Demand and increase in prices: suddenly the film returned to our lives.

this is the reason

After it had already been eulogized and completely buried, suddenly the old analog photography is making a comeback in recent years.

The prices of photo films and film cameras are consistently increasing by tens of percent per year and the field is booming.

why is it happening?

Niv Lillian offers several reasons

Voila system!

technology

12/09/2022

Monday, September 12, 2022, 10:38 am Updated: 10:47 am

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Film (Photograph: ShutterStock)

Who needs film?

Unless you are a photography student at Bezalel or a photography enthusiast, this product that involves exposing celluloid to light and burning it, then creating an image from it in a dark room with tubs full of chemicals sounds like something from the cave age in an era where everyone has a sophisticated digital camera - in their pocket.

And yet, surprisingly, film, the historical photographic film that in the last century was the main format in which images were created, is making a comeback in recent years.

First, a brief explanation for those of our readers who were born in this millennium and probably have no idea what a film is.

Before the era of digital cameras, that is, those that expose images directly to a digital sensor, which processes and stores them as a file on a memory card, the main way for the entire world to record moments was on film.

These are rolls of celluloid and other chemicals, which we would insert into the back of the camera.

During the photographing, the shutter behind the lens would open, light would penetrate and actually burn the image onto the photographic film sensitive to it.

Exposed photographic film is also called negative or negative, because it was the color opposite of the final image.

We would deliver the exposed photographic film to laboratories that, using machines, would enlarge the image (an average photographic film usually had 24 or 36 images in a roll), and print it on photographic paper.

The final product we would receive after delivering the photographic film to the laboratory, unless we ordered a photo or a special enlargement, was usually an envelope, which contained the original photographic film, the negative, and a stack of individual photos, printed on photographic paper.

If that sounds primitive to you - you are right.

The procedure, fundamentally, has not changed in essence since the invention of the "dark chamber", the camera obscura in its modern version somewhere in the 19th century (yes, that's where the word camera comes from, Latin, which means "cell" or "chamber" in fancy Hebrew) the process has become colorful, Industrial and mechanized, but the basic principles, like the internal combustion engine in cars - haven't changed since it was first invented.

Then came the digital cameras somewhere in the early 2000s, and killed that whole industry.

We would deliver the exposed photographic film to the laboratories using machines (Photo: ShutterStock)

Companies like Fuji Film and Kodak whose main pride was in the production of photographic film and industrial image development (that's how the procedure was called "handing over images for development", because that's what they did to them...) evaporated.

Fuji, with the exception of wonderful digital cameras that are manufactured and sold to this day have completely exited the photography market and are now focusing more on medical equipment and research, and Kodak has pretty much faded away.

But as mentioned, in recent years the field of analog photography has experienced a kind of revival and return from the dead.

The cost of photographic films (which have become relatively rare to obtain) is increasing, as well as the prices of certain models of film cameras are increasing by 20-25 percent every year in recent years.

why is it happening?

Digital cameras replaced the film (photo: manufacturer's website)

Like driving an old car

One reason is nostalgia, much the same reason vinyl records made a comeback.

Film images have a different, more tangible quality.

Printed images held in the hand have a roughness, a feeling of warmth, the paper itself has a rough feel that you can touch and hold, and this is something that no digital image on a screen, not even one with a 200 megapixel sensor, can provide.

There is also a different quality to a photo produced by hand, in the case of a photographer who also develops his own photos.

Not for nothing, photography students to this day still learn to shoot on film, and develop it themselves.

This has already become a classic technique, and we will elaborate on it later.

A second reason is the challenge and giving new meaning to professional skill and creativity.

Again, it's like the difference between driving a classic car from the 70's of the last century, versus driving a modern car from today with cruise control, traction control, lane departure automatic braking and autonomous driving.

Old cars don't have all this - take a turn at too high a speed?

The car will spin, maybe even flip over.

The same with film: there are no creative "security fences" of computerized image processing, shooting and automatic selection from several frames or a combination of them, filters, eliminating scratches and what not.

It just doesn't exist in the film!

Did you screw up the exposure?

Did you choose too low an aperture key and let in too much light?

Did you use film with the wrong sensitivity for the shooting conditions?

The picture went.

"Burn" film, literally (and the opposite can also happen - that a picture will come out too dark... as mentioned, there is no safety net here...).

Shooting film, like driving an old car without computerized driving systems, requires real skill and understanding, and here, good photographers can still stand out.

Here there is no substitute for knowledge, skill, experience and creativity.

Also the limitations of the physical medium, and that the photographic film, unlike the memory card, is a limited resource, requires you as photographers to stop for a moment, think and plan each frame.

In digital photography - the exposure is cheap.

She has no price.

You can also take hundreds of casual photos, it's just another file on the card.

Not so in the film.

"It's not like a memory card," says Canadian photographer Miko Maza from Ontario, Canada.

"In film, you can't take two thousand pictures and hope that a few of them will be good. Because of the need to think about each picture in advance, it drives your creativity."

For the same reason that vinyl records made a comeback - the film returns to our lives (Photo: ShutterStock)

An old world flourishes anew

If we have already reached creativity, this is another reason that the film is making a comeback.

Again, unlike digital photography, the film, with its different sizes and formats, different chemical processing of the films and paper, different colors, sometimes strange just like blomography - allows a much greater creative range.

If we use the metaphor of painting, then the palette of colors, materials and methods available to the painter in analog light, are much larger than the one that exists in digital photography.

So it's true, image processing software such as Photoshop and its companies, try to imitate this richness of the analog world and offer a host of processing and filters for their own digital images, but again: it's just not the same.

There is no mediation by a computer, and the creative process is literally in the hands of the photographer.

And in direct continuation of the previous paragraph, photography on film has become an art, just like painting or sculpture.

The educational concept of art schools is to teach photography in film and development, because this has become a classic technique, which is required for the training of a photography artist before using a digital camera.

Film photography is the basis of the art of photography.

So it is true that most of the photography students who come to art schools today probably already have a rich Instagram account full of digital works from their youth taken on their and their smartphones, but there is also no substitute for working with film and the learning process through trial and error, and this is, as mentioned, why photography students work and learn a great deal with film.

And finally, precisely thanks to the revival, innovation and modern technology, analog photography enthusiasts have more options than before: if in the past to develop yourself, you had to build a darkroom, and deal with separate baths of chemical substances, today there are companies that offer simple-to-use film development kits and complicated, that allow everyone to learn and enjoy the process of shooting on film and then produce final images from it, in a large variety of formats, developments and varying colors.

The possibilities are unlimited, and no computer is needed!

So try rummaging through the closets at your parents' house, and maybe you'll find an old film camera there.

Try to take some photos with her and maybe you will discover an old creative world - that is blooming again.

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