alive
If analogue photography really died, somebody forgot to tell the photographers. Film is still being manufactured. Kodak continues to produce photographic film and has invested in increasing manufacturing capacity. ILFORD remains deeply associated with black-and-white photography. Film laboratories continue to process negatives. Chemicals, enlarging paper and darkroom equipment remain available.
More interestingly, new film cameras have appeared again. Leica returned the M6 to production in 2022 and continues to manufacture analogue M cameras. Pentax went even further and developed the Pentax 17, a completely new half-frame 35mm camera launched in 2024. That is important. A second-hand Nikon F3 or Rolleiflex surviving for another forty years proves that old cameras were built extremely well. A manufacturer investing money in developing a new film camera says something else entirely. It says there is a market. And that market is not populated exclusively by elderly gentlemen sitting beside a cupboard containing seventeen light meters. Young photographers are discovering film too. For some, this is nostalgia without memory. They never lived in a world in which film was the default photographic medium. They are not returning to something they lost. They are discovering something that existed before them. That distinction fascinates me.
Thirty-Six Photographs
One of the strangest differences between digital and analogue photography is not image quality. It is behaviour. Give me a digital camera and a large memory card and the practical cost of making another photograph is essentially zero. I can take one exposure, then another, then five more because perhaps somebody blinked. The camera encourages abundance. Now put a roll of 36 exposures into a film camera and suddenly arithmetic enters photography. Thirty-five, thirty-four, thirty-three. Every press of the shutter consumes something physical.
Film costs money. Development costs money. Scanning or printing costs money. And when the shutter closes, I cannot immediately inspect the result. This changes the way I photograph. I look longer. I hesitate. Sometimes I decide that the photograph isn’t worth making. That may sound like a disadvantage, but I am not convinced that it is. Digital photography gives me freedom to photograph almost without limitation. Film gives me a reason not to. Both can be creatively useful.
The Cameras Feel Different Because They Are Different
A traditional mechanical film camera can be an extraordinarily simple object. Shutter speed, aperture, focus, that is about it. My camera does not need to know whether I am photographing a dog, a racing car or Aunt Margaret. It leaves that problem entirely to me.
A modern digital camera is closer to a specialised computer with a lens attached. Menus can contain hundreds of options. Autofocus systems have modes within modes. There are custom buttons, image profiles, wireless connections, video settings, firmware updates and enough abbreviations to establish a small government department.
This complexity exists for a reason. Digital cameras are immensely capable machines. But capability and photographic pleasure are not necessarily the same thing. With a mechanical film camera, I often feel directly connected to the mechanism. Advancing the film, setting the shutter speed, turning the aperture ring and focusing manually are physical actions. The camera does relatively little without me. Digital photography can offer something equally compelling from the opposite direction. It can disappear.
A good digital camera can become so fast and responsive that technology stops obstructing the photograph. Autofocus finds the subject instantly. Auto ISO deals with changing light. Exposure can be checked in the viewfinder before I press the shutter. Instead of slowing me down, the camera gets out of my way. Film achieves concentration by demanding attention. Digital can achieve concentration by removing problems. That is a much more interesting comparison than simply asking which one is better.
Then There Is the Image
Film has a particular visual character. Different emulsions respond differently to colour, contrast, highlights and grain. Kodak Tri-X does not look like T-Max 400. Portra does not look like Ektachrome. Black-and-white film is not simply a digital photograph with the saturation slider dragged to zero. The material participates in the image.
Digital photography works differently. The sensor records data with extraordinary consistency, after which much of the final character can be determined in processing. This gives digital photographers enormous control.
It also creates a curious paradox. We spent decades developing digital cameras capable of producing exceptionally clean images, then developed software to add grain, faded colours, halation and film simulations back into them. Apparently perfection required some repairs. But I understand why. The imperfections of film are often visually interesting precisely because they are not entirely predictable. Grain has structure. Highlights behave differently. Colours shift. Two emulsions can interpret the same scene differently. Digital photography can imitate much of this extremely well. But film does not imitate film. It simply is.
Who Shoots What?
It is tempting to divide photographers into tribes. The analogue photographer wears an old jacket, drinks carefully sourced coffee and owns at least one camera manufactured before he was born. The digital photographer has three batteries, six firmware updates and can explain dynamic range at dinner. Reality, fortunately, is less tidy.
