Today's episode is sponsored by Squarespace. Film versus digital. It's an argument as old as time, or at least as old as my own senior discount ass. About 30 years or so since digital cameras started to hit the consumer market, I have many thoughts on this debate as I'm sure you do too. This whole film versus digital thing has kind of evolved into tribalism instead of the merits of each format. So here's my thesis. It doesn't f***ing matter which one you use. The photos are going to suck regardless. They're tools. What matters is the artist behind the medium and why they might choose one format over the other for the shot. So here's my perspective on that. Objectivity versus subjectivity. Here lies what I think is the dividing line between the two mediums. In general, film is subjective and digital is objective. Digital sensors, workflows, and modern lenses are superior to film on paper, largely because they're newer technology and have developed quite extensively since the turn of the century. Digital sensors can shoot images that are sharper and house more resolution than ever before, producing an image that's almost life-like in rendering. Clinical and perfect. Corner under corner. Which is, yeah, fantastic technology. But in my opinion, they produce images that are purely objective. With so much fine detail and color science down to a T, there really isn't too much room for interpretation. I mean, f***ing. If the photographer who shot this big photo had a GFX at the time instead of like a literal potato for a camera, it wouldn't even be a debate. We'd be able to see the detailed s*** particles stuck in bigfoot's ass for. In my opinion, this makes digital sensors superior for a lot of work. Like sports photography, product photography, macro, passport, ID photos, astrophotography, to name a few. But in my opinion, these subsections of photography are more about capturing things as they are. What I mean by that is, for example, sports photography. It isn't really so much about putting your artistic spin on the image. But seemingly more about capturing the best moment truly is it happened right there before you. It's about being objective. Film isn't about being objective, at least most of the time. I think most people in the film photography community would agree that it's really more about spending literally all your money to explore a new medium. Being experimental and capturing a moment that feels like it has soul on good old celluloid instead of a random assortment of ones and zeros. It kind of makes some sort of sense in this online digital age that people are flocking to this more physical medium in a search for something different. In my opinion, film captures the soul of a moment more effectively. And that's purely because it's an imperfect solution. You have film grain, light leaks, vintage lenses, halation, and unique colors, all of which combine to make something that somewhat resembles a memory and memories are imperfect and subjective. I may be completely off base here because I don't shoot these kind of things, but photographers who shoot birds or sports aren't really trying to capture a feeling most of the time. Typically, I think they're looking for a true reproduction of something. Photographers who capture their vacation on film aren't looking for sharpness or clarity, but instead are hoping to capture the feeling of being wherever they were. A good cross-examination of this concept would be David Burnett, who was a total madman who can probably bench for as a car because he shot the 2012 Olympics on a 4x5 camera and a big-ass Aero-Ektar lens. As I kind of mentioned before, I think sports photography takes more of an objective approach, but Burnett decided to put his own artistic spin on it and shoot film with his crazy ass lens. He was quoted saying this, In the early digital days, we were all shooting with more or less the same camera body. The same couple of zoom lenses and the chance to come up with a different look was something I found worth the extra work. That's the difference between objectivity and subjectivity. That's the difference between film and digital, in my opinion. Different end goals. I mean, damn Daniel or David, you literally used one of the craziest and least sharp lenses you can for 4x5. There's been some really dumb conjecture online lately about how film is far insufficient against digital sensor technologies of today and thus it is kind of nonsensical for anyone to shoot it. Probably from the same kind of people who watch Judgment Day and cheered for the robots. But I never hear the same argument against Tintype or any of those alternative processes. Maybe because those gangsters don't care and they're too busy getting blasted on paint thinner or whatever they used to do that. Likely, we're only hearing this argument now because film is popular once again. And for some reason, some people don't like that. I think what people who make that argument are missing is that sometimes there's merit and fun to be had with older tech, especially if we can use new technology in conjunction with it. Why do people still sail across the Atlantic Ocean when newer technology allows them to fly across? Why do people still send postcards when you can just email? Why