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A single medium format film shot cost about 470 times what the same scene cost on a digital camera. That kind of math should end the film-versus-digital debate outright, and yet the photos taken on film still mean more to the person who shot them. This is the tension every hybrid shooter runs into once digital quality stops being the question.
James Popsys works through that contradiction while scanning a summer's worth of negatives, holding up a photo shot on Kodak Ektar 100 through a Fuji GW690II, a 6x9 medium format camera that gives you eight shots a roll. Next to it sits the same scene captured on a Fuji X100, and the challenge is whether you can tell them apart. Popsys runs the cost per frame out loud, landing on roughly a cent per digital shot against several dollars per film frame. The point he keeps circling back to is that the film photos of his kids feel weightier to him, and he openly admits he can't explain why. Watching someone reason against their own spending is more useful than another clean verdict, because most of us shoot film for reasons that don't survive a spreadsheet.
The camera at the center of the video arrived by accident. After a Leica SL3 grip started peeling apart during a week of shooting in Istanbul, Popsys returned it, took a store credit instead of a replacement, and used that credit on a camera he could sell later while trying something he hadn't done in about twenty years. That camera is a Leica MP, a 35mm rangefinder that plenty of people treat as a grail. He feels oddly indifferent to it, but still couldn't resist running rolls of Portra 400 through it during a day in Bournemouth. He shot it with a Voigtländer 35mm lens, sharp and good value, with a good dose of versatility too.
The most honest stretch comes when the scans reveal his mistake. He decided to shoot everything at box speed and follow the camera's light meter exactly, and the results came back muddy and underexposed. He knows better, having shot tens of thousands of frames in snow where meters get fooled. The correction is one worth carrying into your own film work: when you have to choose, lean toward slight overexposure with negative film, the opposite of the "expose to protect the highlights" habit digital shooters build. He also concludes the ND filter was overkill, that shooting Portra 400 at f/8 or f/11 probably won't show diffraction you'd ever notice on 35mm.
Underneath the cost breakdown sits a pattern anyone buying new gear should recognize: fresh equipment pulls you out the door in conditions you'd normally skip, and then the disappointing frames feel like the gear's fault when the real problem was going out at the wrong time. That's the thing driving a lot of film's recent surge. Younger shooters and returning hobbyists aren't buying rangefinders and half-frame cameras because the files beat a modern sensor, they're buying the friction, the eight-shot limit, the wait, the negative you hold before it becomes a photo. The engagement Popsys feels might be the learning curve rather than the medium itself, and he's genuinely unsure which. That uncertainty is the useful part. If you're weighing a film purchase, sort out whether you want the images or the process, because the process is most of what you're actually paying for.
There's also a small, practical thread on stabilization. Popsys shoots handheld nearly all the time and uses an adjustable leather strap wrapped around his body as an extra bracing point, tightening or loosening it as his layers change through the seasons. It's a cheap technique that costs nothing to try with a strap you already own, and it does more for slow-shutter sharpness than most people expect.
Watch the video above to see whether you can actually pick the film frame from the digital one, and to hear where Popsys lands on keeping the MP.
English (US) ·