Film photographers come from almost every social and economic background. Some are young people buying inexpensive compact cameras. Some are artists and students. Some are experienced photographers returning to a medium they once knew. Others collect Leica, Hasselblad or Rolleiflex equipment at prices that make a roll of film seem positively economical. Digital photography is even broader because it dominates professional and everyday photography. Photojournalists, sports photographers, commercial photographers, wildlife photographers, wedding photographers and millions of enthusiasts depend on digital cameras.
So I do not see a simple social-class division. There is, however, an economic difference. Digital photography often demands a substantial initial investment, but after that each additional photograph costs almost nothing. Film can begin cheaply with an old camera, but every roll creates a new bill. The analogue photographer therefore participates in one of the few hobbies where pressing a button can be itemised on an invoice. Still, people keep pressing it.
Different Photographers, Different Needs
If I were photographing the Olympic Games, I would choose digital. If I were photographing wildlife requiring long lenses and rapid autofocus, digital. A wedding where missing the kiss would result in an uncomfortable conversation with the bride and groom Definitely digital. For professional work requiring speed, reliability, immediate verification and rapid delivery, digital photography is overwhelmingly practical. But if I am walking through a city with no assignment, no deadline and no requirement to return with 800 usable photographs, the calculation changes. Then I might prefer film. Not because it produces objectively superior photographs, but because I enjoy what happens between seeing something and making the exposure.
The limitation becomes part of the experience. That is why I think the question Who is film for? has a simple answer. Film is for photographers who enjoy what film asks them to do. And digital photography is for photographers who value what digital allows them to do. There is considerable overlap between those groups. I belong comfortably in that overlap.
The Hybrid Photographer
Perhaps the future is not analogue versus digital at all. Most film photographs already live partly digital lives. I can expose Tri-X in a camera designed decades ago, develop the negative chemically, scan it digitally, edit the scan on a computer and publish it on a website viewed on a smartphone. At what precise moment did this stop being analogue photography? I have no idea, nor do I particularly care. The hybrid workflow demonstrates that the two technologies are not natural enemies. They can complement one another beautifully. The negative remains a physical original. Digital technology makes it easy to edit, archive, reproduce and distribute the image. Old and new shake hands. Nobody gets hurt.
What Happens Next?
Digital photography clearly owns the mass market. There is no realistic scenario in which film again becomes the dominant photographic technology. Digital cameras will continue to improve, computational photography will become more sophisticated, artificial intelligence will increasingly influence focusing, processing and image management, and smartphones will continue absorbing functions once reserved for dedicated cameras.
Film has a different future. Smaller, certainly. More expensive, probably. But dead? I see little evidence of that. Film has moved from necessity to choice. And strangely enough, that may have saved it. When film was the only practical option, photographers used it because they had to. Today I load a roll because I want to. That changes its cultural position completely.
Analogue photography has become less like an obsolete technology and more like an artistic medium. Oil painting did not disappear when photography was invented. Radio survived television. Printed books survived the Kindle. New technologies do not always murder old ones. Sometimes they simply force them to explain why they deserve to stay. Film has an answer.
Two Ways of Seeing
I don’t believe the future of photography requires me to choose sides. Digital photography is one of the greatest technological developments in the history of the medium. It has made photography faster, more accessible and extraordinarily capable. Pretending otherwise in defence of film would be sentimental nonsense. But declaring film obsolete because digital photography is technically superior would be equally simplistic. They encourage different ways of working. Digital photography asks: What can I do? Film often asks: What is worth doing?
One expands possibilities. The other imposes boundaries. And creativity has always had an interesting relationship with boundaries. So I will happily use digital cameras. I admire what they can do, and sometimes what they can do seems almost ridiculous. But I will also continue loading film. I like advancing the lever. I like knowing that something physical is moving behind the shutter. I like not seeing the photograph immediately. I even like the small uncertainty that follows the exposure. Perhaps the photograph worked. Perhaps it didn’t. Perhaps I will discover that several days from now. In an age when almost everything appears instantly on a screen, waiting has become an unexpectedly modern luxury. Film photography is not dead. It simply stopped being compulsory. And perhaps that is exactly why it is alive.