I'm going to subvert proper writing order in this post and put the conclusion first, because it demonstrates that this actually is a Film Friday post, which would otherwise not be obvious right away.
But first, a digression: TOP is written for practitioners—photographers—and takes their side, and champions their interests, and considers things from their point of view. I formulated this principle when I was a contributing editor of the old Darkroom Photography magazine, and the now-notorious Bob Shell, then of Shutterbug magazine, wrote me a scolding letter admonishing me that our job as photo magazine writers was to help manufacturers sell their products. Ever the contrarian, I decided right then and there that my principle would be to put readers first*. That's who I've served and written for and been loyal to ever since.
That was too long. Anyway: looked at from that perspective, it's important for film shooters in the mid-2020s to re-jigger the optimizing mindset, which I will describe below. The purpose and meaning of shooting film, and hence our approach to it, is radically different now since it has become an optional or even antiquarian pursuit. Many of the optimizing impulses of the old days and old ways have simply become unnecessary now. Just to name a few passions of advanced amateur photographers from the peak of the entirely pre-digital era:
- It was a mark of status to own the longest telephoto lens. But that was because long lenses were single-focal-length and had to cover 24x36mm, and were impressively large and impressively expensive. The guy with the biggest one won! But now, when sensors can be the size of a pinky fingernail, even this bridge camera of pedestrian appearance can be quite cheap and yet offer ridiculous telephoto reach equivalent to 1200mm on a 35mm camera! So there's no point now in sacrificing to own the biggest, um, protuberance for your film camera. You're not going to impress anybody. So give that a rest.
- Same thing with motor drives, in the days before they were built in and had to be bought as accessories. Gosh, guys with really big honking motor drives could shoot pictures at up to SIX FPS (frames per second). At some point the edge of the envelope was pushed even a little farther. Well, even some fairly ordinary digital cameras can shoot up to five or even ten times that. So if you're a film shooter now, you might not need an MD-4 motor drive for your old Nikon F3.
- Everybody wanted the fastest film speed (equivalent to ISO now), and would go to almost self-defeating lengths for bragging rights, using special developers and a technique called "pushing," whereby you'd underexpose the film and then overdevelop the hell out of it. It looked awful, if you want my opinion. Real Kool-Aid drinkers bragged of being able to shoot standard 400-speed films like Kodak Tri-X and Ilford HP-5 at E.I.s (E.I. stands for exposure index, and was the proper term for a shooting speed that departed from a film's official tested rating) up to E.I. 1600! Wow, impressive. I always hated pushing even then, because it made pictures look terrible, but even I could understand that sometimes people had to shoot in dimly lit gyms or dark alleys. But digital cameras now routinely offer ISOs that have to be denoted with absurd numbers like ISO 12,800 or even higher (we really should have switched back to an extended** DIN standard for sensor sensitivities, to avoid those silly huge numbers). So if you shoot film today, shoot at the ISOs that make your pictures look best. If you need to shoot the black cat in the coal mine, switch to your digital rig.
Well, I won't explain all of these at length. But a few more included the quest for the fastest lenses (pointless now, unless you like the bokeh); the finest-grain film developer for B&W (you're shooting film! It's okay for it to look like film); the sharpest film (phone snaps now are sharper than a lot of 35mm pictures); the sharpest lens (making an analog unsharp mask took up to two days in the 1990s when I published Howard Bond's how-to—now it can be done in seconds in Photoshop, and you have endless options for sharpening files); the smallest, lightest camera (that camera module on the back of your phone is a camera); the most expensive brands or marques with the best reputations; the quietest camera (electronic shutter is usually dead silent); etc.
You can of course do anything you want to, and if you've moved to buy a film Leica and hunt for the sharpest lens for it, knock yourself out. But I'd argue that very little of that optimization BS really matters much for film shooting now, and you might consider taking much of the accumulated advice from the past with a grain of salt the size of a salt lick. Go ahead and shoot with funky old cameras if you want to; use grainy films and enjoy the effect; buy a slower lens, it will be fast enough; lenses with faults and optical aberrations are characterful, not inferior; expose and develop for picture quality rather than bragging rights; you get the idea. Digital runs rings around film technically anyway, so, if you're going to shoot film, just go ahead and embrace it. That would be my advice. Celebrate its peccadilloes; enjoy its distinctive look. It's "slow photography" now, so all that anxious optimizing, all that status-seeking, all that mine-is-better-than-yours, can be left in the past.
The Optimizing Impulse
At age 58 I had a late-life fling with a woman I knew years earlier who had been my "dream girl" back in those earlier times. Getting to know her for real was not quite the picnic I had always imagined. I've told this story before so I'll be brief. Once, she was visiting me in my then-new-to-me house in Wisconsin, and there was a heavy snowfall overnight. We woke up to a gorgeous day, as often happens after snowstorms, with sunshine, exceptionally clear air, deep blue skies, and gorgeous clouds. My bedroom had a picture window that looked out over a large backyard, with rolling cornfields beyond a line of bare trees, all of which was covered with a blanket of lovely untouched fresh snow. I fixed tea for us and set up two chairs by the window, and she put on her robe and joined me. After a few sips of tea she asked to switch chairs. So we did. Then she asked to switch back. Curious, I asked what that was all about, and she looked thoughtful and said, "I have to have the best chair."
