Digital AND Film

Dockside Marina, Colonial Beach, Spring 2026 — Film Photos

I don’t spend time comparing digital versus film photography, but I do spend time studying which tools and methods work best for me.

I wear eyeglasses to correct my vision. With my progressive lenses, when I look through the viewfinder, I often cannot see if the subject is in focus. So, any camera that does not have auto-focus is a big NO for me.

I recently traded in my long telephoto lens for cash. The 70-200 mm lens was just too heavy for me to hold steady. Instead, I rely on prime lenses: 35 mm, 40 mm, 50 mm, 85mm. These work for me, and I am delighted with the results.

I love to take long walks and discover things to photograph, but my ability to stand or squat for extended periods of time is limited by pain, so I’m interested in methods that lend themselves to a shorter standing time. Interestingly, this often means using a film camera. I took some pictures at the Dockside Marina in Colonial Beach back in April. Looking through the folder, I can see that I took 43 images with my digital single lens reflex camera and 35mm lens. I processed 7 of those as pictures worth saving. On that same day, location, and time, I used my Pentax 645 medium format camera with an 80 mm lens, which is near 50 mm equivalent, and took 11 images. Of those 11 images, I processed and saved 5 pictures. I can often take fewer film photos, with a higher success rate than with my digital camera. There are likely many factors at play here, including the fact that I am more deliberate when I take film photos. There may be a downside in that I am more likely to experiment and play with my digital camera, where every frame is not counted in dollars.

I’m slow in developing my film, so the scans from April just arrived this week. In studying the images for this post, I definitely noticed that the tones of the film photographs were beautiful straight out of the camera. There was no need to fiddle with colors or work to get the images to flow. The tones in the digital photos, on the other hand, were all over the place, with none of them actually looking natural to my eye.

There are no straightforward answers, but it’s worth taking the time to consider what works and why.

Noticing

These are not my best work. They were taken with my iPhone camera, not my fancy dslr. And still they are the pictures that are the most me. The ones I feel down to my bones. I am a person who notices details. I am blown away by little things - a hand on mine, a funny joke, a vase of tiny flowers, special spoons, and slivers of light.

Mixing Things Up

I’m thoroughly enjoying the posts by Martin Kaninsky on Photography, Reconsidered. In today’s post, How to Stop Taking the Same Photographs Over and Over Again, this question hit home for me:

So how do you know when you have found your way of photographing, and when you are just making photographs you already know how to make?

I think about this a lot. I’ve been taking pictures of the same places and the same kinds of things for decades. I wonder if my way of seeing is getting stale. And then I remember that I am naturally hard on myself. I take a deep breath and look for the evidence. I already know how to take a picture like this one. But I would normally walk past this scene because of that mixture of light. The dappled light presents a challenge. So does that wide open patch of skylight and the tree line across the shore. There is a part of me that is confounded by so many variables. What to leave in and what to leave out. The goal isn’t to make every photograph different. It is to leave room for the situation to change your mind.