Fujifilm's X-Pro1, now M Mount friendly
Olympus' Micro Four Thirds 75mm prime
Can you fix the focus on a blurry photo after the fact?
The birth of Mirrorless Cameras
The Joy Of Winning A Photo Contest
Choosing your first dSLR camera
New York City can be beautiful!
Choosing the Right Light Stand
Photojojo iPhone Telephoto Lens review — AudioCast
How To Buy Digital Photo Frames For An Exhibit - Part 2
Hey MAC users! A great source and an April Fool that is no joke
My week with Q
How To Become A Successful Photographer
"When the Wind Stopped" — poem with 4 photos
Creating The New Family Portrait
Tips for Textures 
Cast aways - saving those photographic memories
One Man Show: My 25 Years With Digital Photography
Studio, Flash, & Available Light — Three Books Reviewed
Portrait styling: dangerous pairings
Adobe Photoshop CS6 Product Managers Interview Audiocast
A gift of flowers: unfold your senses
On Set of "Love & Robots" the Film
No-Brainer Setup For A Digital Photo Frame Exhibit - Part 3
Exhibiting With Digital Photo Frames (DPF) Part 1
San Diego 7 photo gallery — Just Be Love All Stay Cool
Planning “National Geographic” style photo travel
Find Inner Peace and Beauty at San Jose, California, Airport
Wilderness Travel 1 Rainforests – Essential Gear
Backlighting Basics
What Moves You?
FIGURES IN MOTION: Decades of Evolving Personal Imagery in Photography, Part 7
Lomography Store, Austin, Texas — GALLERY
GALLERY — Up to $1,000 Reward for Cattle Rustlers
25% off on photography eBooks
eyePhone: The eBook for iPhone Photographers
Interview with Harold Davis — Closeup Maestro of Flowers & Water Drops
Interview with Steve Caplin — Photoshop Digital Artist, Commercial Illustrator, & Author
A Brief History Of Light & Photography: Part 3 of 3
A Brief History Of Light & Photography: Part 2 Of 3
Easy technique to select, edit and sequence keywords for web
How much should you charge for a photograph?Why Are You STILL Using Film?
Andrew Wagle is a Marketing and Accounting Specialist with C.R.I.S. Camera Services (the specialists in digital camera repair ). Andrew is also a photography enthusiast, an avid writer, and the moderator of the company camera repair blog.
WHY ARE YOU STILL USING FILM?
Five of the best reasons to switch to digital…
Before anyone gets wound up about how they use film, I will start by conceding that there are some instances in which film, while still not necessarily superior, may be a better choice. In the broader spectrum of things, digital is not only film’s equal but surpasses it in almost every way. Let me ask you this, would you use a typewriter to write a book? Or would you use a horse and buggy to go to and from work? While I can see the fun and novelty of doing so, they just aren’t a practical means for most people. If you still have any doubts, here are the five best reasons to consider using digital imaging technology.
1) Financially speaking, if you’re still shooting film, you’re shooting yourself in the foot. The only way digital photography costs more than film is with the initial purchase of the camera itself, and that gap has grown smaller in recent years. Of course you have to always compare apples to apples, and the lack of production of film cameras makes that difficult. Even if you consider price differences between the two types of cameras, the cost of digital is significantly less for the average consumer in just a year’s time.
2) If you’re anything like me, you’re probably thinking, “Who cares? I’ll pay a premium for the best quality.” The truth is digital is still in its infancy by many accounts and who knows how the technology will grow. Film, on the other hand, is at its plateau; unless there is some fundamental breakthrough in the field of chemistry, it’s not getting any better. That being said, film has been surpassed by leaps and bounds with regards to quality in almost every way by digital. You want to talk detail? Just check out some of the gigapixel images out there.
3) What about longevity of the images? Film negatives can last a hundred plus years as well as their silver print counter parts, if cared for properly. Digital images have the potential to last as long as there is a human civilization with about the same level of technology or further. Plus, they can be printed in the same way and last just as long as film prints.
4) Which brings us to my next point: Film is a physical object that can be ruined or destroyed incredibly easily. A tiny piece of grit or sand can easily get inside the camera and ruin your negatives while you take pictures; you’d never even know it until after your shoot and you spent $10 to develop them. With a digital camera, if it were impaired or broken in some way, you’d know it long before you even left your shoot location. And forget about traveling with undeveloped film, you might as well just throw your money away.
