Digital vs Film Photography
1) Zero cost
encourages creativity and experimentation
2) Instant
feedback means you learn and improve quickly
3) You gain a
home colour darkroom where you can do much with an image
4) You bypass
the photo labs
5) The
advantages of digital storage
6) Photos
look much better on a 17" screen than as postcard-sized prints
7) You can
easily make movies
8) You can
make naughty pictures
9) You get
macro capability thrown in for free
10) Digital cameras tend to be smaller and lighter
than film ones
11) Best of all, you can get a super-zoom with
anti-shake technology
1) The issue
of quality
2) It is easy
to get snap-happy and not take care
3) You (almost)
need a PC
4) Correcting
your photos can be extremely time-consuming
5) You need
to recharge the battery and to unload your memory card
6) Digital
photography moves away from the photo as document
I now flesh out the above list of benefits and
drawbacks.
The Pluses
1) The Michael Caine character in a film explained the
difference between an amateur and a professional, “The amateur thinks about it
first then takes the shot. The professional thinks about it later”. Perhaps the
best thing about digital photography is that it removes the thought, "Is
this worth taking?" at least to a degree. That means creativity can
flourish. You are more inclined to “try anything” when there is no cost
involved, especially since you can delete the photo immediately. I can take 40
photos of a lighted match, then scrap them all or keep just one. When I took up
digital photography it was like starting to photograph for the first time. I
found my subject, which is water. I might take 150 water photos during two
hours in Centennial Park. Since I take many more photos than I would with film
it is more likely that I will produce a few good images.
2) You can see a small
version of your photo immediately after taking it. You would typically download
your photos to your PC on the same day (this is a painless procedure), at which
point you will really see what they are like. Not only does this avoid delayed
gratification but it means you learn much more quickly and you can redo shots.
When you get your film prints from the laboratory you need to remember what you
did three weeks ago to see what worked and what didn’t.
3) Ansel
Adams once stated, “The negative is the score, the print is the performance.”
This remark applies even more to digital photography. You can improve the
sharpness, colour, lightness, and contrast, plus a host of other changes. You
can easily crop an image so that it is composed exactly how you want it,
something that you cannot do very well without a darkroom in the film world.
All this is far easier than in a BW film darkroom, let alone a colour one. You
can also do things that are not possible in a physical darkroom, eg lighten
just the dark parts of a picture. The home colour darkroom in the PC gives you far
more control than you can have with colour film. You can also do all sorts of
flashy things that you would not be able to do with film, eg make
oil-painting-like versions or reverse the colours. See my article on Photoshop. If you want to do black and white work
then just shoot in colour and then use any of the myriad ways of making black
and white images out of coloured ones in the PC.
4) You don’t have to wait for the photo lab, nor are
you at the mercy of their quality control. You and no-one else controls every
phase of the photographic process. You can even make your own prints.
5) Digital
storage means that no physical room is needed, that there is no loss of quality
when you copy or email, and no degradation with time. You can store 300 or 600
shots on a single memory card inside the camera, which certainly beats 36 on a
roll of film. You can ensure that your photos are permanently stored by backing
them up to CD or DVD. In addition, you can easily email or post your photos on
the Net.
6) A photo shown on a 17 inch monitor looks luminous
and much more impressive than a postcard-size print. It is more like a slide,
without the bother of projector and screen.
7) You can easily make movies since most compact
digital cameras have this feature.
8) You can make naughty pictures that no-one but you
will see.
9) Most compact digital cameras allow you to take
close-up photos with ease. In the film world you would normally need a special
lens or extension tubes.
10) It is
nice to have a smaller and lighter camera. (Unfortunately, digital SLRs are not
any smaller than film SLRs.)
11) Once I got used to a
12-times optical zoom there is no way I'd give it up. Together with the
anti-shake technology this opens up a whole new world of photography ie hand-held
super-telephoto. My smallish Lumix camera zooms from 35 to 420 mm in film
terms. A related advantage of digital is that if you have an SLR then you can
shoot at the film speed equivalent of ISO 3200 and you can alter this speed
from shot to shot.
The Minuses
1) Quality is a complex
issue. If you make postcard-size prints of your photos then I doubt that you
would see a difference in quality between digital and film, assuming the photos
are made in good light. If you print A4 size or larger then you might see a
difference. This is where megapixels begin to matter. However, I print 70 x 50
cm blow-ups of my 4 megapixel images and I think these are quite acceptable,
though inferior to film. If you only look at your photos on the PC screen then
the issue of quality comparison does not arise, since they look better than
small prints ever did. Finally, there is the new problem of digital noise.
