Pixiq

April Fools, right?

I shoot both digital and film, but I would say a lot of the points you make could be argued either way.

It really sounds like you have an ax to grind; at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is the image, and I am dismissive of digital-only and film-only fundamentalists.

Photography did not kill painting.

The printing press did not kill calligraphy.

Artificial flavours did not kill gourmet cooking.

Colour film did not kill fine black and white work.

If you want to go down that road, I would say then digital photography (in most cases) has not become an idiomatic medium; I see a lot of digital images where the shooter has obviously spent a lot of time (and money on plug-ins) to the image look as analog as possible, instead of working with the particular characteristics of the digital process.

I will argue one point here about back-up; hard drives fail, home-burnt DVD's CD's have questionable archival properties cloud computing services can lose data can go out of business, formats become obsolete; I would say digital back up is a treadmill, and the vast majority of computer users don't back up at all (and with over 15 years of experience in the IT field I've seen enough heartbreak in their area).

In the meantime I have Kodachromes I shot in the 70's (and my fathers that he shot in the 50's through the 70's) which are as bright and vibrant today as they were when they were first taken. Properly processed black and white film and prints have very good archival qualities. I would be interesting to jump ahead 100 years to see what the digital track record is in this area.

I didn't shoot a lot of colour negative back in the day, but those I did shoot I stored properly and they still print/scan fine.

As for colour prints, I have some lovely Cibachromes I did in the early 80's that still look great! I am puzzled y this argument though; If someone creates a low budget inkjet print from a digital image, and the print fades quickly, that is hardly a knock against the original image, just the printing process.

Call it a failure of the person instead of the technology but I believe the fact remains that most people don't properly back up their digital media and hence are at risk of losing their pictures. I'm willing the bet a lot of the same people have old albums of decades old photographs rom parents/grandparents, boxes of slides/negatives etc. that while probably disorganized are still in decent shape.

Thanks for the insightful article!

Rick
I’m going to have to agree with John Meadows here, your arguments don’t hold water. I first suspected there’d be a problem when you began your post by noting that this was a 10 item list à la David Lettterman.

It is ironic because Mr. Letterman’s Top 10 list are always facile and superficial and rarely insightful. I’ve been a photographer for a long time and today I only shoot digital. But the reason is simple;convenience.

I live in the hinterlands of Southern France and the nearest film processing is a long way off, as is the nearest supplier of film. And that's okay because these days clients want digital images so as a working professional that’s what they get.

But that hardly means I use digital because it is superior to film.

There is a downside to your digital 10 point list too. I call “photodumbification,” which is a variant on DIY (dumb-it-yourself). Now that cameras automatically deal with exposure and focus and on Auto take relatively useable images-everyone is a PHOTOGRAPHER. There’s a wacko(one of many) on Facebook who knows nothing about photography but regularly posts “photo pieces” that are full of errors. He’s a leader in the world of photodumbification.

Digital has made photography easy, it has opened the doors for rampant idiocy. Read my post “Take Great Photos with the Greatest Camera Ever Made” for more on this.

Because film is expensive and time consuming and all the other negatives you pointed out it forces the photographer to think and not to shoot 1000 frames.

As August Sander put it photography requires that you See, Observe and Think.” It makes picture making a skill that you have to learn. Now I know that learning is a nasty word, that’s why Wisconsin is wisely seeking to close their school system. Who needs teachers when you have the Internet?

Today you have to study nothing to become something, it’s the most frightening aspect of the digital world.

And just as with Mr. Letterman's Top 10s your glib points do not as, John Meadows indicates, make a case for digital being superior to film.
Steve

Rick

Okay you asked me to not generalize and so I will be specific point by point. Note that I edited down your texts to try to keep this from getting too long. I urge viewers to read your entire post. My answers are in red simple to make them clearer.

To start with let me also say that I am not arguing that film is better or superior to digital, I just don’t think your argument is on the right track.

******#10. Image Stabilization DIGITAL: allows shooting at very slow shutter speeds FILM: For technical reasons film cameras do not have stabilizers in the body*****

In other words, digital is more convenient than film because you don’t have to carry around one of those terrible tripod things? But at truly long exposures IS doesn’t help and I don’t mind using a tripod.

********9. EXIF Data
DIGITAL: The EXIF data can provide invaluable information FILM: requires time consuming and cumbersome note taking******

I like the EXIF data but I’m not sure its a deal breaker. My photo agency likes metadata that tells them where a photo was taken etc…but they don’t care at all about the f/stops and apertures. I kind of don’t either because I’m not that old that I won’t remember more or less what I set the camera to.

