Depends what you want to learn about photography really, doesn't it?
But, Cameras do NOT teach 'Photography', they cant even teach you how to use a camera!
(Though my Nikon has a 'Guide' setting that's supposed to offer tutorial advice and tips! Maybe these will become more common and more useful on entry level cameras, like mine... but no... its no 'Teacher'... you'd learn more, reading a book!)
I started to get a bit keen in 1989, when I started Uni & my Dad gave me an old Olympus OM10. Now he'd always been a keen snapper, but after Uni I moved back to the family farm and was a bit surprised when I asked my Gran if she minded me developing slide film in her kitchen.....
It was a revealing excersise; I knew that before she was married my Gran was a registered Pharmasist, and that her mother was a school-teacher... what I DIDN'T know was that my great grandmother.... was a keen ameteur photographer...... an interest she persued from childhood, encouraged by HER Dad!
So, when I asked about developing my own film..... promted storied from my Gran about learning photography from her mother when she was a kid.... and how it got her interested in chemistry, which lead her to become a pharmasist!
Anyhow... repeating the anacdotes; My Gran was born in 1920, I think, so we're talking late 1920's early 1930's, and her helping her mum, prepare prepare wet-plates! So no box brownie stuff here, SERIOUSE photography for the era!
And My Grans part, started (remember, family were farmers) going and collecting the eggs.... then seperating the yoke for the white, and using the yoke to make a proper custard for tea, so they weren't wasted, but leaving the white to make the film emulsion, to be spread on the wet plates!
Next she would have to cycle to the village, and get a list of ingredients from the Chemist that would be nie on impossible these days.... I know silver nitrate was a key ingredient, but I have a feeling that arsenic was used as well, and think I remember her mentioning antimony? Black-Magic this lot!
So, having got the egg-white and chemicals, a photographic emulsion had to be brewed.... in the dark... then spread on the glass plates, and then dried in the airing cupboard!
This is all before you get any where NEAR a camera!
All incredibly interesting stuff..... but do you really need or want to know about it these days when you can pop into boots and buy a roll of Kodak's finest?
So, plates prepared..... you can take a photo..... Field camera... a wooden box with a hole infront for the lens, and a plate of ground glassin the back, the view-finder and a bit of black velvet over the top so you can see it..... all on a wooden tripod....
They lived in the Cotswoulds, so aparently the camera would be put on the gig and they would go have a picnic in the hills, while my Gt Gran looked around and chose spot to place the camera.... then she would replace the view-screen with a prepared plate, remove the lens cap, and go eat her sandwhiches while she made an exposure.... timing it with her little wrist watch! Three or four plates later..... they would go home.
Next comes making a print. Gran sent out to collect the eggs, and more custard made..... aparently my Great Grandad always knew when my Gt Gran was going to do some photography..... she'd start by cutting rhubarb... for the crumble.... to go with the custard!
And the plate preparation job repeated, only on cartridge paper 'sized' over a wooden frame like for an artists water-colour.... and back to the aring cupboard. THEN the exposed plates would be developed.
And on a sunny afternoon, 'prints' would be made by contact printing, the developed plate, against a sized and coated bit of cartridge paper, on the kitchen windowsill.... before the print was developed....
And she had a photograph or four.
All rather tedius when you can just drop a roll of 36 frames into Boots and get prints back in an hour!
And utterly redundant, in modern times, when you can go straight from view-finder to paper, within a few clicks of a button!
Do you want or need to know any of this old craft, in modern photography?
It's all very very interesting, and incredibly involving, and you get to know and understand as well as control the entire process from start to finish........ But how relevent is that to what you want to do? And hardly any of it involves the actual camera!
Using a more modern SLR Film camera.... the versatility & capability and the operation is much the same as a modern DSLR, and both can offer as much manual control.
I have an old Zenith Film SLR, which has no Through The lens (TTL) metering; just shutter-speed control, aparture on the lens. To take a photo, I have to meter by eye, or hand-held meter, and then apply settings to the camera.
Putting my Nikon DSLR on 'Manual' I have TTL metering telling me if the settings I have selected will give over or under exposure... this is pretty much the same as my Sigma Film SLR, that is fully manual, but with a swing needle in the view-finder TTL Meter, to save having a hand held meter.
