Grant Jenness - Kodak Portra NC 160
I think that anyone who started out in the darkroom as opposed to Photoshop can’t help but romanticise about film to some degree; digital technology is so good now but it still lacks that tangibility of analogue. As well as having a very different look and feel to the images themselves the whole process is very different and as much as I love and have embraced digital photography, pushing a Compact Flash card into a slot just isn’t the same as loading a roll of film. I’ve been flirting with using film again for about a year or so after exclusively shooting digital for several years, but it wasn’t until late last year that I decided to start seriously using film again. I’d kept a casual eye out for a used Hasselblad for a long time – probably a couple of years – and with so many photographers jumping ship to digital there’s no shortage of used film cameras for sale at a fraction of the price you’d expect to pay for a pro level digital body alone, and I eventually picked up a 1994 – the year I left school! – 501C.
I’ve always used 35mm systems so medium format has been an interesting learning experience in itself along with the unique idiosyncrasies of the Hasselblad design. Square format, a waist level viewfinder – as well as the flipped view of the viewfinder screen which made me feel drunk at first - and manual focus all combine to provide a completely different way of working to my DSLR, but after the steep initial learning curve I’m enjoying the process as well as mixing cameras and formats; I get bored so easily that I’ve occasionally wondered if I have some degree of ADD, and I’m finding that chopping and changing between such different cameras and formats keeps me focused and creatively inspired. I’m hoping that some clients may ask for film for certain assignments but in the meantime I’m shooting film both for certain personal projects and alongside digital for assignment work where possible and appropriate and at the very least in those instances it’ll give the Art Director another option which is always important, and especially so I think with digital now being so ubiquitous. I actually read an interview with a gallery owner recently where they stated that although they believed that film doesn’t necessarily produce a ‘better’ (that is a subjective word of course…) print it does have a greater perceived value as it’s a disappearing medium. Food for thought.
Rob Clark - Kodak Portra NC 160
