I get asked this question fairly often. Why take pictures in what some perceive to be an outdated way. My reasons are many. A lot of them have to do with nostalgia but there are practical reasons as well.
Film looks different. It doesn’t have the ability to capture as much of the light spectrum as the sensors in modern digital cameras. For instance, the Sony Alpha 7 iii has a range of 15 stops (roughly how photographers measure levels of light or luminescence) while one of my favorite film stocks, Kodak Ektar 100 has a range of only 10 stops. For reference the human eye has a range of about 20 stops. So a film photographer is more constrained than a digital photographer. But I’ve always found imposing restrictions fosters creativity. Like Orson Welles once said, “The enemy of art is the absence of limitation.”
I enjoy the delayed gratification. Not completely knowing how the shot is going to turn out forces you to really stop and think about composition, framing, exposure, etc. You can’t click and immediately look at your camera’s display and keep re-snapping till you finally capture something satisfying. Not having the option to take unlimited angles and exposures makes you more disciplined and choosing to take that on makes this feel more like an art than a science.
It’s also a tactile thing, or at least it is for me. I have a couple of DSLRs and they’re great. But they just don’t compare to how the Yashica 635 (pictured) feels in my hands. Or nearly any other older film camera. I have a Bronica ETR medium format camera that is just a behemoth and I love hefting it around. When the shutter opens and closes on a mechanical camera you really feel it.
Some people have the opinion that film is dying but it just isn’t true. New film stocks are being introduced all the time and old ones are being brought back from the dead like Fuji Neopan Acros and Kodak Ektachrome. Older cameras were built to last and I have quite a few that are as old as or older than I am and function beautifully, and there is an ample supply of them. I find it a more fulfilling process than digital photography.