When it comes to both photography and videography for many years now Digital has been king. After some initial scepticism at the birth of the digital revolution nearly all wedding photographers and videographers jumped on the digital bandwagon, but recently we’ve been talking to more and more photographers and videographers who are bringing analogue film back into their work either to capture just a few shots or even the entire wedding. So is digital truly king or is there still a place for film work in modern wedding photography and videography? Let’s see what our experienced debaters have to say on the matter!
In the Red Corner, fighting on behalf of analogue film, having had to search through the biggest selection of old negatives I’ve ever seen and a pile of developing gear recently I can assure you she knows a thing or two about analogue photography, it’s Dom “The Tog Bride”
In the Blue Corner, he only turned his hand to filming weddings professionally upon realising the quality that was achievable using digital SLR cameras for video compared to their camcorder counterparts, it’s Matt “The Gormless Groom”
Film Vs Digital
FIGHT!!!
Dom: There’s something just magical about the way film pictures look. Most digital photographers these days spend hours on the computer trying to create a film-like look for their digital images but you can never beat the purity and beauty of the real thing.
Matt: But with new technology it is quite possible to more or less recreate the look of old film digitally but with more flexibility to put your own stamp on the finished look, reduce or increase grain, alter colour balance etc.
Dom: Taking amazing quality analogue photographs is generally more challenging than with Digital as virtually everything is manually controlled and you have to really know your camera backwards to get great results. Consequently when you book someone who shoots analogue you know you are probably getting someone top notch!
.jpg)
Matt: Digital is much more user friendly and offers more flexibility in terms of achieving the specific look you want rather than having to scan individual frames or simply deliver the product straight out of camera.
Dom: Many photographers find that they feel more of a connection with more traditional film cameras which can often really show in the photos and improve the creativity of the work!
Matt: When something goes wrong with film there’s almost nothing you can do whereas many modern pro level cameras have dual memory cards to act as instant backup as well as more means of recovering the files.
Dom: With digital the photographer can find themselves taking shots that they know probably won’t be good enough simply because they can, whereas with analogue film every shot you take costs time and money to develop and therefore has to really count!
Matt: With digital you can check on your shots as you go and make sure you have everything covered whereas with analogue you don’t know what you’ve got or whether anything is going wrong until it’s too late to change anything.
Dom: There are some film looks that are so unique they are incredibly difficult to truly recreate digitally, for example Super 8 Videos have such a nostalgic feel about them that can be easily lost when just trying to create an artificial effect.
Matt: But each different film type generally has qualities that you don’t particularly like which can easily be removed when creating your own digital look as you’re starting from a clean shot then adding effects rather than starting with an affected shot and trying to remove things.
So those are our arguments but where do you stand? Would you be happy for your photographer to use analogue film for your wedding or would you actively prefer someone who uses digital? We’d love to hear your thoughts so join the debate via the comments section and don’t forget to place your vote in our poll below!
[yop_poll id=”34″]
