Okay - that’s not exactly true.

She can’t drive a stick shift. She can’t balance a clutch and change gears. She never learned how to, because she never had to. She learned to drive on an automatic, took her test on an automatic, and has only ever driven automatics. And so, I give her shit - often - about how she never learned how to drive, only to steer.

Back in the late 80s, when I became of driving age, everyone I knew learned how to drive on manual transmissions. Balancing the clutch on an incline, listening to the engine to know when to shift gears, 3-point turns while preventing the car from stalling because you let up off the clutch to soon - all mainstays of learning to drive in Trinidad back then. I don’t know how it is now, to be honest - but I do know that everyone back then learned to drive a stick shift - and that if you stalled the car while taking your test because you couldn’t balance the clutch, you failed the test.

I still feel that learning to drive means learning to balance a clutch.

In much the same sense, I still feel that learning to take pictures means learning to shoot with film.

Film is a lot less forgiving than digital. With digital, you can shoot as many images as your memory card can hold, knowing that you can both delete the ones that turned out crappy, and retouch the ones that could use them. Hell, I do both of those things, having made the switch to (mostly) digital. Today’s cameras come with all sorts of settings, including one that turns the camera into the photographic equivalent of “just steering”. All you need to do is point the thing at the subject, press a button, and the camera does the rest.

Film is hard. Film is expensive, so you have to be judicious about what and how you shoot. The is no instant gratification, no peering at the view screen after every shot to see how it came out. (Incidentally, I’ve found that one of the telltale signs of someone who doesn’t know how to actually take pictures, and relies on pointing and shooting, is the frequency with which he/she checks the screen after every shot.) Fim requires patience.

As I learned to drive on a stick shift, I learned to take pictures with film, long before I could afford an automatic transmission car, or buy a good DSLR, respectively. I sometimes rest my hand on the “gearshift” in my automatic car, as I used to do when I had to actually change gears when I drove. I hardly ever use the fully automatic settings on my cameras. I fact, I only use those in weddings, when I can’t spend time making adjustments in order to get a “happening right now” shot. I like playing in the Manual setting. I like figuring out how to change apertures, shutter speeds, ISOs, and focal points. It feels weird to me to let the camera do all the work. What’s the point of that?

My cousin is a semi-professional wedding photographer. When he switched to digital, he posted online that he didn’t know what he’d do with his (very good) film camera, and I don’t think he’s used it since. I own 2 (very good) DSLRs, and a (very good) film SLR - and every so often, I take the old film camera out, and shoot pictures with it. It’s becoming harder and harder to find places that will do a good job of developing film (no, WalMart and CVS do not qualify) - but they’re still out there, and I still use them, once in a while. To keep me honest.

I learned to drive on a stick shift. I learned to shoot pictures on film.

I still recommend both.