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Editor's note: This excerpt first appeared in photographer and author Harold Davis' recent Focal Press book, Photographing Flowers: Exploring Macro Photography with Harold Davis. The closer you...
I am a photographer based in Pretoria, South Africa. I have been an avid slide film user since 2001 when I was forced to change over from print film when I enrolled in a course at a local photography college. Prior to that, I always thought of slide film as something that my father used and was the reason for our family to sit around the slide projector and screen and reminisce on a few occasions per year. The photography course really opened my eyes as to how much more vivid, exciting and rewarding my photography could be. It meant the end of photo labs deciding for me how my images would look with all of the adjustments that they could make to “correct” my images. The vibrancy of a good slide has to be seen to be believed. It transports you back into the original scene and is something tangible.
For those who haven’t used it, slide film is a photographic medium that does not give you second chances. You have to get the exposure and other technical considerations correct (or at least to your liking, even if not “technically” correct) before you press the shutter release to capture the moment. If your exposure is wrong then the result will not look the way you expected it to and there is nothing that you can do about it after the fact. For that reason I think that photographers who use slide film have to think more carefully while making photographs and their images benefit from it. With both print film and digital capture there is at least some degree of “correction” that can, and probably should, be applied to images post-capture.
One of the recommendations made during the course that I did was to join a photographic society/club in order to benefit from being around like-minded people and to be challenged to improve by seeing the work of others and through regular competitions. I have indeed benefitted from the cross-pollination of ideas and also from participating in the monthly competitions in order to have my images evaluated and as a requirement to progress through the ranks towards the upper club echelons.
The advent of digital cameras and their increased use has made real waves in the photographic club circles. The obvious appeal of digital capture and post-manipulation has resulted in many photographers making the change over to digital capture for most or all of their work. This has brought with it issues of how to compare traditionally captured images with the new wave that could have “benefited” from a large amount of manipulation. Without going into detail, this has caused much conflict in various photography club circles. The bottom line though was that the club that I belong to was seeing fewer and fewer slide entries and more and more digitally captured and projected images. From a competition viewpoint, a victory on club nights become close to meaningless when one was almost competing against oneself while the digital medium had a great number of entries.
I had real concerns as to what would become of the slide medium in the club context. Much thought was spent trying to come up with ways to encourage the existing slide film users to continue doing so, and ideally to find ways of attracting new members to the medium. I felt that slide film users were beginning to feel more and more marginalized and becoming increasingly tired of the never ending film versus digital debates. Slide film users needed to have a place where they could still see the benefits of their choice.
The decision that I came to after consultation with like-minded friends was to start a small group that would meet once per month to bring along recent work and have a forum for presenting it and have some debate about it. While our photography club meets in a formal venue, the slide group has its gatherings in the homes of the members participating. The format is an informal and friendly one. Slide group evenings normally see around 10 photographers arriving—where our photographic society has more than 50 active members. We often sit around and chat prior to getting started and seldom meet our intended start time because of the conversations and sharing of ideas that takes place. When we do get started, each participant has the opportunity to show a number of their slides (a suggestion was originally made of around 5 slides per member, but some bring more and that is fine too, time allowing) and to describe how and perhaps why they took each image. Sometimes the slide shown represents a problem that the photographer is experiencing with a new technique or equipment and suggestions for improvement are requested from the group. But there is almost always a large amount of discussion and appreciation of the photographer’s efforts.
The participants seem to get a lot of pleasure and satisfaction out of being a part of the group and it has been communicated to me that they would like the group to continue functioning in its current form. Although we haven’t drawn many members away from those new to photography via the digital medium, the current group is consistent in their desire to keep using slide film while it is feasible to do so. We also occasionally get new members who used slide film in the past and have for whatever reason become lapsed photographers. They also seem to be encouraged that a home of sorts for their photography choice is available to them.
The informal assessment group format has proved to be so popular that the main photographic society has also started to have an evening per month at our main venue to do something similar. It seems that there is a need to have a forum where people can show and discuss their photographic work in a less competitive environment. I suppose that this is why Photo.net is also so popular with so many photographers.
I would like to believe that in a small way we have helped to encourage photographers to not abandon film. This has been supported by our photographic society’s committee, with them ensuring that our group’s meetings are advertised in our monthly club magazine for anyone else who may want to come along. With the limited number of slides that have been entered in some month’s club competitions, a decision was made to combine digital projection and slide projection under the overall banner of Projected Images. At the same time there was also a combining of all print categories (black and white together with color and no distinction between film and digital capture being made) into a single Prints category. The benefit to the slide film users is that we now once again have lively competition, albeit among not only ourselves but also the digital shooters. Although we represent a small component of the total monthly entry, we have on occasions delivered the month’s overall winning image in spite of the lack of post-shooting manipulation possible.
The future is not all rosy for slide film users. There are practical threats to ongoing slide film use. I am assuming that the phenomenon is not limited to the South African situation, but the number of labs that offer reliable E6 processing has decreased significantly. This has been the case for a number of years already. The range of available slide films has diminished through companies folding, as in the case of Agfa, and ranges decreasing even for those brands still available. More recently the price of film has risen by about 25% over the last few months. Processing costs have hit all time highs and even the range of slide mounts available has decreased dramatically. I have reached the point where I think twice about trying something new and experimental with slide film where the whole roll may turn out to be a disaster—or stunning. This is not a concern for digital users who often remark on how their creativity has taken off with their adoption of digital capture. While it is still practical to keep on making images with slide film I will do so, but unless something changes and people become inspired to use more slide film, the future does look a little uncertain for my medium of choice. I feel like a traitor to admit that I am already planning on which digital camera I will buy—hopefully just as a backup to my film cameras and to use as the modern equivalent to Polaroid film before shooting the final result on slide film.
The future depends a lot on how photographers will respond to the new opportunities while still appreciating the wonderful media that have stood the test of time. I know that I do not get the same satisfaction out of having taken a good digital image (I use a decent digital camera at work) as I do out of holding up a slide where all of the elements have come together in one piece of celluloid. Let us hope that the end is not near!
If you use film, love film, miss film, think film photography shouldn’t die out, enjoy sharing the world of film, or simply have film on the brain, this is for you.
It is time to move past the petty arguments of “film vs digital” and start encouraging those who are interested in film photography rather than fighting with those who are not. That is what the Photo.net VivaFilm project is all about. Read more here…
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William Kramer 
, June 06, 2009; 04:48 P.M.
Jan Senko , July 01, 2009; 09:40 P.M.
Stephen Asprey 
, July 12, 2009; 07:13 P.M.
Etienne Winkelmuller , July 20, 2009; 02:21 A.M.
Brendan Hohls 
, July 20, 2009; 04:11 A.M.
Jan Senko , August 16, 2009; 09:49 A.M.
Tom Aellis , September 23, 2009; 07:55 A.M.
Cris Stringfellow 
, November 22, 2009; 08:53 A.M.
Randall Pukalo , December 13, 2009; 08:50 P.M.
Brendan Hohls , December 16, 2009; 09:37 A.M.
Dennis O'Connor , September 11, 2010; 04:08 A.M.
A Tonkin , November 02, 2010; 07:44 P.M.
Brendan Hohls , November 26, 2010; 11:20 A.M.
