The short answer is no.  Film is not “better” than digital.  Both are simply mediums with which wedding photographers use to create their signature imagery.  Neither is inherently “better” or “worse”.

That being said, my personal preference is for digital photography.  I love photos that are bright and vibrant.  I LOVE color + contrast!  Over the 12 years of my wedding photography career, I’ve worked hard to develop an editing style that is consistently described as “clean, bright, timeless” and my clients love my work because of that color pop.  It all stems from my shooting style and how I use light during a session or wedding.  The editing process just fine tunes and enhances what I’ve captured in camera and it’s exactly what I want to be known for.

As much as I LOVE film and the soft, creamy, muted tones it can produce, that just isn’t my personal style.  I’ll admit – when I first started, I jumped on the bandwagon last year and bought a film camera.  After all, I originally learned to shoot on film and thought it was something I had to do to keep up with everyone else in the industry.  Looking back now, that was really naive of me.  I’m just not a film photographer.  And that’s okay.

There is nothing “wrong” with a photographer who shoots digitally.  In fact, most former film photographers have switched to digital.  The cost of film has skyrocketed, the cameras are older and no easily fixed when they break, and you can get the same exactly look of film on a digital camera body.  You don’t need to actually shoot film to get the film look.

Digital photography allows me to shoot quickly, which is so important on a wedding day.  I don’t have to worry about changing film backs throughout the day and I can ensure that I got “the shot”.  With film, you don’t have that security and it can be a crap shoot on whether you got a good shot or not – for lack of a better term.  If someone blinks, makes a funny face, isn’t looking at the camera, or if the shot is really out of focus, you won’t know until you get your film scans back.  And that terrifies me because I’m a perfectionist.  I’d much rather KNOW that I have the shot so I can move forward with confidence.  There’s no place for uncertainty on the wedding day.

Digital photography also allows me to backup my images immediately, thanks to dual card slots in my camera.  As I shoot throughout the day, the images are written to two different media cards – which means if one media card corrupts, there is already a backup copy available.  I can also transfer those digital images from the media cards to my computer desktop, cloud storage, and external hard drive as soon as I get home.  I now have your wedding photos backed up in 5 different places before I go to bed on your wedding day.  With film, photographers have to send it out to their film processing lab through the post office.  There’s always a chance that the film gets lost in the mail – or destroyed.  I just can’t justify taking that risk with my clients’ images.

Digital photography also allows me to shoot “unlimited” images on my clients’ wedding day.  There is no financial ‘penalty’ for overshooting – as long as I have space on my memory card, I can shoot to my hearts content.  With film, there is always a cost to consider.  Film photographers generally have a set number of rolls of film that they can shoot throughout the wedding day.  This means that they have to be conscious of the amount of photos they are taking throughout the entire day.  Film is not cheap and neither is the processing.  For example, one 120 roll of Kodak Portra 400 is $13 and that roll yields 16 frames.  To develop that roll of film, it costs around $15-20 per roll plus shipping.  That breaks down to $1.75+ per image!  As I’m sure you can imagine, film photographers simply can’t afford to shoot and deliver as many images as a digital photographer.  On average, I deliver 1100 images to my clients from their wedding day.  If I were shooting film and delivered that same amount, it would cost $1,925 and that doesn’t even take into account the images that get discarded because of poor exposure, awkward facial expressions, eye blinks, etc.  For me, and the way I like to shoot weddings, it just wouldn’t make financial sense.

Digital photography also gives me the “look” I love.  I’m all about bright, crisp, colorful images that are sharp and in-focus.  Just because I use and prefer digital photography doesn’t mean that I’m “worse” than someone who shoots and loves film.  It also doesn’t mean that I am “better”.  It simply means that this is the medium that works for me.

At the end of the day, whether you choose to work with a digital or film photographer is a personal choice.  Do you love their work?  If the answer is yes, then it really doesn’t matter whether they shoot digitally or with film.  If you love a photographers’ style + their personality, that’s really the most important thing.  Whether they create the images you love with film or whether they shoot digitally, it really doesn’t matter.  There is no right or wrong – the most important thing is that you love your photographer’s work + style!  The end result – the images – are what really matter.. not how they are produced.