I have OM4, which has both Through the lens metering, AND automatic exposure, by aparture priority... I select the aparture on the lens..... electronics in the camera set the apropriate shutter speed according to meter reading... Nikon has the same feature, if I select 'Aparture Priority' setting. It also has a 'Shutter-Priority' setting, that some other cameras of the same era as my Olly had; you select the shutter speed, camera selects apropriate aparture.
OM10, used a 'centre weighted average' metering system... taking an average meter reading over the whole veiwfinder area, but guessing that the most important bit is the bit in the middle. This is one of the metering options on the Nikon.
OM4 had centre weighted metering..... but also had 'spot' metering..... press a button and it would give an exposure value based on whatever was in the middle ring of the view-finder focus spot. Again, this is possible on the Nikon. As in the OM4's multi-spot averaging meter function, I put centre spot over something in the scene, and press button, to tell the camera if its a highlight or low-light, and I can take I think seven samples that the camera then averages to get an optimum exposure value. Nikon can do this too (I think!) BUT will do the same thing 'automatically' in its 'matrix meter mode'.
But the DSLR goes on... it has a whole dial of 'auto' modes, 'auto', portrait, landscape; sport; macro.... AND it's auto-focus, so I dont even have to touch the lens, it will do almost everything but point itself and press the shutter!
There are two features, most of my old film cameras had that are missing from the Digital; A Hyper-Focal scale on the lens, so I can work out what will be in acceptable focus between aparture marks, and A Depth of Field preview button... but it has a preview screen on the back.
So to all extents and purposes, a Digital SLR will do pretty much everything any film SLR might have done, and can help teach as much about USING a camera... which is only a fraction of photography, as an older Film SLR might.
IF you want to....
A completely manual, unautomated Film SLR like the Zenith, doesn't give you any choices. You have to learn to use a meter, you have to learn to set the controls, it wont do anything for you, you CANT be 'lazy'... and you cant work as fast, which may mean it encourages you to be more disciplined, and learn to use the camera to best effect, and to think a bit more about what you are doing.... as does every frame exposed costing you 20-50p a time......
Last of the era film cameras with Auto-Focus and often almost as many automatic exposure modes, as a Digital SLR may not impose such constraints or encourage such disipline or thought, and merely impose a financial cost to every frame.
Its not the capture medium, therfore, its the degree of automation within the camera itself, and how much of it you choose to exploit or not.
I can hapily take pictures on the Nikon on 'Auto' and let it do all the work, metering and translating Exposure Values to Shutter-Speed and Aparture settings for me; letting me worry about nothing more than framing my scene the way I want it. I can just as hapily drop it onto Aparture Priority mode, so that I can take more control of my depth of focus when composing the picture. And I might only worry about fully manual modes if and when I am shooting something more tricky, and I dont trust the camera to cope with it as well as I could..... though to be honest... those instances are few, and probably fewer than the times I do use manual settings!
So, the camera.... only a very small part of 'photography', and its an impliment; a tool; it wont 'teach' you anything. It has little or no means of imparting knowledge to you. It has no 'knowledge' to impart. Its a 'stupid' machine that just follows dumb instructions, if it does anything at all.
Film camera or Digital, how much you may HAVE to learn to use it depends on how much automation is bult into the camera.
How much it may encourage you to learn about exploiting the camera controls, is pretty much entirely dependent on how much of the automation you choose to use, how much manual control you choose to use. But to 'learn' you need to go get the knowledge how to exploit that control some-where else.
So it really shouldn't matter what sort of camera you choose. Digital or Film. There's pro's and con's either way.
Digital? Cameras tend to be more expensive to buy in the first instance, but can be a lot cheaper to run per frame after that. They tend to offer a lot more in-built automation, and can be quick and easy to use and dont demand much from the photographer, though possibility to take command is still there.
Film? Upfront the hardware can be a lot cheaper; particularly as most tend to be
second hand, and you can get a much 'better' camera for your cash; But frame by frame paying for film & processing, its more expensive to run. USUALY with less automation, they demand more input from the photographer, so they have to gain knowledge how to use it, before they can put it to best use.
