Will we all go digital?

Most working photographers I know shoot film for fun, and digital for food (and fun).

In his excellent book "Digital Photography Bootcamp" (Amherst, 2006), Kevin Kubota sums up why why I'll never shoot film again for work...(and haven't since 2001)

The Benefits of Digital
Let's cut right to the chase. Digital has myriad benefits, not all of which can be listed here. Here are a few that can be easily brought up in polite dinner conversation:

For the Photographer
-Multiple Originals. Never send irreplaceable film throught the mail. Create as many backups of original images as necessary.

- Substantial Materials Cost Savings. Shoot as much as necessary to get the shot you need. No more film, processing, and proofing expenses. Reduce your environmental waste production. We paid for our first digital camera in three months with film/processing savings.

- Instant Review/Job Insurance. You know the job is in the bag before you even set the camera down. Share images with clients in-camera to ensure their approcal.

- Creativity Enhancer. Try new ideas, shoot more, experiment. Increase confidence in your creative abilities.

- Consistency in Printing. Reproduce a print the same way from day to day or month to month. There's no need to rely on lab inconsistencies and chaning personnel.

- Studio Control Over Image Printing and Final Look. Prints can be given the studio's "look" with simple Photoshop techniques. Print on Demand when using in-studio printers.

- Myriad Creative Output Options. This facet of digital will keep you excited about your work and enjoying the impact of multimedia presentations.

For The Client
-More Creative Images to Choose From. Your gain here is their gain too.

- Clean, Retouched, Custom-Printed Images. Clients receive the best-quality images possible.

- More Exciting Ways to View Their Images. Viewing options include slide shows, DVDs, CD-ROMs, on websitets, via e-mail, etc.

- More Emotional Impact with Multimedia Presentations. You can add impact to your presentations by pairing music and images.

- Print-Ready Images in CMYK. You can provide separations services for commercial clients.

- Clients Receive Your Full Artistic Vision - if You Choose to Give it to Them. They will place a higher value on your products and services.
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For me the best reason to shoot my weddings with 100% digital workflow is having back that total control of my final images. For years, most of us who shoot events and protraits for a living had to rely on a good relationship with a pro-lab for 2/3 of the process for our final images. Sure, we made the initial exposure, but the lab did all of the critical work in processing and printing, using thier best judgement for our images. Often their artistic choices and weren't in complete lock step with what ours would have been and so our images, looked like all the other images which came out of that given lab.

Today with 100% digital workflow, we get to do all of that work in the shooting AND the processing steps and maybe we just outsource the printing. With a properly profiled and calibrated workflow any print should look damn near exactly like what I see on my monitor so the actual printing doesn't have the same creative control that it used to when I shot on colour negative for 17 years, but my images look exactly like I want them too in print.

The 'downside' is that it is now a LOT more work for us, but in exchange we now have total creative control that most of us had lost (and if we are smart, we charge for the added work anyhow.)

Ultimately, if photography is just your Avocation, either film or digital is just as valid an option depending on which suits your mood and budget, but if photography is your actual Vocation, (and you don't have an efficient wet lab at your disposal) 100% digital workflow is really the only path that makes fiscal and creative sense today.

(oh, and there is no such thing as a 'digital look' and a 'film look' there are only good photographs and not as good photographs. Both types of photos can be made on either digital or film.)
 
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Axel100 said:
Hi,

in Germany you can get a film, developing and 36 color-prints for around EUR 5,- actually.
Are there similar prices in the other countries?

Regards, Axel
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Don't forget to mention that this is not the film in your avatar :)
 
If I were a professional photographer depending on photography for my living, I may very well have switched to digital photography for ease.

However, I am still free to choose, and I strongly dislike digital photography. I simply sense no life in digital images. As an example, a good Sonnar lens can deliver a special look that I do not see with a digital camera. My wife does not take photos, but even she can distnguish between film based images and digital images, and she does not encourage me at all to go digital.

Raid
 
ywenz said:
Yes, digital will eventually become so good that even the film die-hards will convert.. just watch!
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I work two days a week as a resident pro at a local independent camera shop. I always get a kick out of folks buying Kodak Max 400 to put in their AE1s, FAs and X700 bodies telling me that they'll eventually go digital but they "want to wait until digital image quality gets there."
:rolleyes:

DSLRs began rivalling the quality of 120 colour negative film in 2001.
(120 - 100F or Velvia carefully exposed on a tripod still rivaled DSLRs until the 5D, D200, 1D MkII & D2X hit the streets, now digital has the edge even against 120 chrome.)

I shoot the my 1952 IIIf RD daily and put at least one roll through my 1954 Rolleiflex MX-EVS weekly. It is a sheer joy to use such jewel like quality cameras and lenses that are almost as old as my dad and I love them both just as much as I loved my Ikon, Bessas, Graflex, F100s, FM2s, SRTs, Hasselblads or Mamiyas, that I've owned, but if I were only allowed to own one camera fo the rest of my life, it would be a D200 without question. The quality of the images that I make with a D200 far exceed anything I've ever been able to produce with film.
 
Fabian said:
What do you think? What has to happen to make you give up film?
Fabian
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As many other said for most of the professional work digital is already almost the only viable option but I don't think there is anything which will let me give up film: I just love too much pinhole photography. You might be able to do something not too far away with a computer but for me the almost 180 degrees of view with no distorsion of a round back pinhole is just impossible to replicate. Contact printed from 5x7" or larger is not even that bad sharpesswise...

Also it is incredible to think whatever format or variation you might come up with and being able to have a camera for that in a few evenings using a few dollars worth plywood.

Sure for action photography you might want something faster than F250 but...

