Film Friday Video: Pros & Cons of Film Photography

by | Jan 21, 2022

Today’s Video by Joe Farace

In previous Film Friday videos I’ve danced around an issue— The Pros & Cons of Film Photography—that I do my darnedest to address in today’s vlog. While my approach references the Zen of Photography, it also features my typical not-so-serious look at four or five (I somehow lost track) points, each one of which has it’s own pro or con—at least, I think so. It also was shot using different camera and sound gear than my previous videos; see below for the details.

But first here are some links that are referred to in the video:

A note about the video: Unlike the Cars & Coffee videos made with Cliff Lawson, with this series of Film Friday videos I am responsible for everything from hosting, setting-up, shooting and finally editing and posting on my YouTube channel.

Up until now, the camera I’ve used for these videos was Canon’s EOS M6 Mark II with EF-M 15-45mm f/3.5-6.3 IS STM kit lens. While I like the idea of shooting a camera that has an APS-C sized sensor, based on recent experiences with this camera, I switched to a Panasonic Lumix G9 for this video. The sensor of the Lumix G9 is smaller that the M6 Mark II’s but the video shot with this camera somehow looked better to me, although that may be hard to tell after YouTube applies its compression. I’m often asked how I shoot these videos; here’s the camera setting for this one:

  • 1920×1080, 30P
  • 420/8bit
  • 20Mbps

My normal mic, the Deity V.Lav Lavalier Lapel Microphone, crashed and burned as I was setting up: I think it’s just batteries, which if you’ve read any of my recent posts seem to be bedeviling me at the moment. Instead of a lavalier, I’m using a Rode VideoMic shotgun mic, that was a gift from Barry Staver, mounted on the G9’s hot shoe and powered by a 9V Duracell battery. Again, the audio from this mic sounded better to me than the Deity; let me know what you think. Most of the lighting is provided by daylight from two large windows in my living room but for this and the previous video a NEO 2 LED Camera Light was added at camera left. The footage is edited with a seven year-old copy of iMovie and then uploaded to YouTube.

What’s Next?: I am open to suggestions for the topic on my next video. Click CONTACT and tell me what you would like to see or if you have questions about film photography.


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