5) Convenience! This is what I find to be the most significant difference between film and digital photography. This is intrinsic in all the points I’ve made so far. There is little to no way in which film is more convenient, save for maybe in the most extreme of circumstances. With regard to traveling, having a camera when you need one, capturing the image, learning new techniques, editing, post processing, physically storing, archiving, overall time spent, and sharing your images, film doesn’t even compare to digital when it comes to convenience.
Photograph Canonet GIII QL-17 by Greg Nissen
Comments
This blog entry is so clueless, I really don't know where to begin. It's quite obvious the author knows very little about film.
1.) Uh, no. The average person will not recover the cost differential between digital and film. Due to the nature of film, people tend to shoot less than when shooting digital. I hate to break it to you, but film and developing costs are not that high.
2.) Film has continued to evolove. Just this year, Kodak has introduced two upgraded films; Ektar 100 and Portra 100. Once again, you don't understand the nature of film. Film continues to evolve because of the motion picture industry; both films I mentioned are due to that connect. Secondly, these two films (and there are more I could list) are designed for scanning, not optically printing.
3.) Film still outlives any digital media ... tried to read any 20 year old CDs lately. Digital can be long lived, bot only if you are constantly upgrading ALL your images to new medium.
4.) Again, no. I have negatives and transaprencies in my archives that are more than 30 years old. It depends upon how you handle them. Secondly, film cameras don't suffer from dust issues, like seem to like to think ... I know I SHOOT FILM daily.
5.) Subjective. I like not having to carry a laptop everywere I go. Oh, and I live in Hawaii and shoot in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Philippines .... all with film. I'm not having any problems.
How to completely miss the point! Especially on quality. I shoot both film AND digital, mainly because the qualities between the two are different. I don't consider one or other to be better, but the colours are different, the depth of field is different, and with each different format, you get a different set of constraints which make you think differently about the photo you're taking. And as for longevity, find me a negative which DOESN'T get scanned in as a digital file these days!
Completely superficial and illogical article. Reads like a marketing ad but from 2000. I also shoot both film and digital, very happy with both mediums.
Makes me interested in jumping back into film. I've seen some pretty great results from some folks who do use it. And yes, you really can't compare the two.
I think this is a case of different strokes for different folks?
I, by the way, shoot both film and digital and I certainly agree with the creativity that can be brought out by the constraints of film.
Hey, that's a sweet canonet you've got there. Pretty damn sexy in fact. Just makes me want to go out and run a couple of rolls through one of my rangefinders...good for the soul.
Actually that photograph (and most likely the camera) belongs to one of our Flickr group members Greg Nissen. You can click on the photograph or the credits at the end of the post to be taken to his stream.
And yes...it's a pretty sweet camera.
The ignorance isn't surprising. This is carefully crafted link spam. See links at the top.
uhhh large format anyone? I dont have 20,000 to do it!
I could loan it to you...just kidding!
Yeah, large format digital photography is super expensive.
I can feel a guest post coming on....
I was expecting one from someone...
Someone who works at a digital camera repair company writing an article to say digital photography is better? Shocker...All trolling aside, I mostly agree. I shoot digital about 95% of the time for the convenience and ability to adjust/learn on the fly, but it's still fun to bust out my Minolta Maxxum 5, Mamiya Sekor 500, or Canon Canonet every once in awhile.
Digital images have the potential to last as long as there is a human civilization with about the same level of technology or further.
Seriously? This reads like an Onion article.
Digital is easier, quicker, cleaner, and convenient. I shoot digital for many things and love my DSLR. Digital is also fairly flat, lifeless, and often grotesquely over saturated by users.
I still shoot film when it matters to me, when I care. I shoot digital if a client wants it or I just don't care about the quality or soul of the image.
And my $150 Nikon FM2 or Olympus OM1 will still be shooting film twenty years from now. I develop at home in my kitchen sink and it costs me less than a dollar a roll to develop. How many DSLRs (and all the equipment and toys that comes with them) will I have went through in that same time period?
Not a digital hater, but generalizations like this are just sad, sloppy writing.
The ignorance in this article is down right astounding.
You're a digital camera repair man - and it shows. Get a effing clue.
What a pointless article. It's like if you write something defending the photography as art or of the value of a photographer manipulated photograph. That debate is over, really. What a waste of time.
Post new comment