But again this is about convenience not any quality that makes digital photography superior to film.

And you know what? I know a photographer who actually takes notes with a paper and a pencil. What a bore!

******#8. Sharing/Sending On The Internet
DIGITAL: photographers can upload digital imagery in a matter of minutes FILM: The picture must be printed, then scanned in before posting on the Internet. With editors and publishers full sized hard copy needs to be mailed which is slow, expensive and time consuming -- or scanned in thus losing most of the benefits of a film photograph*******

Again I read this as the convenience of digital in the modern world of publishing By the way you send prints to editors?

If you shoot large format images-for their superior image quality—scanning is just part of the work. Sharing on the internet is good, but as far as I’m concerned that hardly makes digital superior unless you need want to share pictures of your cat playing piano otherwise not so sure.

******#7. Archival Storage And Protection
DIGITAL: Protecting photographs and making perfect archival copies that will not fade FILM: "Color photographic materials are impermanent and are by nature unstable." (Wikipedia).*******

Rick I have lots of floppy disks with images on them and no matter how hard I try I can’t shove them in the DVD slot. So these diamonds aren’t forever.
As for archival. 1.) I don’t think anyone really wants my photos around forever. I am not Robert Capa.
2.)B/W glass plates from the 19th century and Kodachromes from the 20th have survived so I guess I just will have to wait until the 22nd century to see how much of my 21st century digital imagery lasts.

******#6. Cataloguing
DIGITAL: Cataloguing, archiving and retrieving photos can be accomplished easily FILM: Cataloging…is time consuming, difficult *****

Again this is convenience not a superior aspect of digital. I had a photo stock agency and I will guarantee you that the human brain beats the PC every time. Especially with images. We set up a simple and coherent filing system and entered images as we received them. My staff people saw and literally knew every image in the files. And could not only retrieve what people asked for but could do what computers can’t--they could remember alternative images that keywording would never have found. And they could do it all quickly.

*****#5. Darkroom Processing
DIGITAL: Hours formerly spent in the darkroom can now be done quickly and cheaply using software.
FILM:. In addition processing is expensive and time consuming. Also these chemicals are not good for the environment.*****

Wow, I wouldn’t go there as lots of photographers who still love to work in the darkroom. And you seem to have an attitude of laziness here that needs to looked at. There are people who think that working slowly and meticulously is good. They like to “waste” a few hours in the darkroom.

That you or I might enjoy the convenience of Photoshop doesn’t make it superior to film by a long shot. There’s still a strong debate about what looks better the silver print from a negative or slide or a digital print.

Also digital is pretty damn environmentally dangerous with its rare earths and plastics.

********#4. Color Photography
DIGITAL: The subtleties of color -- and of the color peculiarities of a particular situation -- can be quickly viewed, evaluated and adjusted in real time.
FILM: While color film can be adjusted…..you will be at the mercy of the lab******

I don’t understand this at all. Slide film was great because of the challenge of getting the image right when you snapped the shutter. If you are saying that you have more control of the final print in digital maybe but that assumes of course that the photographer has some understanding of color. Where do they get that. School or YouTube.

But that still is an aspect of convenience and ease not superiority. I can only suggest that you should work with master color printers--who are amazing--and see what can be done with film.

*******#3. Cost Of Taking Photos
DIGITAL: Low expense means that dozens or hundreds of different shots, angles, exposures, techniques etc. can be attempted during a shoot at virtually no cost.******

Gee whiz what’s this? Before digital, National Geographic photographers and most other pros were always shooting from various angles, st various exposures etc…Digital just lets ordinary folks the non-pros do the same. But I’ll give you this point.

*****FILM: Film is expensive; prints are expensive*****
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Score one for you again. Digital is cheaper that film. Can’t beat that. As a working pro, fiIm and processing costs were a tax deduction and I passed these costs onto the client anyway. And yes you are right that film photographers are more conservative because of the cost. But I’d argue that that’s a point in film’s favor, if it causes photographers to think and work more carefully. Hmmm…Might have to take this point back.

*******#2. Learning New Techniques
DIGITAL: Learning and evaluating….as difficult photographic techniques can be mastered rapidly.
FILM: With no instant feedback, a film photographer is flying blind. She or he will not know, often until days later, what the effect of a particular new technique was*****

Are you saying that everyone from the early photographers like Matthew Brady to Ansel Adams and Cartier-Bresson were flying blind? Its a joke right? Do you think that when Dorothea Lange took that photo of the ‘dust bowl’ mother she didn’t know that she had something great?

