Film vs. Digital...and Film won....almost

I have four nieces whom I adore. There is nothing in the world I would not do for any one of them. So when Niece #2 asked me if I would shoot pictures of her fiance and her, for the gifts table at their wedding I was naturally delighted and flattered.

Now, it should be noted that Niece #2 is very particular about how things should look, and had planned her wedding to the finest detail. I was therefore conscious of the exactitude that would be expected of my pictures.

We were in Toronto in January for the wedding. Arguably at least in that detail her planning had not been flawless - she could have chosen the Bahamas in January or Toronto in June, like her sister, but we digress.

We set off one cold morning to shoot the pictures and decided on the grounds of my son's old private boarding school as a suitable location. It offered plenty of old stone buildings, ivy covered walls, a beautiful chapel and wonderful wooded areas in which to shoot. Plus with school being out for the holidays we would not be bothered by anyone other than over-enthusiastic teachers anxious to prepare for the post-holiday term.

So as I posed and directed the young couple, I started with digital - my Nikon D70 with the excellent Sigma 70-210mm zoom. After a few shots, posing the couple in the lee of an evergreen with snow underfoot, I noticed that it was proving to be impossible to expose correctly for the shadows, the darker complexion of my niece; the snow and the lighter (the less politically correct would say 'white') complexion of her fiance. I either ended up blowing out the highlights on his face and the snow (not good at all) or getting deep shadows on her face (even worse). The dynamic range of the digital sensor just wasn't up to the challenge of this lighting situation.

So out came the trusty Nikon F5, loaded with Kodak Gold 400HD. After a brief pause to switch the lens from the digital body to the film body and another moment to slip on a warming filter, shooting resumed. I shot three rolls of film bracketing each shot with one stop under and one stop over the metered exposure for good measure. Going back to film, the thing I missed the most was being able to take a couple of test shots, study the histograms on the LCD, adjust exposure as appropriate and then blaze away until the scene or lighting changed.

So now with a productive morning's shooting in the bag, we dropped the film off for processing at a local mini-lab and repaired to the pub for a restorative pre-lunch drink. Picking up the processed film after lunch, the bride was suitably awed by the pictures and selecting the 'one' that would be used on the gifts table became the challenge.

She took the negatives and the 4x6 prints in their envelope and we left to show the rest of the family.

Later that evening the men (including the boys who could muster up the required fake ID) went off to host the groom at a bachelor party. Of course we all know that bachelor parties are like Vegas. What happens there stays there, even if the party in question was hosted by an uncle of the bride.

Before the festivities could turn really risque, the father of the bride rounded up the only young man under 21 and left the gala, pleading an early morning meeting. Whether this was to preserve plausible deniability or whether there really was an early morning meeting is unknown - and now unknowable.

When the partying contingent returned in the wee hours of the morning, we were greeted by a makeshift hand-lettered sign taped to the door that read "QUIET PLEASE. PEOPLE ARE SLEEPING". The sign made from a film envelope turned inside-out, and written in fastidious capitals was clearly the handiwork of the father of the bride.

The note struck the returning celebrants as somewhat churlish, and in their inebriation caused them to make more noise than they might have done otherwise. Amidst the muffled conversations and the shedding of shoes and coats in the hall, the note was forgotten.

The next morning, as the bride looked for the negatives to make prints, they were nowhere to be found. Whether they were lost when the sign was being made, or when the late night revelers got home, we shall never know. But lost they were. And lost they remain.

So, here's how film won over digital: The superior dynamic range of film over the digital sensor saved what could have been a day of less than pefect pictures. Since the ultimate output was going to be a print, the increased latitude of the print film over the digital sensor also helped to increase the percentage of acceptable pictures from the shoot.

And here's how film's victory over digital was pyrrhic: In the fact that film produced negatives which were left on a hall stand in an envelope, ready to be used for sign-making, probably caused them to be lost. Had I shot digitally, the memory card would have gone from the camera to a card reader and then straight back to the camera. Even if a CD bearing the images had been lost, I would still have the pictures on the memory card, since I hadn't had the time (or the need) to delete the pictures from the morning before we went out for our evening of revelry.

I don't quite know how to call this fight. But since the pictures are gone, I'd say we all lost.

Photography, Digital, Film, Dynamic Range