Under-exposed areas and areas of high contrast can exhibit unsightly coloured
blotches. The film equivalent of digital noise is film grain.
2) It is tempting to
make hundreds of shots in an afternoon without taking sufficient care, as
digital photography encourages the throw-away attitude and sloppiness. You may
drown in a flood of your own making.
3) You
don’t actually need to have a PC as you can use a digital camera in the same
way as a film one. However, to get the full benefit of digital you should use a
PC. This can be cumbersome and time-consuming, not to mention painful for
non-techy people. Also, it is hard to show people your photos
compared to an album. Unless you have a large hard disk you may run out of
storage space. The other downside of digital storage is that you can easily
lose all your photos if you don’t back them up. Do it now!
4) In the
past I just got my prints from the lab, asked for some to be corrected and that
was that. Nowadays, I correct most photos that I take, at least the ones that I
like. Since I make about 10,000 photos per year that is quite a work-load. It
would be nice to get good photos straight out of the camera, but this is not
the case with mine – they all require sharpening and colour correction. This is
the downside of the major plus point 3) above.
5) You
will probably need to recharge the battery every day or two of
camera use. This can be annoying on a trip. You also need to unload your memory
card(s) to a PC or onto CD (if travelling without a laptop).
6) Digital photography is another step away from the
documentary nature of photography. It is all too easy to adjust or tart up
photos until all sense of the photo as document is lost.
What camera should you get?
It depends on what you want to do. If you are, or
think that you might become, an enthusiast then you should buy a high-quality
camera that is versatile, such as an entry-level dSLR (digital Single Lens
Reflex) or a high-end compact like my Panasonic Lumix. If you just want to take
happy snaps then you are probably better off getting a unit that will slip into
your pocket and that you can take everywhere without even thinking about it.
See my camera Comparison. A word about
digital zoom: this is a worthless gimmick.
In August 2006 I bought a Canon 30D, which is a
mid-range digital SLR. It is wonderful to be able to see what I am
photographing again. I find that the combination of 8 mega-pixies and the 18-55
mm zoom lens gives me pretty good macro capability – I can fill the frame with a 2 cm long object at 100%
crop. Image quality is a big step up from the Lumix.
I bought
it because I no longer wanted to put up with the limitations of the Panasonic
Lumix FZ10. These are: poor low light performance, low dynamic range
(highlights are washed-out), digital noise (coloured dots or purple fringes
that should not be there), the crappy viewfinder, plus the need to sharpen and
correct all pictures. Yet, apart from that it is a great camera!
My lessons
Never photograph people
indoors without flash. Even outdoors flash is a good idea in order to avoid
noise in shadow areas. Do not underexpose but use the middle exposure
setting and bracket the shot if in doubt. When photographing people with the
sky as background (especially using the self-timer) make sure that spot mode is
on. If you end up lightening your shots in the PC then it is better to over-expose
than to under-expose when you take the pictures due to the noise that appears when
a digital photo is lightened.
On the other hand, highlights are easier to blow than shadows are to under-expose
and highlights are usually more important, so overall I'd say that under-exposure
works better than over-exposure.
Do not increase the
in-camera settings for saturation or contrast, as this is likely to introduce a
colour cast.
This can be a painful
area. Many people use the shoebox at the bottom of the cupboard method to
organise their film photo collection. This method works equally well on a PC.
Given how many more shots you are likely to take once you have a little digital
beastie, I recommend that you start off with a plan. You can either use a
freeware picture organiser, such as Picasa, or do it your own way. I don’t like
having to use other peoples’ ways of organising my own data, so I have my own
system. I put each month’s snaps into their own folder and call it “23 Month
2007” so that the months will sort in sequential order. It’s also a good idea
to add to the end of the folder name the range of names contained within it.
When I correct a picture I give it the name “Blaha”, where the ‘a’ on the end
signifies that it has been downsized for screen display (and email) plus has
been corrected. If it is one of the best for that month then I copy it to a
folder I call “24 Month 2007 Best”. I don’t recommend using shortcuts instead
of copying because if you move or rename the source folder then the shortcuts
will not work. The best pictures of the year go into “Gallery 2007”. A similar
system may or may not suit the way you want to work, but do find a way that
suits you.
One of my pet hates is
the third-rate image viewer that comes with Windows called “Windows Picture and
Fax Viewer”. It does not even allow you to view your images full screen. The
best program I have found is ACDSee V3.1 but this is obsolete (later versions
of ACDSee are afflicted with a bad case of feature bloat). Try a freeware
program like IrfanView. Stop press: you can get ACDSee 3.1 for free from
here
Tad Boniecki
Written 29
July 2006
Updated 6 Nov
2007