Film Cameras versus Digital

    Some traditionalists insist that, for them, digital photography will never replace film, as if there were some inherent "spirit" of photography that is embodied in film.   There is no such thing, and there is nothing inherently superior in the grains of silver halide in film as opposed to the pixels of the digital medium.   The relative states of the technology and relative costs are practical issues that give the advantage to one or the other in different aspects.

    At the present time, at the high end of  the resolution spectrum, digital still costs more than film technology, but the cost of digital is declining at a very rapid pace.   Already, very good resolution is available at moderate prices, and resolution is not all there is to photography.

    Digital SLR cameras are still rare, and very expensive.  However, it is also the case that even the simplest digital point and shoot camera has one of the most important aspects of the SLR.  Viewing the scene with the digital camera's LCD screen, you are viewing through the lens, and verifying exact focus and framing.  This is something you can never do with a 35mm point and shoot camera.    The digital trumps the SLR in that you are also able to preview exposure.  You can change settings until you get it right, whereas with the SLR camera you will have to waste film "bracketing" if you want to be sure of accurate exposure, and even then you may end up disappointed when you get your developed film back.

    The digital camera ends up being much cheaper for trying out a lot of shots.   You can try numerous angles, exposures, etc., and erase the ones you don't want, instead of spending $10 and up for a roll of 35mm film with processing.   You upload your results to your computer, and you can have an instant slide show to review your results.   Pictures viewed on a large high resolution monitor are actually much more rewarding to look at than the small prints that most film photographers acquire.   And, you can crop and edit your pictures before you choose the ones you want to print off.

    Your "negatives," stored in neatly organized directories on your computer, with thumbnails instantly available, are far easier to find than traditional film negatives.   With a CD burner, you can back them up to a CD, with about 1000 high resolution images fitting on a CD that costs you 50 cents to buy.    How's that for a better shoe box? Not only that, most digital cameras, as a matter of course, save the technical information such as f/stop and shutter speed for each shot.

While a regular 35mm film shot is reputed to be the equivalent of a 10 megapixel or more digital shot, this high resolution is wasted in the vast majority of cases, since it is too expensive to enlarge prints to their full potential. Few photographers shoot slides, since they are cumbersome to view. The digital medium lets you view every shot at its largest size with great results if you have a high resolution monitor. Simple software lets you instantly turn any directory of jpg files into a slide show, with much greater ease than sorting physical slides into plastic trays. You can even hook up your computer to a large screen TV for this purpose.

Another valuable feature of digital cameras is automatic white balance. I can take indoor shots under available light (incandescent) and the colour is much better than I would get from film. Since the camera has no moving mirror or shutter, if I'm not carrying a tripod I can just rest it anywhere and trigger it with the self-timer, without worrying about camera vibrations reducing sharpness. There is also far more depth of field with digital cameras, making them particularly useful for macro photography. (See http://www.wrotniak.net/photo/dof/). I'm surprised by this, since I would have thought that having to "blow up" the pictures so much more offsets the short focal length of the lens, but apparently it doesn't. I certainly can attest from my own experience that, at the short focal length and f/2.8, depth of field is very large.

There are, at present, some obvious disadvantages of digital. For example, there are fewer places where you can get prints if you don't want to make them yourself. However, there are already some minilabs that let you take in your "negatives" on a floppy or CD and make prints for you, and no doubt there will be more and more as time goes on.

If you are willing to do it yourself, the best ink jet printers produce output that compares pretty favorably to photographic paper. I have a relatively inexpensive Epson 820 printer that produces beautiful 8x10s that are hard to tell from photographic prints. On top of that, I get to control the color and exposure, and the total cost of paper and ink is considerably less than if I had a photo lab print it out for me.

It would certainly be nice to have a Pentax SLR with interchangeable K-mount lenses (especially wide angle). However, the prices the camera companies are charging the "early adopters" for digital SLRs is extortionate. Consider that Canon can make a good basic SLR body to sell for $300, and a reasonably good 3 megapixel point and shoot (including 3X zoom lens) for $500. You would think it's a pretty simple matter to throw away the motor from the SLR, put in the electronics of the digital, and sell the result for $900 or less (after all, they are leaving out the motor and the zoom lens). But no, they want to charge thousands of dollars! Pentax should get ahead of the pack for once and recapture some market share by introducing its digital SLR at a reasonable price.

A somewhat more controversial benefit of digital photography, or at least digital techniques, is the ability to do digital editing. (Of course, for this you don't need a digital camera, since you can scan in the results of your film shots). For example, one of the classic problems of photography is that buildings appear to lean backwards when the camera has to point upwards to take in the scene. To correct this, you can buy a perspective correction lens for about $1000. Or, you can use photo-editing software. Even Adobe PhotoDeluxe, bundled with most digital cameras at no extra charge, can easily do this.

For details of how it is done, and before and after pictures, click here.

Digital editing also encompasses the very easy and effective combining of two or more side-by-side pictures into a panoramic shot. This cheap software allows the simplest digital camera to replace the very expensive panoramic film cameras that are made for this purpose. It also goes a long way to overcoming the objection that digital cameras do not have sufficiently wide angle lenses.

The freedom to experiment and shoot over and over is a great learning tool that will make you a better photographer. Digital is not perfect, and no doubt it will continue to improve, but it already has such powerful attractions that every serious photographer should try it out.

To read my views about the pros and cons of digital SLR cameras versus prosumer digital cameras click here.
 

Peter Spiro, December 2002. 

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