Category: Film Photography
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Why Film Photography Feels Different From Digital (And It’s Not Just the Look)
When photographers talk about why they love film, they usually start with the look. The grain. The color. The way highlights roll off. The warmth of certain emulsions. The slightly imprecise quality that no digital filter quite replicates. All of that is real. The aesthetic differences between film and digital are genuine and they matter.… Read more
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What Happens to Film After You Press the Shutter
There is a moment in film photography that digital does not have. You press the shutter. The image is made. But you cannot see it. It is there — recorded, held — but invisible. Somewhere inside the canister of film in your camera, something has happened that will eventually become a photograph. But right now… Read more
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Where to Get Your 35mm Film Developed and What to Expect
You have shot your first roll of film. Now what? This is the part that trips up a lot of beginners because film development is a step that simply does not exist in digital photography. There is no equivalent to sending your memory card somewhere and waiting. But the process is genuinely straightforward once you… Read more
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The Best 35mm Films for Beginners to Try in 2026
If you are just getting into film photography, the number of options at the camera shop or online can feel overwhelming before you have even loaded your first roll. Kodak or Fujifilm? ISO 200 or 400? Color or black and white? Consumer film or professional emulsion? Each one seems to come with strong opinions from… Read more
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What Shooting Film for 25 Years Taught Me About Photography
I did not start with digital. Nobody did, when I started. I started with film — with the smell of a darkroom, with the discipline of thirty-six frames and no do-overs, with the particular quality of attention that comes from knowing every frame costs something. Film was all there was. Then digital arrived and changed… Read more
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How to Choose Your First Film Camera Without Overthinking It
If you have spent any time searching for advice on choosing a first film camera, you have probably come away more confused than when you started. One person tells you to get a Canon AE-1. Another says the Pentax K1000 is the only real choice for beginners. Someone else insists you need a modern point-and-shoot.… Read more
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What You Need to Know Before You Shoot Your First Roll of Film
There are a handful of things about shooting film that nobody tells you until after your first roll comes back slightly wrong. Not wrong in a way that ruins anything — film is more forgiving than its reputation suggests — but wrong in ways that would have been easy to avoid if someone had just… Read more
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How to Start Shooting Film Photography as a Beginner
Film photography looks intimidating from the outside. There is the camera to figure out, the film to choose, the exposure settings to understand without a screen to check, the development process to navigate, and a dozen other things that feel unfamiliar when you have only ever shot digital. Here is what I want to tell… Read more
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What Film Teaches You That Digital Can’t
Digital photography is a genuinely excellent tool. I use it. I teach it. I am not here to argue against it. But I have been doing this for over twenty-five years, and I started in film, and there are things that film taught me about photography that I simply did not learn from digital. Not… Read more
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Why Film Photography Is Having a Moment (And Why It Makes Sense)
Something is happening in photography right now and it is not a trend in the way trends usually work. Trends come from marketing. They get pushed by brands and algorithms and influencers who need something new to talk about. They spike, they peak, they disappear. The photographers who chased them look back a year later… Read more