And I’m not so sure of instant feedback. When I shot film and my lab took two hours to process it. During that time I’d go the bar next door, relax, bitch with friends and then pick-up the processed slides.

Digital isn’t superior to anything if it cuts into my relaxation and bar time.

****#1. Visualizing The Results Of Your Picture Taking
DIGITAL: The instant review and feedback of the LCD monitor allows quick corrections and adjustments almost in real time along with a real time preview before the shot is taken……….. No more time consuming light metering.
FILM: While film photographers learned to previsualize after years of experience, it was easy to make mistakes. There were often times that instant feedback was needed. For example, when taking a flash photograph of a group, did one of the people blink when the flash went off, thus ruining the photo? This is something that is easy to judge with digital and impossible with film.*******

Previsualization as I was taught it has to do with looking at a scene and in your mind determining how you want the photo to look. Then using the Zone System-where the term was first used--you learn to take lots of those nasty old meter readings at various points in the scene. From this information, you determine the contrast range of the scene, the exposure to use and how you will adjust the development to get the longest, fullest tonal range in the photo. This process is called work and I hate it and personally long for a camera with an Auto Zone System Mode.

And people blinking with a flash, well I used a Leica M and since there was no mirror blackout I could always see when eyes were closed and re-shoot.

You are so right though Rick about “No more time consuming light metering.”

My heart is breaking. Life is too short to take exposure readings. But you forgot to mention that there’s no more time consuming focusing (hated that) and no more time consuming framing (just crop in Photoshop.)

My problem with your post, and what I believe John Meadows was objecting to, is that you are saying that digital is superior to film because it is easier, cheaper and more convenient.

What these qualities have to do with which technology is better for producing images, I don’t get.

What you seem to be impyling is that because I can’t jam my 4x5 transparencies into the DVD slot on my laptop and send them out on the Web instantly, they are inferior images to digital images. Come on.

Digital and film are alternative visual media and we photographers are fortunate at this moment in time to have both. Why muddy the waters with a Top 10 list that proves so little. Enjoy BOTH!

Regards

Steve

Good summary Steve (and I'm glad we both feel the argument is unecessary). One thing I would say about the cost comparison though is that for medium format at least film is cheaper hands down; Last year I purchased a Mamiya M645 plus three lenses for well under $400. I can shoot an awful lot of film before my costs reaches the heights of a medium format digital back.

Also ironically in this "digital age" Kodak has in my opinion released one of the finest colour negative films ever (Ektar 100), and in the black and white world, the venerable Tri-X, and amazing films like Ilford Delta 100 deliver great results!

John
I am green with envy an M645 and three lenses. Might be my old one. Sigh, as I wrote earlier living here in Southern France, its a hassle to shoot film (the convenience factor) but a local camera shop (digital) has a little armoire full old Leicas and other 35mm ancients they won't sell.

Its like a museum or better a shrine. I can be caught there praying and weeping every other Thursday.

with envy

Steve

I'm lucky here in Toronto to have a great store downtown that has a reasonable film stock selection in 120, plus even with shipping B & H online orders aren't too painful (At least a lot less painful than a LEAF back or a Mamiya digital MF camera!!)

I had dinner several times this week with my friend Jay Maisel at Photoshop World, who is now 80 years old, bless him. Still shooting away, the former "Mr. Kodachrome", who probably shot more Kodachrome than any other photographer (if not, he's in the very top tier) was showing his digital images on his camera LCD screen and marveling at the photos he was able to get, the unbelievable quality that he would never be able to get with film.

Jay can barely turn on his computer and will gladly admit if there is a way to screw up a computer, he'll find that way.

But rather than waste time arguing over film v digital, Jay has fully embraced digital, not for any manipulation (which he doesn't do or like anyway), but rather for the simple fact, he can get photos he was never able to get before. It's about getting the shot. Everything else is chatter.

And BTW, the digital revolution has enabled us to make inkjet prints with pigment inks. Most of the analog processes are made with dyes. If you don't know the difference between pigment and dyes, the difference in longevity is day and night. Today's inkjets made properly last 100+ years and dye prints, no matter the process, will fade much, much sooner (read Henry Wilhelm's book and studies).

