Film vs. Digital

[Grant]

This is not intended to incite any riots and I am not sure if it has any relevance but I did find it interesting.

http://www.gommamag.com/survey001.html

[Carbone]

I can see this leading to a war... (NOT!)

Ray

[Grant]

To quote a good friend of mine.

"Film shooters suck and should get out of the stone age! er.. wait.. I shoot film. hrm..

I mean.. um.. Digital shooters are morons who just burst fire until they get something right! .. damn... I also shoot digital and have been known to do this as well.

Ah nevermind. :-)"

[Carbone]

Grant... LOL !!!

[troush]

Interesting, they "prefer" film but "use" digital more. Does the convienence of digital (meaning speed/time) out-weigh the image-quality of film?

I think both still have their value. Although we rarely use film at our house these days.

-Trish

[Carbone]

I would imagine if you're in a rush, for that last minute shot to go on the press in 30 minutes, Digital would save the day.

Or cost.. You might do the regular stuff with digital, but keep film for that exceptional moment. Film has not met it's digital counterpart. Though the quality is good, slides film are way, way better than digital for the time being. That's only one example.

Ray

[Norm F]

Ray,

It seems that Grant's film propoganda is starting to impact you.

[Grant]

Norm

Ray is just being a realist.

I love the quality and longevity of film and it is my prime source for art work, portraits and weddings. That being said it is impossible to beat digital for speed. Sports and news photographers now have wireless hooked into their camera so once the shutter is pressed the image can wiz through the air to the editor's computer. Longevity is not always the most important aspect of photography, if we consider an ad agency add don't run two years so images for add are very very old at two years.

Now for the life of me I can under stand why pros shoot weddings in digital. Well I can on a financial level but these are images that should last a life time and as yet the jury is still out on that one. Who knows, maybe most people think that a 20 year marriage is a life time.

[Carbone]

I used to shoot film a lot (well, 4-5 rolls per month, that was a lot for me taking into account the cost of it) before I switched to digital. The joy of the Instant gratification passed, and then remained the blown up highlights or difficult to render shadows. That was my JPEG era.

Next came the Canon 10D with its RAW format. Much, much better! No more unable-to-repair pictures! But.. something was missing... The grain, the "texture" of the colour (I don't know what other words to use to describe the grain visibility inside various colours), it was lost.

To add a sort of depth to a picture, with digital, you can increase the ISO, and Photoshop the resulting image to make up for the washed out colours which often happen with too high ISO settings. But still... This induces a colour artifact (I don't know if it's the right again, like creating colour dots which were not present in the original picture).

Now, when I compared slides with digital, hmmm... Different ball game. The dynamic range of the Fuji slide film is much superior to that of a digital image sensor, no matter what sensor your camera has. Perhaps that 39 megapizels Hassleblad is better .. But certainly not that other brand, Nikon.. (hehe!)

However, me being a home hobbyist, I really don't need the extras of the Film. Digital is fine with me. Though, I can recognize the need for it, and most importantly, the loss of it going over to digital. But I surely don't miss the hours spent in front of the film scanner, the dusting of pictures scanned, the 4 days to wait for a film to be processed, etc..

Ray

[troush]

Well, Hmm... My wedding gift from my parents was paying for the photographer (my husband and I paid for everything else). We got a nice album and then were able to order some other prints for other family members. A couple of years ago we got a letter from the photographer with an offer to buy the proofs from her, or she was going to toss them. We decided to let her toss them - two engineers just aren't that sentimental .

But anyway, I recall a couple of my friends who actually took their photos out of their albums and scrapbooked them! I was floored. I wouldn't dream of doing that to my professional wedding photographs! (Do it to snapshots all the time ) And, reading on Nikonians, at least one wedding photographer lost a customer because he didn't shoot digital. But I'm also noticing that a lot of people want a more "scrapbook" look to their wedding photos. (I, personally, can't imagine why. It was a formal event - the album should look formal!) I'm just wondering if it gives the photographers more options for stuff like this. Or, if it gives faster turn-around time.

I don't know. It's pure speculation. But, with all the bridezilla's out there who throw a hissy fit if it isn't their way, I'm not too surprised. Digital may give the photographers more options to deal with them.

-Trish