Does It Matter If Your Wedding Photographer Uses Film Or Digital?

Though it may sound strange to think about it, we’re now entering an age where digital photography is all that soon-to-be-married couples have ever known. Long gone are the days of wedding photographers dropping film off at the lab on Mondays and letting the lab do all the work!

Film Photography
Film has begun to make a bit of a renaissance in the wedding photography world, with some photographers incorporating it into their offerings. For some, it’s a medium that they have always loved, and been able to use film gives them different perspectives and allows for a different kind of creativity than digital does. Technically speaking, film has more “latitude” which means that it’s more forgiving than digital images which can be an advantage when you are photographing a white dress in bright sunlight. It also has a distinctive “look” that is hard to duplicate in digital photography. By using film, photographers are not spending hours in post-production like they often do with digital images. Some photographers argue that using film forces them to be more careful and deliberate in their shooting because a) it's expensive, and b) the rolls have limited number of exposures available.

Digital Photography
Digital photography has been embraced by wedding photographers because of the ability to shoot hundreds of images without having to reload a new roll every few minutes, and because of the improvements of the quality of the cameras, especially in low-light situations. If mistakes are made, the photographer can see them quickly in-camera and adjust, and they can manipulate the images in post-production. These reasons make digital photography very attractive to wedding photographers, who often shoot thousands of images in a long wedding day.

Does It Matter?
Should it matter to you if your wedding photographer is using film or digital? In our opinion, not really. The result is what is essential when it comes to wedding photography. When you are searching for a wedding photographer, you may notice differences in styling and the “feel” of their photographs, and it may be that they are using different cameras, film or other post-processing techniques. Go ahead and ask them about it! But at the end of the day, loving your photos is the most critical part, not how the photos were captured. If part of your wedding day is captured on film, ask your photographer if you can have the film scanned, so you also have digital files as well.

ISPWP photographers are masters at their craft, no matter the type of camera or medium they use to photograph weddings. Find a photographer in your area and view their portfolio of stunning wedding images!

Photo by Vinci Wang, Fuzhou, China wedding photographer