Making a good digital print takes just as much skill as making any analog print. I see that with great print makers like Mac Holbert who make digital prints that knock your socks off. Bad inkjet prints are just as bad as bad analog process prints. A lot has to do with the talent of the printmaker, but for longevity, there is no argument.

Rather than waste time on silly arguments, be like Jay and just take the damn shots. A great photo is the context, not the substrate.

Amen brother...take the damn shots> Give hugs and best wishes to one of the greatest color photographers ever--Jay Maisel. The man could shoot great shots with a Holga!

I've been in professional photography for 47 years and I've spent tens of thousands of hours in the darkroom developing and printing film. The last time was Jan. 1998 right before I got Photoshop 5. There was something special about the darkroom, it was magic to see a print develop before my eyes. I miss that. I switched to digital in 2003 and every now and then I'll break out the old Kiev 88cc and shoot a roll of film just for the fun of it.

I photograph for real estate and digital is the only way to go, with film it would be impossible and too expensive. I have a turn around of 12 to 24 hours and I shoot 3 to 5 shots for each picture at different exposures and blend them with Photomatix. Sometimes I'll add flash on one of the exposures. In two hours of shooting I may have 150 or more shots for each house.

I will say digital has made me a better photographer because of the instant feed back. Oh, by the way, I shoot in manual mode, manual focus and use an exposure meter for every shot! On top of that I use a $500 Sony a300 with a Sigma 10-20 zoom and the live view flip up/down LCD view screen is great! I can do pole photography with it and on the tripod I use the screen flipped up to view each photo without having to bend over to look through the optical view finder. It sure does save on the back.

I love digital and film, each has its place.

There seem to be some pretty wild generalizations here.

#10

Image stabilization is not unique to digital. You can for instance use IS lenses on Canon EOS film bodies for instance. In fact, IS pre-dated digital cameras. Sure, in-camera IS is impossible with Film, but to say IS is a purely digital advantage is nonsense. The top two DSLR makers do not use in-camera IS.

#9
Sure, digital cameras make recording all sorts of metadata really easy, but there are options in some film cameras to have data backs imprint exposure data on the margins of the film so it's not like you HAVE to do this completely manually in every case.

#8
Sharing / sending on the internet is not unique to digital cameras. There are things called film scanners that can directly scan negatives and slides. More steps are required, which I guess was the point of this assertion. Scanning also doesn't necessarily "lose most of the benefits of a film photograph"

#7
This is where I perhaps have my biggest gripe. Film will stay stable for many years if stored properly. What about your digital files? What method, exactly, do you have of protecting that digital data? Hard drives can have bit rot if not used, and are of unknown long-term longevity. More importantly, who's to say 20 years from now there will be any software that has any clue as to how to open a CR2 file or an NEF file from a particular camera. There's not even any kind of standardization there. There are no guarantees with data longevity. Only with constant vigilance is your digital data going to be secure in the long run.

#6
The argument here precludes the possibility of an efficient film cataloging system like it can't possibly exist, though clearly software does make things pretty simple. I will argue that sorting through thousands of digital photos is time consuming without time consuming entering of metadata. Lightroom for instance cannot automatically tell which pictures you shot have mountains in them, for example.

#5
Digital wins here sure

#4
"Very different exposures, for example, can change a color composition dramatically" How exactly is this unique to digital? Oh wait, it's not. The entire argument here is about instant feedback, and has nothing to do with how film or digital really record color. This is instead written in the film section where yes, color balance and other things can be easily adjusted with digital and are harder to visualize sometimes with film. However, I am not aware of a magic "vevlia" plugin for a digital camera that can match that film's beautiful organic palette, so it's also a matter of preference.

#3
Digital is a clear winner in cost-per-shot. There's a tradeoff when things are free. You might not take the time to prepare and think about your shots, resulting in a much higher noise to signal ratio.

#2
Some things can be mastered more readily with instant feedback. With film you have to have faith in your techniques. Often you will "know" you have done right by your techniques with film, whereas with digital you might just shoot a few hundred unplanned exposures and then select the one that's right.

#1
It's just as easy to make mistakes with digital as it is with film. The digital advantage is that with instant feedback you can (possibly) correct those mistakes and reshoot and this won't cost you much. A trained eye and mind can visualize a wide variety of situations in the final film image and print, and have the know-how to make that happen. This may require more effort than many people are willing to put in these days.

