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Film vs Digital - What's the value of learning photography on film?

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bumblecat
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2 years agoSteemit2 min read

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I found myself giving my two cents about good camera options for a young person who wants to learn photography. I recommended my first camera, which is a Nikon N80 35mm film camera. You can get the body with a lens nowadays for about $100 and my first camera body lasted almost twenty years.

Now, I know that it's useless to debate film as opposed to digital in terms of aesthetics - you're allowed to like cold, lifeless digital images and I won't stop you from making them. Still, I stand by my position that people should learn photography on film.

In a way it's like learning to drive. If you learn how to drive on a manual transmission, getting behind the wheel of an automatic isn't a big deal; but, it doesn't go the other way around.

If you know how to shoot on film, picking up a digital camera isn't a big deal.

The best argument that I can think of for learning on digital is the metadata. If an image comes out differently from how you wanted it, all of the information about your camera settings are right there and you don't need to keep notebooks to log what you were doing. Still, unless you're keeping logs of your light measurements, that information doesn't tell you that much.

When you learn on film, you learn to be efficient. Oftentimes your mistakes turn into happy accidents that turn into aesthetic choices. Even if you do eventually go digital, you'll probably have some cheap, full frame lenses that you got with your film camera that will work with the digital camera; and, you know what you need to know; and, you might have discovered some looks on film that you can at least try to emulate digitally.

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