Every few months, someone asks me whether they should shoot film or digital. I’ve stopped giving a direct answer.
The question contains a false premise: that there is a generally correct answer that applies across stories, directors, and contexts.
Film has grain. Grain is information — not noise, information. It tells you the image was captured, not generated. For certain stories, that honesty is indispensable.
Digital has latitude. In the right hands, digital latitude creates space that film rarely permits. For other stories, that latitude is what allows the truth to emerge.
The answer is: what is this story? What does this story want to look like? Work backward from there.