{"id":12208,"date":"2018-03-07T12:52:46","date_gmt":"2018-03-07T04:52:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/?p=12208"},"modified":"2021-10-18T17:02:04","modified_gmt":"2021-10-18T09:02:04","slug":"film-photography-comeback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/2018\/03\/film-photography-comeback\/","title":{"rendered":"Rolling with film"},"content":{"rendered":"

Analogue photography makes a comeback in the digital age
\n<\/strong>
\n By Scarlet Shiu<\/strong><\/p>\n

P<\/span>ull up the film-rewind knob, open the back of the camera, insert a roll of film, drag it all the way through the film take-up spool, tug on the lever and close the door. This sequence of actions was a familiar one for photographers in the past. Today, despite the domination of digital cameras and smartphone cameras, more and more photographers are performing the same rather laborious ritual as analogue photography becomes fashionable once again.<\/p>\n

Analogue photography, as the name implies, refers to photographs taken with an analogue camera and film rather than a camera with digital image sensors. The first camera using flexible roll film was made in 1881, but the popularity of analogue photography really took off when the mass production of cheap cameras in the 1960s meant more people could afford to own one. Although the first digital cameras were produced in the late 1980s, it was not until 2003 that they outsold analogue cameras for the first time.<\/p>\n

Now, film is making a comeback, at least among enthusiasts like Lui Pak-yu. The 28-year-old opened her first film and film camera retail store, Showa, in Mong Kok in 2015 as a venue where she could gather \u201cfilm photophile\u201d friends. She opened another branch in Causeway Bay in 2017. She says film photography is increasingly being seen as a lifestyle choice.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can say it [analogue photography] is living on in another form,\u201d says Lui. \u201cNow it\u2019s really for living a way of life, randomly taking pictures, less emphasis is put on the functionality.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Lui Pak-yu’s first film and film camera retail store was a meeting place for fellow \u201cfilm photophile\u201d friends<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Lui\u2019s first customers were mostly young people. As her business has grown, her customer base has expanded to other age groups, including experienced photographers. She says peer influence and interest from the media has encouraged more young people to experiment with film cameras.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Pictures at Lui\u2019s store<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For 22-year-old photography fan Cherie Tsoi Tsz-tung, using film encourages her to concentrate on the scene before her rather than the image on a monitor screen.
\n\u201cWhen you are shooting on digital, you often view the scene through the monitor. But when I shoot on film, I mostly look directly at the scene before taking the picture. This reminds me to look at it carefully with my eyes and heart,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Cherie Tsoi Tsz-tung with her Lomography camera<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tsoi started shooting on Lomography film in 2013. She recalls she once accidentally dropped her camera on the floor. \u201cIt [the back of the camera] was broken open. The film inside was exposed. I closed it immediately and continued to use that roll of film. When I took the film to print out [the photos], the light leak effect was unexpectedly beautiful,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

You cannot always predict how a photo will turn out until it is developed and printed and it is this element of surprise that brings joy to Raymond Chin Wai-yin, a freelance photographer who has been shooting with film since 2011.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most appealing thing [about analogue photography] is anticipation \u2026 I think shooting on film enables you to cherish every frame, you will observe carefully before you press the shutter. Unlike digital, you can\u2019t use a continuous shooting mode and delete it if you don\u2019t like it,\u201d says Chin.<\/p>\n

For Chin, the colour and texture of film is something that cannot be achieved in a digitally captured image and the digital format will never \u201creplace\u201d film. \u201cWould you say painting will be replaced by an electrical drawing board?\u201d says Chin.<\/p>\n

For her wedding photos, Phoebe Chan Wing-hei hired a digital photographer to shoot a series of shots and used a studio photographer for some film shots. The 29-year-old says she enjoyed her studio film shooting experience more.<\/p>\n

Hong Kong still has a few film photography studios and despite the higher cost of her film photos, Chan appreciates the human touch as well as what she believes is a superior result.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you look at the colours as reflected in the outline, you will see that film is slightly better,\u201d says Chan. \u201cYou only press the shutter once after thinking it through, but with digital you can shoot continuously; I will treasure it less this way\u2026 Film gives you a feeling that it is delicate, you have to be really careful to take one good photo, every photo is precious.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vishal Soniji, the founder of Camera Film Photo, is a film distributor and online film retailer in Hong Kong. He has noticed an increasing use of film in secondary schools and universities. He says some schools have started to invest in film paper, chemicals and equipment to set up darkrooms for photography classes. \u201cThere are a lot of good things happening with film photography,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Soniji says it is the element of surprise and the aesthetics and authenticity of film that makes analogue photography attractive to people living in a digital era.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith digital, it\u2019s so easy to manipulate. But with film \u2026 what you see is what you have,\u201d he says.
\nSoniji says the sensors of digital cameras are designed to be flat so it is impossible for them to produce images with the kind of depth of field that film cameras have. He thinks images shot on film are livelier.<\/p>\n

Rather than thinking of whether one format is superior to the other, or whether one should be replaced with the other, it is perhaps more useful to think of analogue and digital as being suitable for different uses. On the one hand, digital images are useful for commercial work as pixels can be easily manipulated, creating many possibilities for the easy post-editing of photos. On the other, according to Soniji, the grain that appears on film photos is important and adds a sense of liveliness.<\/p>\n

He believes that analogue media will continue to have fans in the digital age. He draws an analogy between film and vinyl, saying audiophiles and people who are genuinely passionate about music still prefer listening to recordings on vinyl because there is less data loss in the analogue medium. \u201cWhen you listen to digital music, you don\u2019t realise there is a lot of sound that you are missing but you listen [to] the same music on vinyl, a lot of details then sort of appear,\u201d he says.
\nAt the end of the day, while Soniji concedes \u201cfilm will not be as big as digital\u201d, he believes it definitely has a future.<\/p>\n

\u201cFilm will always have a good community that will keep everything sustainable and it\u2019s growing sustainabley, but nicely because there [are] a lot of people who are interested in it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Edited by Nannerl Yau<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Digital cameras began to outsell film cameras in 2003 and nowadays most of us take more photos with our phones than with cameras. However, some young people are rediscovering the magic of analogue shooting in a digital age.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12214,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1811,836],"tags":[964,133,135],"class_list":["post-12208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-issue-147","category-lifestyle","tag-analog","tag-film","tag-photography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12208"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12312,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12208\/revisions\/12312"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}