Thirty-six chances: shooting film in a digital age
A year of shooting almost nothing but film, and what it taught me about photography and paying attention.
Elena Varga
4 min read
Every roll of film has thirty-six chances. That is it. You cannot delete, you cannot check, you cannot take the same photograph forty times and pick the best one later. You have to decide.
For the past year, I have shot almost nothing but film. This is what it taught me about photography, and about paying attention.
Why go backwards?
Film photography should have died around 2010. Digital cameras were better in almost every measurable way: sharper, faster, cheaper per picture, more forgiving in low light. Kodak went bankrupt. Most labs closed.
Then something strange happened. Sales of film began to rise again, slowly at first and then quickly. New film stocks appeared. Young photographers, many born after digital took over, started buying their parents' old cameras.
