The perfect shot

Lyndsey Schappe opens the back of her grandfather’s Leica M3 camera to insert a canister of 35 mm film. As she presses the shutter release and winds the lever a couple of times, the film slides into place.

Schappe cut her teeth on this black-and-silver antique when she started her photography business in 2017. Although she uses both film and digital cameras, she still favors film. With about 36 frames on each roll, she can’t afford to waste a shot, and she likes that forced intentionality. “You have to slow down and pay attention,” Schappe said.

Film companies like Kodak nearly went bust when the majority of photographers opted for the functionality of digital devices. But thanks to renewed interest in the medium, film is regaining some of the ground it lost. Kodak claimed in a press release last year that it “has no plans to cease operations, go out of business, or file for bankruptcy protection.” The company experienced a 2% revenue increase in 2025.

Lindsey Schappe says retailers can’t seem to keep up with the growing demand: “There’s a film shortage. It’s always on back order.”

Traditional film cameras use a chemical process to capture light rays on silver-based film. Photographers must develop the film themselves or send it off to a lab. But digital cameras completely revolutionized the photomaking process by recording pictures via a built-in computer.

Even though a Kodak engineer invented the first digital camera in 1975, the company was slow to shift its business model from film to digital. The company reached its peak yearly revenue of almost $16 billion in 1996. But due to the widespread adoption of digital cameras, Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012, though it emerged from Chapter 11 the following year. Today, the majority of photographs are captured digitally.

Gary Fong worked as the director of photography at the San Francisco Chronicle from 1986 to 1994. His photography team used to burn through 20 300-roll cases of film every few months. Fong, who founded and now runs Genesis Photo Agency, says it was a no-brainer to switch from film to digital in the early ’90s. The team had strict deadlines, and the newer cameras made it much easier to submit photos on time and nab last-minute shots, especially at sporting events. “Digital photography helped us to get fourth-quarter, game-winning action in the paper, where everybody who was using film would only be getting halftime or less,” Fong said.

But now, some photographers are starting to rethink the artistry they lost for the sake of convenience and speed. The “rediscovery” of film follows the more widespread trend of ditching digital devices in favor of analog options, said Adam Long, an associate professor of art and design at George Fox University.

Photographers like Jess Amrich also prefer the look of film photos. Amrich used to edit her digital photos to imitate the grainy aesthetic of film, but that didn’t last. “It’s just so hard to replicate,” she said.

Amrich now shoots exclusively on film and appreciates the simplicity of the cameras. Digital cameras can have thousands of settings, but most film cameras only allow adjustments for shutter speed, aperture, and ISO, a measure of a film’s sensitivity to light. “I find that having a simple bag of gear really has allowed me to dial in my style and build a really consistent body of work,” Amrich said.

Film reacts to light differently than digital sensors, and analog cameras do a good job at capturing brightly lit environments. Since Amrich prefers outdoorsy shots, the medium gives her a lot more flexibility to experiment. Rather than plan her shots around sunrise and sunset as many digital photographers must, Amrich can shoot at just about any time of the day. But for a photographer who wants to take pictures inside exclusively, film might be a little more tricky to use.

The additional limitations of shooting on film forces Amrich to ponder each shot before pressing the shutter release button. “I can’t see the photo right away,” she said. “So I’m really thinking about the frame.”

Once she gets the photos processed at a lab, Amrich always keeps the raw film or “negatives.” “Even if the computers crash and everything goes away, you’ll always have your photos,” she said.

Amrich factors in the expense of using film when she charges clients for a photo shoot. Buying and developing a single roll costs about $30, and she goes through up to 10 rolls per month.

To cut down on that expense, photographer TJ Petrino develops the film in a darkroom himself. A professional photographer since 2008, Petrino rediscovered film in 2020 after a long hiatus. He came back to film partly because he missed the tactile nature of the cameras.

Plus, digital cameras have become so sophisticated that the results can look almost “clinical,” Petrino said. And, as AI-manicured pictures flood social media feeds, he believes imperfections will provide a kind of fingerprint verifying human-made work. Film makes each picture look very realistic, something Petrino finds increasingly valuable: “With as advanced as technology is getting, the currency of creativity is going to be authenticity.”