That's the optimizing impulse. When we have to make sure we have the best we can get, of whatever we can get.
I own a tube amplifier I no longer use. Tube amps as a category are obsolete as mainstream technology, but they're often favored by audiophiles who like the distinctive rich, dimensional sound they offer—I love 'em, myself. Mine isn't even a modern design (there really isn't any such thing, as most of the possible circuits have been pretty thoroughly explored), but mine doesn't even pretend to be the latest thing—it's an updated replica of a Dynaco Stereo 70, a highly popular mid-level amp introduced in 1959 that was sold mainly as a kit. The replica is all-new, made entirely with modern parts that are mostly higher-quality than were found in the original. I wrote about it quite a while ago, at this link. Scroll down for pics.
Not long ago I got an email out of the blue from a guy who had found that old post and wanted to know if I still had the amp and wanted to sell it. I did, and I did. But I told the guy I didn't want to go through the rigamarole of getting it out and setting it up and photographing it unless he was really sure he wanted it. He assured me that he absolutely was going to buy it. So I got the amp out of storage, unpacked it, and found the big box of old tubes I had for it. Made a list of all the tubes. He was enjoying the exchange and the anticipation, I'm sure, so he asked for more and more in the way of descriptions, pictures, information, and my opinion. A fair amount of time and work for me—you know how it is. It's what you have to do to make buyers happy.
Suddenly the lines of communication went dead. I sprang for most of the extras when I bought the amp, but it turned out the guy who built the amp and marketed it had started offering another little tweak as an option some time after I bought mine. My buyer had found out about this little extra (I don't even recall what it was), and had decided he had to have it. So the bargain we had already all but struck was dropped like the proverbial hot potato, with nary a word to me, and he went for the one that had the extra feature.
Had to be optimized! Never mind that it's a replica of an old amp from 1959. And was a mid-level bargain then and now. And is low power compared to similarly priced transistor amps. And doesn't take the most powerful, most accurate tubes (it uses EL34's, which I also love, although you can also "tube roll"—swap in—larger tubes). And it's already optimized, because all the cheaper parts from the original model were all upgraded in the replica—the transformers are bigger, the input board is revised, even the chassis is made from heavier and better stainless steel. So it's outdated technology that has low power that you only would buy in the first place because of its luscious, smooth, midrangey, full, rich sound—and thus already departs from technical accuracy in all kinds of ways.
But the guy had to have the best chair.
Anyway, I understand the optimizing impulse. It's common and rather natural. I do it. I'm sure a lot of us do. But it's often...sorry...really quite stupid. If you buy a modern version of an old 1950s steel-frame fat-tire cruiser bicycle, you don't need to remove the fenders to save weight. If you buy a new Ford Pinto for $2,021 in 1973, you don't need to pay $800 for a set of Pirelli racing tires that last only 10,000 miles (hi, Billy from high school). If you buy a budget Paul Reed Smith SE guitar built in Indonesia, you don't need to fret*** endlessly about whether you have the absolute best guitar strings for it, reading obsessively about strings and trying set after set in a Quixotic quest for the ultimate peace of mind. A pool cue is important to a pool player, but after about $400–$800, the more and more expensive ones just have better, more artistic decoration****.
There's not an exact, inflexible analogy to film photography here. But my recommendation is: if you're getting into film photography in 2025, choose carefully what you actually need to, and actually want to, optimize. Much of the hoary advice from the past that you will read and hear repeated all over everywhere is no longer actually relevant.
And if you want my advice as to what new film shooters might want to optimize these days, well, keep checking in here on Fridays. I'll get around to it eventually.
Mike
*Of course, one big result of that is that I am ignored by manufacturers, seldom receive embargoed announcements in advance, am almost never offered pre-production samples of upcoming new products so I can post a review on announcement day, and am never offered invitations to expenses-paid press junkets. You know what they say: Oh well. I'm okay with being independent. Make your bed, lie in it!
**Official DIN speeds only go up to DIN 39, which is ISO 6400.
***Did you like that one, Herman? :-)
****I believe the Empyrean sold for $35,000. Could be wrong.
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Featured Comments from:
Hansen: "Your story about the amp sale ring very true to me and deserves a rant.
"In my experience would-be buyers of bargain or mid-level stuff can be some of the worst people to deal with, and it's one reason I don't even bother to sell inexpensive items most of the time. If hunting bargains on cheap stuff is what you do, then I don't want to hear from you. I'd rather throw things in the trash than waste my time.
"I once sold a cheap lens and the buyer cheated me out of the shipping, an inconsequential amount of money, but annoying nonetheless. Why did the guy degrade himself for pocket change?
