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Film Photography In A Digital World

By Andrew Goodall

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 27Oct2008 Word count: 730 Viewed: 427 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

Digital photography has arrived, and it is the way of the future. You don't need an old photographer like me to tell you that.

Forget the traditionalists who insist that film is better. In some ways it definitely is; it is simply not practical in the digital world to continue taking your photos on film. However, that doesn't mean you should throw your old photos away.

It may come as a shock to some young people, but great photography has existed for many years, done by true artists who relied on camera skills, not computers, to produce their images. Some manipulation was possible in the darkroom by the few who knew how, but most great photography was captured 'in camera.'

What a shame, then, that so many of these great images are now gathering dust in closets around the world.

Our rush to embrace digital technology was not gradual. Digital cameras made film almost obsolete in just a few short years. With the cameras came computer software, USB cards, online storage and social networking. Almost overnight, everything related to photography involved digital technology. You really could not do anything with a photo unless it was on your computer.

Of course, this is no problem for photos taken now and in the future. Most of us now have digital cameras and are becoming comfortable with software. My concern is, what has happened to all those great photos from the past, taken on film and now out of place in the modern world?

I have been taking photos to sell in my gallery for over twenty years. I love the benefits of digital photography but I do not have a digital camera. I have thousands of photos from my many travels, all taken on colour slides, which I am determined to put to good use.

I just know that when I buy a digital SLR camera and start snapping, all these old slides will be forgotten. They will gather dust, fade, and eventually be good for nothing but throwing away. So my decision to continue working with film is about making sure that doesn't happen.

These days I am trawling through years of images, picking out the shots that deserve to be seen, and scanning them. As colour slides they may be out of date, but as digital files they are as good as anything taken with a digital camera. Some people would argue that for quality, they are even better.

Since I started scanning my slides, I have rediscovered a treasure trove of photos from years past. For every photo I have printed and sold, there are ten more photos just as good that have never seen the light of day. Some photos I always knew were there. Others I had forgotten I ever shot. Some of those photos are now on sale and proving more popular than photos I had been selling for all these years.

When you revisit photos after many years, you start to notice things about them that you may not have appreciated before. Sometimes the photo you chose to print first is not the best, although you may have thought so at the time. Certainly after looking at one angle of a waterfall for many years, it is exciting to discover the same waterfall photographed from ten different angles, each interesting in their own way.

Scanning your negatives and colour slides does not have to be expensive. You can buy a film scanner for just a few hundred dollars which has the resolution and the software to get the job done. After that, the only thing you have to spend is time.

If scanning them yourself doesn't appeal, you can pay to have it done professionally. This can cost as little as a few dollars a file, and should include all the colour correction and spot removal you need to make your photos ready for printing. To save money, you certainly would not get every photo you have ever taken this way, but you might choose your 'top 100' to save for posterity.

Whichever way you choose to go about it, I encourage you to revisit your old photos. Don't allow them to gather dust until they are thrown away. Scanning can breathe new life into old memories, and I guarantee you will find some real gems that are worth preserving.

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