BetterPhoto Q&A
Category: New Answers

Analog vs. Digital

I’m experiencing increasing agita as I read the many articles and BP questions that describe traditional [film-based] photography as “analog.” When I took courses in process control, albeit in the dark ages of the early 1960’s, analog referred to: …of a circuit or device having an output that is proportional to the input; "analogue device"; "linear amplifier" [syn: analogue, linear] [ant: digital] n : something having the property of being analogous to something else [syn: analogue, parallel.]

The above definition came from an Internet thesaurus and, because “digital” was listed as being an antonym, I looked that up and found: digital:
1. Expressed in numerical form, especially for use by a computer.
2. Computer Science. Of or relating to a device that can read, write, or store information that is represented in numerical form.
Since a digital camera is a computer and work s off of zeroes and ones, like other computers, it certainly meets these descriptors. But, I can’t see how a film camera involves “a device proportional to input” except, perhaps, as one consider proportionality of subject versus image on film.

So, why don’t we all get technically, as well as politically, correct and drop the analog “analogy” to film.

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August 17, 2005

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August 17, 2005