Digital camera technology is helping the public take better photos than ever before.

Smartphones offer sophisticated cameras, while photo editing software is becoming more accessible and easier to use.

But a Victorian university has found that its students are increasingly interested in using film rather than their phones to capture images.

A unit in Darkroom Studies is one of the most popular subjects on offer as part of Deakin University's photography degree.

Lecturer Daniel Armstrong told 774 ABC Melbourne's Red Symons the university had built a new darkroom at its Geelong Waterfront campus to accommodate the subject.

"Our course is 90 per cent digital, but it's important to engage in that history," he said.

Film images more meaningful



Mr Armstrong said analogue photography forced students to think differently about how they shoot.

The expense of film means that students must spend more time thinking about each shot before they take it.

Darkroom Studies is one of the most popular subjects in Deakin University's photography degree. ( Supplied: Deakin University )

Mr Armstrong said many of the digital photos taken today were never looked at again.

"They may be flicked through in the camera and put away on a disc and we never come back to them.

"With your film images, you go through each one and you study it and you learn from it."

Darkroom brings back older techniques

He said there was a "resurgent interest" in film photography and developing photos.

Photography lecturer Daniel Armstrong says some students have never handled film before. ( Supplied: Deakin University )

"We've built a darkroom to bring back some of those older techniques."

And they are techniques that are quite foreign to the digital-native students of today.

"The students that are coming through now, some of them have never handled film," Mr Armstrong said.

He said analogue photographs had a different quality to digital because of the way they were made.

"The processes are different, the making of the image is different, the options are different and compared to digital they're limited," he said.

"Standing in a darkroom, projecting an image onto paper and then watching it come alive in the chemicals — that's all part of that process."