GLF
 
jaapv said:
This is not quite fair as a comparison. To the film camera you must add the cost of film and developing, and a filmscanner maybe (and then the computer etc...).
If you do chemical prints the cost of a darkroom as well.
To digital add the cost of computer hardware.

Adding it all up the average amateur will break even over say two or three years and the pro will have saved a fortune by going digital...
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For digital you still need the computer, you still need some sort of printer, and ink, paper. The ink in my last printer was $50 each cartridge and didn't last very long- I don't have a printer anymore. Digital cameras are more expensive, no way around that. The 'accessories' are likely about even, maybe a bit more if you're printing color in a darkroom, maybe not. Ink is still made by the some chemical company, paper is paper, the cameras themselves are much more disposable, and so certainly consume more resources in ones lifetime than my lifetimes worth of film cameras. And printers seem to last about as long as a case of toilet paper. My enlargers?

Guilty of being nostalgic, I like to use that 100 year old box camera, my 75 year old view camera, my M5. They are simple, concise and make very beautiful images in a way that I enjoy. I dislike using my cell phone, the microwave, calling anyone who uses a voicemail system or 'listen as our options have changed' phone directory.
The debate gets pointless. I'm not going to shoot digital. Like several others here I don't want to 'edit' images, I want to be printing in the darkroom. I like it. I'd rather coat my own glass plates & salted paper again than spend hours Photoshopping. Yes, I know how to use Photoshop- it is a powerful tool for an illustrator or a digital photographer, but not for me.
The world turns. Things go out of fashion. I don't think I'm better or worse than those digital shooters. I like my film. I like a nice vodka & soda in the evening. You like digital, you like a skotch & soda. Great. Enjoy. I know I am.
 
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So this is a forum which attracts people who enjoy the craft, tools and processes of older technologies, such as film.

So why do most posts extolling the virtues of film have to include some iteration of digital bashing?

Why not say "I prefer film just because I like shooting film" and leave it at that, without the pompous nonsense about why it's superior to digital?
 
I started with digital, then switched to film last October, but now I'm wanting to go back to digital. I'll probably keep the M3 and shoot with it for as long as I can get 35mm film, and when that's impractical I'll still use large format film and a lot of DIY experimenting and stuff.

I'm dissapointed that the current digital rangefinders aren't practical, since I enjoyed shooting a two-day event with the M3 this week. I shot more on film than I did when I shot the same one last year on digital because I enjoyed it more. If I had a DRF, I probably would have shot about the same, but I wouldn't have to wait until next week to see the shots I took (sure, I could have had them developed at the one-hour place, but it's over twice the price of 3-day service).

I'm probably going to get another DSLR for my landscape and nature shooting when I can afford it, and I want to get into photojournalism so I'll have to shoot digital for that.
 
Edward Felcher said:
Why not say "I prefer film just because I like shooting film" and leave it at that, without the pompous nonsense about why it's superior to digital?
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Probably people who had that in mind just skipped the thread... :)

GLF
 
Edward Felcher said:
Why not say "I prefer film just because I like shooting film" and leave it at that, without the pompous nonsense about why it's superior to digital?
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Exactly! Film, especialy B/W, is part of the fun for me, that's it, not more and not less.
 
Edward Felcher said:
So this is a forum which attracts people who enjoy the craft, tools and processes of older technologies, such as film.
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Yep, among others.

Edward Felcher said:
So why do most posts extolling the virtues of film have to include some iteration of digital bashing?
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I don't think it's most posts, but some of us do get tired of being told that our medium is 'dead' every week or so.

Edward Felcher said:
Why not say "I prefer film just because I like shooting film" and leave it at that, without the pompous nonsense about why it's superior to digital?
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I did that too, and tried to explain that digital isn't necessarily such a money saving way to make images.
 
Silver Paper vs Ink Cartridges ... Paper Wins!

Silver Paper vs Ink Cartridges ... Paper Wins!

I can still buy a lot of double weight, gallery quality fiber based paper for the cost of several ink jet cartridges. So I don't see the cost factor favoring non-photographic printing technology, at least in the short term.

Of course, the premise of this thread is faulty, given that most all who post here are already engaged in "digital" photography if they've ever uploaded an image, or viewed one online.

I just don't see the two worlds as equivalent; at least where I sit. Now, if I were a photo 'professional', that may be different; but for my purposes silver gelatin prints are an entirely different field than pixel painting.
 
photogdave said:
At the end of the day the number one reason I don't like digital is the cameras themselves.
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this is so true.

how much would it cost to do what you can do with a bessa r and 15mm heliar in digital? a canon FTb with a 50mm FD macro? etc...

of course, this is all kinda obsolete technology from one point of view. but much less rapidly obsolescent than a d80.
 
another thing that bothers me about the DSLR market...

another thing that bothers me about the DSLR market...

i've been looking around and the dslrs out there (being interested, besides RFs, in macro, telephoto and tilt/shift lenses) and the market seems almost uninterested in the lenses!

from my point of view, it's the selection of lenses i want to use that will dertermine the camera choices. followed by the viewfinder quality.

but in all the reviews i've read on the web, dpreview in particular, there's nest to no info, quantitative or subjective, on the leses!
 
I use digital for work, and I love the convenience and advantages of it, but I still regularly use film for everything else, and plan on continuing for as long as I can.
 
I sure hope not, I just switched to film. :(

The most disturbing, and best, post, however, is the one talking about the infrastructure required to produce film. If it no longer proves a profitable model to each and every level of the various industries involved, it will cease to be.
 
a 4x5 sensor/back with no preview monitor that is the thickness of a sheet film holder, with a 6 to 12 month battery life, and built in storage for 8 images for $2k. i'll never touch film again.
 
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