Another benefit of shooting film is the patience you gain from it. There are only so many shots you can take with one roll (e.g. 36 for 35mm film, 12 for medium format). You cannot look at the shot you just took and then erase it because it is already recorded on the film. You have to think about what you are taking a photo of before pressing the button, what light you are in, if it’s worth taking a picture of, etc. It becomes a very deliberate process.
There’s also the waiting that takes place both before and after you’ve clicked the shutter button. Waiting for the right light and for the perfect moment to take your photograph. Waiting until you’ve completed a roll of film, and then rewinding it back up in its canister. Waiting to walk back to your house or apartment to drop it off. Waiting days, weeks, or months for it to be processed in a lab somewhere. During the wait, your imagination begins to swirl around the photographs that you took and why they are important to you.
That patience can be taken one step further if you decide to print your own photos in a darkroom. You’ll watch your photos develop under the red glow of an enlarger as you make test strips to refine the contrast and burn and dodge your photos to get the desired effect after several tries. You’ll see any errors right away, but it will take time, chemicals and several tries to get it right. There’s no undo key here. You have to keep at it until you get it right. I think that physical process of taking a negative and turning it into a print helps you connect with your photos in a way that a purely digital process can’t.
In the digital age when we see thousands of images on our monitors each day, the limitations and the slow pace of film remind us to respect the images we create. In the case of 35mm film, one remarkable photograph from a roll of 36 exposures might mean more than the thousands of exposures on a memory card, because it had to be considered, anticipated, and valuable to be shot. Learning to shoot film is learning to take more responsibility for each individual shot. Ultimately, your eye will become more critical and your pictures will improve.
Perhaps this is what makes shooting film so appealing. It forces you to slow down, to recall the way in which photography was invented in the first place. That way still works, and it’s still magical. With film you are forced to be patient, to wait, and to wonder. The pictures you take when you make yourself wait to shoot are always better than the ones you make without.
