The iPhone already has an app available that attempts to recreate the feel of 8mm film. But why fake it on your iPhone, when you can pull it off on the real thing? Aaton founder Jean-Pierre Beauviala notes that part of the move to cease making film cameras came from the realization that there were plenty of film cameras already circulating. Old camcorder-style cameras may also include features not standard in modern, cost-effective digital cameras, such as built-in effects or infrared filming.
With an abundance of unwanted film cameras, the price goes down. Depending on the model and age of the camera, you can find such items for as little as $50 or less. Part of the price of these cameras might be mitigated by the hunt for compatible film – a much easier endeavor with camcorder-style cartridges, but decidedly more challenging with Hollywood-grade film formats, such as super 8.
The great benefit to digital is the ease with which it is transferred to an editing station. You can edit video taken on your iPhone and post it to a public-viewing site before you get back to your PC. Even in the traditional editing process, the master material becomes easily transferable between other editors. Film, meanwhile, requires intermediary devices to convert to a format editable with digital equipment. This equipment, such as RCA converters, can add additional costs to using old film cameras. Every project involving a film camera will further entail the task of conversion.
It’s easy to take for granted the importance of quality in a world of near-ubiquitous high-definition productions. Using a film camera quickly reminds you how grainy a 480-pixel-wide image, the resolution of standard definition recordings, can be. Old film can only capture so much detail that can then be translated into pixels on a modern screen. Though you can upsample in the editing process, a process of enlarging the space which the film fills, film will appear considerably lower-quality than recordings which use modern equipment which supports formats of 720 or even 1080 pixels wide.