How to Achieve a Film Light and Airy Look with Digital Photography
Does film photography make you swoon? Me too. But using real film may not be a good fit for your photography business. Let’s talk about the pros and cons.
Pros of Film:
Retains the highlights beautifully.
This is probably one of the most key features of film photography and the most sought after. Skies, bright highlights (like in white dresses, dinner menus, or over-exposed backgrounds) retain beautifully and effortlessly.
Skin tones are creamy and flawless.
You can get a beautiful natural grain, which is a popular aesthetic in film.
Holding the photos in your hand and delivering them to clients that way, can be a really nice, tangible experience for you and them.
Cons of Film:
Film is costly. You’ll need more capital in your business to start with film, and you’ll need to raise your prices to reflect that cost.
You’ll likely need to shoot less and deliver less photos to your client. Shooting with film takes educating your clients on why they are paying more for less quantity of photos.
You need to be more discerning about what you shoot and shoot less. There’s no “over-shooting” or the dreaded “spray and pray” in film photography. You have a limited supply of film, and each shot costs money.
There’s a higher risk of film damage if the camera is dropped, the film is improperly handled or the risk of going through an xray machine while traveling.
Your delivery times to your client for film photography are longer. There are extra steps sending it to the print lab for processing and uploading digitally to you and then mailing the final prints to your client.
There may not be a film lab close to where you live for processing.
Although I love the look of film, shooting with film was not something that would work well with my wedding photography business.
So to solve the “con’s”… but get the “pro’s”, I created my own preset for my digital photography called Sueña Presets.
With Sueña, I can:
Shoot underexposed and retain my highlights, giving me that “film look”
Shooting underexposed, also gives me the beautiful film look with skin tones. And Sueña Presets naturally decreases the reds in skin, and replaces that with a creamy sun-kissed tone.
I created a gorgeous grain for Sueña Presets that is an optional add-on to your photos- giving it a true film look.
My editing process is still fast and my clients are still able to get a larger quantity of photos than with film and receive their galleries back in a timely and professional manner!
Sometimes in life, you have to create compromises- and I’m happy to say my love of film helped me to create a preset that gives my clients and I everything we want!
