Another day, another debate.

okay, so this debate i had was whether film is better than digital, and my preference of film over digital. everyone has their own right to have their own preferences, but it's always nice to know why.

alright, any contemporary fine art photographers would say that their are advantages and disadvantages of both digital and film cameras. all in all it's how the artist wants to perceive their work.

and for me, my story on photography. when i first wanted to explore the world of photography, i bought myself a amateur dslr, nikon d80. i had this thing for about a good year. got a 50mm f1.8 af lens, which is commonly used by amateur photographer because it is the closest width of human sight, and thought it would be easy to learn. well, it took me some time. as i was taking classes for graphic design, it was mandatory to take a digital photography course, which i did do. and i thought the class will teach me what i need to know. i will say i did learn something from the class, but i felt like it wasn't enough.

at this point, i was debating whether or not to transfer to a real art school and study photography. well eventually that is what i did, and now i am at columbia college studying photography.

attending columbia opened my eyes to film photography; with the processing of your own film, the chemicals, enlarging, just the process you need to go to just to get one nice print. well, because of all that work just to get one nice print out of a 35mm piece of plastic with eaten away by light gelatin layers of silver, i learned to actually care about each shot i take with my film camera. to make sure there is no dust on my lens or in my camera, the light meter works, i have it on an appropriate aperture and shutter speed, and that i am using the right film with the right iso/asa for whatever scene i am shooting. and those tidbits is what i learned just in my amateur black and white photo class. just imagine what you need to go through when doing color film photography, color film processing is much more dangerous and tedious. and on top of that, you add in a flash or a studio, that means more technical adjustments and thorough thinking. then you got different types of cameras that hold different size film. and the enlarging part is just another jar of headaches and can get just as bad. all that work does pay off, it's a kick in the stomach to let you know you should stop and smell the flowers. give what you produce some thought!

with a dslr, sometimes all you need to do is switch a couple of things, point, shoot, plug it into a computer, do a couple of adjustments, then you got yourself a decent photo. to do all of that for one photo, it would probably take 5 or 10 minute...

the reason why i prefer film is because you are more intimate with your photo, picture, piece of art. once the process is actually experienced, it would be understood to what i mean by intimate, well maybe.