do people paint pictures when you can just print one out? Sure, it's slower and technically not as good, but that's the beautiful thing about it. It's got meaning and soul. Digital photography is so perfect nowadays, it's hard to imagine where it could go in the future. If you can absolutely rip 200 photos of basically the same moment over and over again separated by one 2,000th of a second, is there something special about any of those shots if you have a 199 almost exact copies? It depends where you're going for it, I guess. For a lot of us, film photography brings back intention and slows us down a little bit in a digital age where everything is instant. But it's the point of shooting something like film and then digitizing it with a digital sensor anyway. Why not just shoot film to begin with if a digital file is the end goal? The simplest answer is purely workflow. Some people like myself enjoy the lack of abilities that film and film cameras bring. The fact you can take a photo and it's immediately wiped from your brain a minute later because you can't check on the back of your camera is a good thing to us. It allows you to move on to the next shot and stay more in the scene. And that's simply apart from the fact that there are looks you can get on film that you just can't on a digital sensor unless you use heavy emulation. Scanning your film to your phone or computer is also non-destructive to the look of the film itself. You still get all the imperfections of celluloid and the colors are true to the stock. In fact, I'd argue that that's one of the strengths of today's digital sensor market. These cameras can objectively capture high resolution scans of your film photos without missing a beat. Sure, it's not entirely historically accurate to how they did it back in the day. But back in the day, people didn't have ways to show their work that was convenient as, for example, Instagram. You can't directly upload a darkroom print online. It has to first be digitized somehow. If this is an argument that you've ever made, you still require pilots to use compasses and maps instead of GPS. Why can't we enjoy older technology made convenient by newer technology? Which somewhat leads me to my final point, at least in this video. Digital photography is about fixing it in post and film photography is about fixing it in pre. And as someone who's had to fix it in post for many, many years, I wholeheartedly have to tell you, it almost always looks better if you just fix it beforehand. What I mean by that is with all the bells and whistles that digital cameras can offer, like high megapixels and camera raw, it's super easy to drag your digital file in any direction you want to go, like across the computer screen and into the trash. You can apply filters, presets, emulations, you can change the exposure after the fact the whole shabang. Digital sensors can see just about every detail of photo and with high image resolution, you can crop in if you miss the intended composition. Which again, is a great thing and it's fantastic to have as an option, but in my opinion, it's a little more useful for things that are objective. Like documents scanning, wildlife photography, courtroom photography, paparazzi bullshit, the list goes on. With film, you don't have the same kind of flexibility, not even by a long shot. With 35mm, you're pretty much locked into the exposure and composition that you shot on the day that you shot it. I won't even get into how f**king people shoot half frame in 110R, which means you need to fix it in pre-production. You need to be more conscious of what you're doing before doing it. It requires more effort and in my opinion, that thinking before you shoot mentality makes you a better photographer overall. But these aren't things that are exclusive to film photography. These are practices that any photographer can use. Though if you know the ability to fix it in post or double check your image is there, how are you going to force yourself over time to not become lazy and utilize those tools? Do you yourself have a deep lover passion for something, anything, that you do in life? 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I think what makes a photographer great is being able to recognize these tools, what they're best used for, and finding the right application for them. I don't think one is necessarily better than the other for everything. If you shoot digital and have found a workflow that benefits you, then great. I say more power to you. Without a question in my mind, digital photography is better for some things. I have found a workflow that I enjoy for film photography, and I think the film photography look and workflow compliments the things that I shoot much more better than a digital sensor. If you shoot both, great. I also shoot both. Obviously, this video is shot on digital. It'd be an exercise in pain and bankruptcy if I shot these videos on film. It's about the application. But that's just my two cents. You can do whatever you want. Just don't hate on the other one. We're all fighting the good fight against bad photography together. Oh, and yeah. My YouTube plaque doesn't make my opinion more correct than yours. What they send you isn't even a plaque. It's literally cake.