I prominently use both film and digital in my work. Although since getting a digital camera I must admit I tend to use digital far more often than I used to. Much of my work is taken using a 35mm camera and slide film. You’ll find that slide film is brilliant for bringing out the best in strong colours. I find it captures something that you just can’t get with digital and you’ll find that many professional photographers work with this medium.

If you look at the work of Stephen Shore and William Eggleston much of their early work is done using 35mm slide film and it shows. I feel you can always tell that there’s a big difference between the quality of an image taken on film and digital. The downside to using film is obviously the fact that you don’t instantly get to see what your image looks like- I find this quite an exciting part of using film but many don’t like the wait and some would argue that there is much more skill involved in taking images on film rather than digital due to this fact. Other downsides using slide film is the cost- I mainly use fujichrome sensia process paid slide film which comes to around £12 a film, and with more people using digital nowadays the prices are tending to go up. Here some examples of some of my images using this film. As you can see the colours are really vibrant- this is without altering anything about the images using Photoshop.

Using digital is a much easier way of taking photographs and I have found myself taking more pictures since getting a digital SLR. It’s the fact that everything about digital is instant, if a shot doesn’t look right you can see where you have gone wrong and re-shoot straight away which isn’t possible with film. One major factor about using digital I have found though is that I feel it essential to own Photoshop for obvious reasons like changing the colour balance, curves, brightness and contrast ect, which again is major expense. Also if you are exhibiting work I find that film when printed large scale looks and works much better than if you print an image from digital.

Here are some examples of some of my work using digital. These shots have been altered slightly in Photoshop. I have changed the curves and the brightness and contast mainly.

To conclude I do feel there are ups and downs to working with both film and digital- it’s just trying to find the balance between getting used to using both mediums to get good results either way. My advice for anyone who is just starting out in photography who isn’t sure which would be best is to (as I did) pick up a cheap second hand 35mm camera and a cheap digital SLR and try both out to find what you work best with, rather than get a top of the range digital camera straight away.

Written by user Adam Booth