Film is Dumb


A website to share photographs, both film and digital, and to enthuse about the gear and process of creating them.

Who am I?

My name is Chris.  I am a lifelong, mostly-amateur photographer. I still shoot regularly, and for the last five years I have shot mostly on film.

I created this website as a space to share some of my work with people who might enjoy it.

Why “Film Is Dumb?”

Modern digital cameras are good. Impossibly good, and I get shots I could never have gotten in heyday of film, or even with my digitals a decade ago.

Still, not long after I got my first mirrorless (a Z6), I got it in my head to try film again. I loved it. Even with all the challenges, I continue to use film.

There’s almost nothing I can do with film that I can’t do more quickly, more easily, and way more cheaply with digital. I won’t justify it, and when a friend tried to get me to explain it to him, I only had one thought:

Film is dumb.

OK, it’s not. It’s really cool and I shoot it because I enjoy it, which is the only reason I use any camera. But the “filmiscool” domain name was already taken, so here we are.

Welcome to Film Is Dumb Dot Net. It’s Dot Com!

“To photograph is to hold one’s breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It’s at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.”
– Henri Cartier-Bresson

What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time.

– John Berger

“You don’t take a photograph, you make it.”

– Ansel Adams