Im happy that this one thing of shooting pictures on film has brought so many people a sense of happiness, but its really not that film did it. Its just a sense of comradery that people need to cling to (myself included).
Film is lovely, yes, and its really made its impact on me and my shooting style changed through the period I was using it, but ultimately its not film that made the growth, its just the excuse that film was that catalyst.
At the end of the day, I shoot my digital cameras just like I did my film cameras, Im fast and deliberate, conscientious and aware of the dimensionality of the scene that I fit my frame around. The medium never really had an impact on that for me, it really never did. I shot a lot of internet famous images on film and because it was an act of wanton refusal to accept the current trend of electronic image making, in the end, the images would have been so close to being identical regardless of the medium.
In the two years I’ve owned my current cameras, which are digital, I’ve put 66,000 images on them which is a mere fraction of the amount of normal digital quota. When you see the camera as a functional tool to make an astounding image then the fact that its film or digital really shouldn’t matter at all.
Originally, I went back to film knowing that Id want to only ever use it like it was as free as air and as fluid as water. So I fired my shutter button as much on film as I ever did digitally. Now I’m back to digital, Im slower than ever, and every single frame I get has meaning and is calculated.