 Anna Stassen |
Film vs. Digital In your opinion as a photographer what are the benefits to shooting film as opposed to digital?
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doug Nelson |
You can go from film to digital, but the other way around only with difficulty. Just my opinion, but until digital cameras can offer me the optical quality of 35-mm prime lenses, SLR flexibility, and a 6 megapixel image, at a price I can afford, I'd rather use a film scanner to scan the film. Also, negatives and slides properly stored can be truly archival. Zip discs for storing digital files have turned out to be unreliable, and who knows about the long-term storage of CD ROM and DVD. No one's had 100 years to try them.
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Anna Stassen |
thanks for your response!
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Carl |
Same here, I shoot film, and use a film scanner. I'll only consider digital when a close to 10 megapixel camera using nikkor D lens gets down to a decent price, and has still the same quality as good slide film. Not anytime soon, that is.
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Alan E. Saldinger |
As the previous responses mentioned, a big downside of digital today is the cost for a decent digital SLR (such as the Nikon D1x or Canon EOS-1D). Other downsides are a more limited dynamic range (ability to capture shadow and highlight detail simultaneously) compared to film, and the "field of view crop" - as the image sensors in D-SLRs today are smaller than a 35mm piece of film, the pictures are "cropped" from the get-go. So for really wide-angle applications, film is still the only way to go. However, I find many advantages to a digital SLR (I have a D1x). Because of the almost zero additional cost to capture an image, and the instant feedback on how it came out, IMHO it's a much better tool for learning new techniques quickly. If you're an ace already, you probably can take great pictures in almost any situations without using lots of film, but for me the digital is great. Also, for shooting kids' activities (which I do quite a bit) - it's cheap and easy to capture 100s of images in an afternoon and quickly post lots of good ones to the web. The D1x takes the same lenses as Nikon 35mm SLRs (as Canon D-SLRs take the same lenses as their 35 mm film bodies). As far as archival properties, both film and CD-R life are very dependent on storage conditions - but in the case of computer data such as digital photos, IMHO it's generally wise to migrate your data fairly often anyway - as devices to read ancient media aren't readily available (even if your old data on 5" floppies was still "good", it'd be tough to find a computer to read it today). The next generation of 6 mp D-SLRs (e.g. Nikon D100 & Canon D60) will be/are priced around $2K for the body - 60% less than my camera cost when it was new - so sometime in 2003 I'd imagine a similar or better D-SLR would be below $1K and in more folks' price range. BTW, I assumed you were asking about Digital SLRs - in case you were talking about point-and-shoot digital cameras, the main downside of these is the *very* slow lag time between pressing the shutter and actually taking the picture (mostly due to autofocus speed). On most point and shoot digital cameras, this is greater than half a second, which makes them in my opinion useless for most action (or children) applications. The digital SLRs use the same lenses and focusing methods as film SLRs, so behave like a real film camera.
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Anna Stassen |
You provide great insight, good point on the delayed time between pressing the sutter and taking the picture, hadn't considered that yet. Thanks!
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Carl |
6 mp is still lower. With film you can also get films for desired purposes. Choose tmax 100, velvia, you name it. And right now, digital SLRs like the D1x are still very highly priced, and you have to buy storage too, so this camera with two 1gig microdrives to swap when shooting, and possibly more storage for travel, like a laptop with a big HD. So this is a LOT of money. Right now, film is still the best way imho. Also, I saw reviews on the D1's and the fujifilm based on the F80 have still less saturation and some noise. Film for me.
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Jeff J. TenHave |
Cannon has their new digital SLR coming out with 11.1 MP. Once they get to the 15-20 MP range I will seriously be shopping for Digital..... Since my Photography is 90% print based I need the highest quality output I can get. Right now that is with film....
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Alan E. Saldinger |
Thought the flames had gone out on this thread months ago ;^) If you're using medium-format or larger, I agree film can give better results. I've printed 13x19 inch prints from my 6 mp D1x, and they certainly rival 35mm-based prints at that size (as do prints at smaller sizes). And applying some curves in Photoshop can give you colors like Velvia or whatever other film you desire. I agree that the equipment is expensive; you are trading off additional capital cost vs. a decrease in recurring cost. If you aren't shooting 1,000+ frames per month at least, perhaps it wouldn't pay for itself - but if you are I'd think you'd be saving money (and definitely time) with digital. After using a 6 mp digital SLR for over a year, and dealing with 8 MB per image for RAW files, and 33 MB TIFFS, I'd be wary of going to 11 or 15 or 20 mp cameras and seeing those already huge sizes double or quadruple. You'd certainly need a large pocket full of expensive CF cards to go with it. Unless you need to produce high-quality prints larger than 13x19 inches, I'm not sure the benefit would be worth the cost. -Alan
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Dan C |
Uh oh.... I think the debate is getting very close to closing time. It is sad indeed. just like recording audio went from tape (analog) to cd and next DVD... and video tape VHS to digital... NEW TECHNOLOGY: X3 by Foveon Inc. to be and is imployed in a Sigma (of all cameras!) model #SD9 at the time of reading. said to produce images better than film at a price point of $1800 bucks and I beleive you can use the body with regular lenses. I THINK... but still expensive but lower. I dont know why I have a grump about digital. Perhaps it is because the human body itself is analog and I can relate better to analog... Dont get me wrong I know that digital has its advantages. Go cheap with the camera though and you will have cheap images and/or have to spend 500-1000 more on photoshop and the extra plug ins to fix the pic. but by the time the good digital cameras are cheap than there will be much more competition by less experienced photographers that can fix there pics at home on cheap software. To make this short: Wasnt there a debate when cameras where invented? Things change, some people have a harder time with it. I am one of them and hope that I will not have to buy a digital camera in my lifetime and that film will be available. why? because I like the feel of a real camera. Dan
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Mike J. Horen |
I've included two images that illustrate this: The first one is at ISO 100 with a 4 second shutter, the second is ISO 400 at 8 seconds. Mike
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