"Putting lots of effort into providing more and more details and then being ghosted is a classic. I put a popular watch up for sale at a good price (a few hundred dollars) hoping to make a quick sale, and one person started the familiar process of requesting more info. Luckily a different buyer could recognize a bargain and snapped it up within hours.
"One man put up a 'wish to buy' ad, but then asked me to finance him. He didn't have the money ready.
"I suspect many of these 'buyers' just don't have the sufficient funds in the first place and just want to kick the tires a bit so they can tell themselves they got close to buying mid-tier item X."
James C. Chinn: "I am going in the opposite direction of optimization. I have been shooting digital for the last 20 years but recently went through my negatives and old prints and found the ones I had done with a Holga. I just can't replicate the dreamy look that camera provided with my Z7. Still have the Holga so I decided to order some rolls of HP5 and re-enter the world of film."
Jack Mac: "Optimization for film today is an enjoyable read. But did you take enough time to really optimize it?"
Mike replies: LOL. Probably not, no. Even if I take two days it's not enough time to rewrite the way I should.
Zyni: "I think this can be quite complicated. What I am going to describe has not yet happened to film photography because it is not yet 'alive' in the sense that large numbers of new film cameras are not being made, yet. But for guitars, yes, they are.
"The Fender Telecaster ('tele' below) is the most important electric guitar. It is important because it is (in its larval form which was not yet called a tele) the first electric guitar which did not try to look like an acoustic (or, in fact, a semi acoustic) guitar. If you look at a Gibson Les Paul, which was being developed concurrently with the tele, well, it is recognisably similar to, say, a Gibson ES-175, which is a semi. The tele is not: it is only itself. All later electric guitars which do not try to look like acoustic guitars have the tele to thank for this.
"It is a work of a genius. But the genius, Leo Fender, did not do this to invent the pure electric guitar: he did it to make it cheap. Bolted-on necks are cheap. The body is a simple, uncontoured, slab because that is cheap. The neck, originally, was a single bit of wood with no separate fingerboard made of nicer wood, because that is cheap (also it is not strong enough, so truss rods were added, but still many teles do not have a separate fingerboard). There are three bridge saddles, not six, because it's cheap. Everything is cheap.
"But all that cheapness made a fantastic noise, and is in fact a very flexible guitar.
"Well, I do not play a tele. But I know a man who does. And he had a choice: he could become a rich plutocrat and buy a real '50s tele. Or he could remain a human being and buy a replica. He bought a replica. And it is 'cheap' in all the ways the original instrument was cheap. But it was not cheap: it was not cheap because it is not enough, for instance, for the pickups to be cheap: they had to be 'cheap' in just exactly the ways that those original 1954 pickups were. Not cheap like the 1952 or 1961 pickups, which also were cheap but were not the same. And that kind of 'cheap' is expensive, because it requires taking to bits an old pickup and perhaps making the right wire and insulation and so on.
"Well it is not that expensive because it is a European guitar, not an American one (this is as well: today I look at my beautiful American semiacoustic and, knowing what so many Americans and American companies have made it so clear they think of women and minorities, of which I am both, I think perhaps I should sell it and buy a vintage Höfner). But it was not a cheap guitar.
"The world of guitar players is perhaps a more mature culture than the world of film photography: we understand as we have understood for a long time that what we want is not 'good' but 'right.' We'd like our teles not to hum like crazy, but if sounding like a tele means they must hum like crazy well, we will learn to stand far from the amp and face the right way so the hum is less. Because we want our teles to be right.
"So, yes, we optimize, but we optimize for 'right,' not 'good.' And I think film photography will become like this, if it is not already. Do people really want good lenses, or do they want a Cooke triplet which will be bad in all the right ways, and are people making very beautiful copies of those old lenses yet. I think they probably are, and if they are not they will be. Do people want good developers...or do they want Rodinal?
"So I believe that, already, film photographers are probably optimizing for 'right,' not 'good,' but they perhaps do not, yet, understand that this is what they are doing."
Richard Skoonberg: "Here is a 'best chair' story This is story from Tim Burkett when he was a student of the famous Zen master Shunyru Suzuki in San Francisco. Burkett was considering going to Japan to study Zen for a year and was trying to evaluate the most perfect Zendo (in this case, a monastery). He was doing a bit of 'comparison' shopping. When asked for advice, Suzuki pointed to a collection of Raku teacups, each handmade and unique. He said, 'If you try to pick and choose the best teacup, you will not appreciate any of them.'"
Mike replies: Thanks for that. Beautiful. Suzuki's book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind was a big influence on my life.
Analogue Lamb: "Very interesting article. Nice start to the weekend. The way you describe it makes me think that digital has, in a sense, liberated analogue photography. Practitioners of traditional photography no longer have to chase the perfect. They can embrace the flaws. Flaws = character. Gone are the days of Leica versus Zeiss on CompuServe."
