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Just like and even moreso than vinyl, there are sound, non-"hipster" reasons one might choose to shoot film.

The major one that keeps many artists coming back is medium/large format. It's much much cheaper to get an extremely high resolution photograph on film. Medium format is something like 100 megapixels, and it costs about a dollar per shot after initial expenses. The higher resolution might not matter on monitors, but it makes a huge difference in size limitations and sharpness when printed, and prints are generally the goal for artists.

True large format like 4x5 costs something like $10 a shot depending what film you use (I've heard it can cost a lot less if you shoot cheapo medical b&w), but has insane resolution, measured in gigapixels. You can print it wall-sized, no problem. On top of that, you can only perform the full range of movements such as tilt shift and correcting for some types of perspective distortion on a large format field camera.

This stuff does not matter for photojournalist or weddings or sports, but many professional artists still choose film. They never really stopped. This is in contrast to DJs, the largest supporters of vinyl through the 90s and 00s, who seem to have mostly stopped spinning vinyl unless they're scratching.

As a hobbyist, I appreciate that film makes me think more about each shot. I hate the immediate feedback of digital. I love film's tactile nature. I love turning off the screen and hitting the darkroom. But for me, I agree it's definitely a lifestyle choice.

[wuliwong]

You are comparing vinyl to film but in the way you are doing it you are implicitly comparing the experience of the consumer of the audio with the producer of the image.

It is interesting though, that the "analog vs. digital" takes place both in photography and music in both the production and consumption stages. You can record analog or digital and listen to analog or digital sources of the recording. Likewise with photography, you can use a digital or film camera and then you can view the image on a print from a darkroom or on your computer monitor.

It seemed as though you were using the term "hipster" to imply vinyl was more about style and trend. If that is the case, I wouldn't characterize the sonic differences between analog and digital recordings as simply "hipster" differences. There is a quantifiable difference between an analog and digital wave. Not saying one is better than the other but they are different.

Your argument that the differences with film vs. digital seemed to boil down to the economics of the two mediums not any aesthetic difference. That is interesting because off the top of my head I don't think there is any scenario in music recording where it becomes cheaper to go analog. I believe, in general, analog recording is more expensive.

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> You are comparing vinyl to film but in the way you are doing it you are implicitly comparing the experience of the consumer of the audio with the producer of the image.

> Your argument that the differences with film vs. digital seemed to boil down to the economics of the two mediums not any aesthetic difference. That is interesting because off the top of my head I don't think there is any scenario in music recording where it becomes cheaper to go analog. I believe, in general, analog recording is more expensive.

You are correct, my apologies. From the producer standpoint, analog recording techniques offer few benefits compared to digital.

I didn't argue from an aesthetic viewpoint because I don't think the aesthetic viewpoint is worth arguing about, in that it's generally a non-productive conversation that ends up in "well I prefer x because it feels better than y". Although, I will argue one particular point: I find that vinyl creates an "equalizing" factor when listening to older music alongside newer music, whereas the increased clarity and lower noise floor of digital makes 50s/60s/earlier recordings sound considerably worse than contemporary recordings. A result of this is that when listening on vinyl, I am better able to look past poor recording quality and make decisions based on artistic quality. This, however, is merely a personal preference.

> It seemed as though you were using the term "hipster" to imply vinyl was more about style and trend. If that is the case, I wouldn't characterize the sonic differences between analog and digital recordings as simply "hipster" differences. There is a quantifiable difference between an analog and digital wave. Not saying one is better than the other but they are different.

I will direct you to this very enlightening page: http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Myths_%28Vinyl%29 -- in my view, the only quantifiable differences in audio between vinyl and digital is that vinyl has a worse noise floor, a generally smaller "usable" frequency spectrum (the highs deteriorate pretty quickly), and includes surface noise, hum, rumble, etc.

I think the revival is hipster. I collect vinyl because it's often the only place to find certain genres of music (such as western swing and classic honky-tonk country), but I am generally hesitant to buy a pressing of a contemporary recording. I will do it, though, because I like having the physical product, but that is a stylistic decision more than one based on necessity/actual audio differences.

[stan_rogers]

There is little I miss about shooting large format. The huge print thing really doesn't work; an enormous high-quality inkjet print from a sufficiently large sensor (60-80MP medium formatback, or a 200MP multi-shot back if the subject is stationary) will usually look better subjectively. (Sensors are flat. So are glass plates. Film seldom is.)

There are two ways in which shooting film can give objectively better results than shooting digitally. The first is that a Zone System practitioner can wring an exacting exposure from deepest shadows to highest highlights in a single shot. That's especially true when using sheet film (with roll film, you're pretty much stuck with one development for the roll unless you're quick with scissors and can do development by inspection). There are no alignment problems, no interpolation, and no de-ghosting to perform, just a hell of a lot of dodging and burning, note-taking and test prints. Combining Zone System shooting on film with good scans and digital manipulation and printing is, in a sense, getting the best of all worlds for enlargements. And if you shoot colour, it's really the only practical way to use the Zone System, since reciprocity failure between channels meant that wild dodging and burning was always a bit of a science experiment with filters, etc.

The second is contact printing. We are a long, long way from being able to produce digital prints that are even in the same ballpark. Yes, they're tiny and jewel-like (unless you're shooting really large formats like 1114 or 16x20), but they repay a close look with an astonishing detail and depth. Not quite as much as a high quality direct positive (a good Daguerreotype is almost unbelievable, even if you forget that it's probably on the order of 150 years old and was made with a lens that is absolute garbage by modern standards), but more than a little impressive nonetheless. A contact print (assuming the picture has artistic merit at all) can still suck me in for an extended stay in a way that no enlargement, dye sub or giclée can. Who knows? We might even have been there* digitally, except that our printers became literally good enough for most purposes a few years back; only a fanatical devotion to ecstatic experiences with small prints by someone in a position to produce a printer is ever going to change that.

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I guess I'm a little spoiled by being at a university with a very expensive Hasselblad scanner that can actually pull that DPI without issues. I imagine it's much more challenging to achieve that resolution on a flatbed. However, if you have access to a facility that has a nice scanner, then it's probably much cheaper to simply scan your large format film than to purchase a digital back.

I would love to see some large format contact prints someday. It sounds incredible. An artist in the area was doing tintype portraits and I got to observe. I wish I remembered more of how it looked, but after a 6 second ("manually timed") exposure, the result was beautiful. I've always loved making small enlargement prints of my 35mm negatives, but being able to contact print sounds so valuable.

Do you ever miss the large format bodies, though?

[foldr]

I agree with your points, but it might be worth noting that the resolutions you're talking about are not so easy to achieve in practice. To get 100MP out of a medium format frame you need to scan it at around 4000dpi, which isn't really achievable unless you send it to a professional lab (which can be quite expensive). Of course, there are cheap flatbeds now which claim to have an optical resolution of 4000dpi or higher, but you never get that resolution out of them in practice.