I'm not anti-digital, but I do think some more thought and research could have been done into many of the assertions here. I shoot digital primarily but use film from time to time too. There's something to be said to the organic way that film captures an image. It's something that cannot really be replicated with digital cameras without extensive post-processing in my opinion.

The debate will go on for awhile, and inevitably film will fade to a smaller and smaller slice of the photography pie. But for me at least I hope that it won't die off completel.

""Digital and film are alternative visual media and we photographers are fortunate at this moment in time to have both. Why muddy the waters with a Top 10 list that proves so little. Enjoy BOTH!""

I said this two days ago, the film vs. digtial is in many ways simply a false dichotomy set up to have a straw man to beat down.

Paraphasing a former non-inhaling President's campaign line, "It's the pictures, stupid."

I think Jay Maisel would agree with that, too.

Rick:
One other advantage to digital I think you missed is the ability to practically see in the dark. New DSLRs can do ISO ratings that would have sounded like pure science fiction when I was getting into photography in high school (late 80s).

I do appreciate digital, and as a newspaper photographer I've been using it since 1998 when my paper bought into the Kodak DSC-520 system. The quality was middling but the freedom and speed made up for it. I embraced digital full on.

However, just a few years ago I started toying with film once again after buying a Holga. From there I've gone on to do newspaper projects not just with low-fi cameras but real medium format and 35mm. A lot of my personal photos are once again shot on film, and I'm even constructing a B&W darkroom in my house...something I wouldn't dream of ever doing again just a few years ago.

Maybe you're still in the digital honeymoon period, maybe not. For me, I had grown tired and bored with photography in general until I started working with analog materials again. I believe it's helped to inspire my seeing and enthusiasm.

I still shoot mostly digital obviously, there's no going back. Now it seems that with the pace of information even digital workflow isn't fast enough, it's gotta be online before you have a chance to fire the shutter. I like stepping back and slowing down with film when I have the chance. I love the deep, organic feel of film and grain. I'm rather tired of everything looking kinda 'samey' now.

I hope (wish?) that film and digital could coexist forever. Sadly it seems like the digital beast is taking over everything. Emulsions and processes are vanishing, Kodak is all but doomed. Some analog will survive, but so much will be lost forever.

Like I said, a few years ago that wouldn't matter to me. Now, it's downright heartbreaking.

dan c

Dan C

That was beautiful and eloguently said. I think a lot of us share those feelings.

Steve

Let me chime in too -- well said, we are in a fortunate time.

One thing I like about this time is that interested photographers can try out different formats quite inexpensively; it is a different experience shooting medium format, or a twin lens reflex or a rangefinder, to say nothing of a view camera, and it has never been cheaper to try any of these; one may still shoot digital most of the time, but I find that using the other formats/cameras still informs how I shoot when I do have a DSLR in my hand.

Dan c,

Very well said!

Although I've been a member of PPA and VPPA for many years, a couple years ago I joined an amateur Meetup digital photo club. A few weeks ago we had a black and white film developing class and we had about twenty members to show up. We started out with a morning photowalk in one of the more picturesque part of town. Some put film in their old 35mm cameras, others had 45 year old TLR cameras and even a few Holgas.

After lunch we met back at the community center to develop our film. Well, everyone had so much fun processing their film, we have scheduled more classes in using film. What they seemed to like the most was film requires manual labor, it's more than just pressing buttons on a computer keyboard to produce an image.

Film is not dead. The Sunday Virginian Pilot paper had an article about people that have discovered the joy of using a typewriter to write with. I see film the same way, I don't think it will ever die off because there will always be a small number of film lovers!

Jerry K.

Rick:

I think you missed my point regarding #10. You are citing image stabilization as an advantage of digital, when it is available for both. Just because one form of the technology is available only on digital, does that mean that digital has the advantage? Some might argue that lens-based IS is superior to in-camera image stabilization. Canon and Nikon bodies don't have in-camera stabilization. I just don't see how this is really a reason why digital is superior to film.

I stand by my assertion that digital archiving has unknown longevity for a number of reasons. All prints are going to fade over time, but film if stored properly will last a good long while. Digital may have the long term advantage in potentially keeping perfect copies, but since most film is going to be scanned one way or another it's kinda moot.

As for #1, I already said instant feedback has it's advantage.

You say digital, I say film. Let's call the whole thing off.

OK?

I shot mostly in film BUT I also realize digital has it advantage for high ISO. Yes, I can push 400 BW to 1600, but what if I need color? High ISO color is very expensive and rare now.