I enjoy film photography in some contexts (I do a bit of 4x5), but film photography basically sucks. I think possibly a lot of the people who find some kind of magic in it are those young enough not to have grown up in the era where shooting film was the only option.
I don't mind 4x5 so much because just taking the photo is so much effort that the associated ordeal of developing and scanning isn't out of proportion. But for 35mm and medium format, there's a hugely disproportionate investment of time and money for a small number of photos.
Curious how 4x5's inconvenience is "proportional" while 35mm's is "hugely disproportionate". I'm not familiar with the specifics of these formats, but you seem to be arbitrarily drawing the line for where the added friction is still serving the "magic" I believe is very real if not fragile. I think you recognize the value of photography isn't solely in the product. I'm curious what you personally find in 4x5 that saves you from these younger artist's silliness.
It takes about 10 minutes to take a single 4x5 photo, and you have to carry around a tripod and a fairly bulky camera to do it. So the time and effort invested in taking the photo is similar to the time and effort required to develop and scan the negative.
In contrast, a 35mm camera is very convenient and you can expose an entire 30 frame roll of film in a few minutes. But getting high quality scans of all those frames requires either a lot of time or a lot of money. (Consumer flatbeds give poor results for 35mm, so your best bet is putting the negative on a light table and using a digital camera and macro lens. But that’s a physically fiddly process, the ‘scan’ needs manual spotting for dust, and if you’re shooting color negatives you also have to do some work to get the colors right.)
Back in the day, most users of 35mm cameras were satisfied with waiting a week to get a set of prints with absolutely no creative control over the printing process, but that’s not what most people want now.
It's what some people see as the point now. Back when film was the only option, the cost and time per frame were just negatives (if you'll excuse the pun). There was no romance in deciding whether or not to use one of your last three remaining frames; it was just annoying.
I don't deny that for a whole range of reasons, some people might take better or more meaningful photos using old cameras. Limitations can feed into the artistic process. I just think it's a bit silly to romanticize the cost and inconvenience of film, or to think that photos taken using film are somehow inherently more interesting or valuable.
The parable of the pottery classes that were graded on their best work and total volume of work springs to mind. I never would've bothered with photography if I didn't have the ability to be shameless with burst mode and pick the winners later.
I don't mind 4x5 so much because just taking the photo is so much effort that the associated ordeal of developing and scanning isn't out of proportion. But for 35mm and medium format, there's a hugely disproportionate investment of time and money for a small number of photos.