The major difference here is that when you send film off to be developed by a good lab like Richard Photo Lab in Los Angeles, it comes back FULLY READY TO GO! You can choose to have prints made, or you can (like me) have the negatives scanned. All of the images you have seen in the examples above were developed and scanned by RPL and came back just like you see them here. I may have done a bit of brightening here and there, but that’s it. And they look amazing! Is this a quality inherent to film? No. Because it does take a good lab to make it look this good. In the next part of this series I’ll be comparing two different labs, and you’ll see what I mean. But when you do send it to a good lab, it comes back beautiful and blog/client-ready!
As for digital, you can definitely send your digital files off to be post-processed by an external company too. But a lot of photographers, myself included, do their own post processing in Lightroom and Photoshop. It’s a basic trade of time vs. MONEY.
And I will point out that the reason why (I think) film is extra viable now as an option is because in truth, what you’re getting from a lab like RPL is the best of film AND digital– you can actually have an analog thing perfected through digital means, and then you get the convenience of having the digital file as your final image. It’s no longer either or. It’s actually the best of both worlds.
So it seems like film processing is great, but there are two major drawbacks. One is time. Especially if you are mailing it off, it will take 1-2 weeks before you see anything, whereas a digital preview is instant, and retouching can happen as fast as you can make it happen. The other major drawback of film, of course, is cost. Which will be our next topic.