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Anyone else not really into digital photography?

Anyone else not really into digital photography?

Old Dec 5th, 2002, 09:59 AM
  #21  
Andrew
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Marilyn, many studio photographers have *already* switched to digital. Why? Easy: subjects can see the results of their photo shoots instantly and choose on the spot. And the prints are as good as or better than 35mm if the studio photographer has a good camera. Soon, prints from digital will rival medium format and leave 35mm completely in the dust. Canon's (expensive) 1Ds already does.

Unless you take your film to an old lab, you are already using digital photography anyway. Almost all photo processing labs use digital scanners and digital printers to make prints of your 35mm pictures. Why? It's a lot cheaper to get good prints.

The labs I use use the same printers for 35mm and digital prints. Using a digital camera simply avoids the middleman - instead of scanning 35mm negatives or slides, you make the "scan" in the camera. The "scan" a digital camera uses will get cheaper and of better quality as technology progresses.

Sure, film will probably always be around (assuming Kodak and Fuji still make it), in the way that vinyl records are still around. But film will eventually be relegated to a hobbyist's format; consumers and professionals will mostly use digital. You can already get digital prints (at kiosks at the mall for example) without even owning a computer. Why would people bother with film when they can get a reusable memory card that will hold hundreds of photos and print just the ones they want?

Film won't be replaced by digital immediately, probably not in the next year or two but it's just a matter of time.

Andrew
 
Old Dec 5th, 2002, 11:29 AM
  #22  
Tai
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"if you are a serious photographer digital can be construed as a step backwards in some respects, i.e. time we used to spend in the darkroom is now spent at the computer. You can’t be earning money with your camera while chained down to a monitor. That’s why professional labs liberated us from the darkroom in the first place."

But time spent in front of the computer is optional, as in allowing one to perform Photoshop effects, not required as in developing.

"As far as saving money on film, flashcards, sticks, etc. are very expensive and, personally speaking, when I’m shooting digital I will almost always spend as much on batteries or power packs as I would ever have spent on film."

Rechargeable batteries are a wonderful thing. The rest are one-time investments that amortize quickly the more their used.
 
Old Dec 5th, 2002, 11:51 AM
  #23  
Aad
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I stick to my 35mm SLR as long as it is the only way to make slides. Prints on paper is just not enough for me!

However, I like to experiment with digital photo prints and texts. Composing a photo book of the highlights of my trip makes my holidays complete.

So, I try to get the best of both worlds by scanning my slides with a 35mm scanner.
 
Old Dec 5th, 2002, 12:02 PM
  #24  
Snoopy
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Digital photography is a wonderful thing. There seems to be a tendency by some to turn this into a philosophical issue as if true photographic art can only be achieved by toiling over stop bath and fixer . . . what a crock! And the comment about film's ability vis a vis digital media to withstand the effects of time is anachronistic.

I have a 30 year old Nikkormat that still takes exquisite photographs!! That it has lasted so long is a tribute to the quality of its construction and NOT a statement about the superiority of analog over digital art form. Good grief!

Mel, "romantic" is a perfect word to use in the context that you used it. The debate on this forum reminds me of the "PC vs MAC" debates I used to listen to. PC-is-best! people tended to be who'd never used MACs and vice versa. People tend to like what they have; a sort of self-affirmation of their decisions. I don't mean that condescendingly. You should continue to cling to your "evermore outdated ideal" but try a digital camera, you might really enjoy it.
 
Old Dec 5th, 2002, 12:08 PM
  #25  
slider
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Aad, I take slides but have never scanned them, something I'd love to start doing. Do you need a special type of scanner for this? Any recommendations?

Also, what do they look like compared to both scanned regular photos and digital photos?

Thank you.
 
Old Dec 5th, 2002, 12:13 PM
  #26  
kathypompe
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I'd like to re-enter this conversation and add support to the responses by S.C. Dixon and Marilyn--confirming and validating film. Film lives!
Traditional "chemical based or analog" photography will be around for a long time to come. The photographic image on film still surpasses the digital one in many subtle ways. There remains as many reasons to shoot on film as there are to shoot digitally. An image on film, taken with a good camera lens can record various depths of field, at the photographer's direction, shutter speeds selected to guarantee the right moment, and nuances that the analog aspect of film can make visable.
Digital too has its advantages (in my opinion) in its creativity in the surreal. Many of the really interesting digital images that I've seen, are those that began as fragments of real scenes, taken on film, then using Photoshop software, combined to create a new "reality" Using a digital camera can be attractive as a post-selection shooting method --immediately dump the images that aren't what you want. But it can also be a growth process of learning, on the spot, to re-compose for a stronger image, as Mina, I believe, suggested. I realize that alot of people use digital in a straight or unmanipulated way, to record the world, but to others the variations, possibilities, and combinations of pieces from many photo images are what attracts them to the digital field of photography. I think both directions will enjoy a long life. And, as was said in the early nineteenth century about painting when photography was invented: Painting is dead. Obviously not.
 
Old Dec 5th, 2002, 12:16 PM
  #27  
Snoopy
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Nikon makes a high dollar solution for scanning slides and HP makes some low dollar solutions ($1800-Nikon, $199-HP). What you buy really depends on what type of result you want to achieve and how quickly you want to achieve it. You can feed one slide a time through a slide scanner that takes 90 seconds to scan a single slide OR put lots of slides into an auto-feeder and watch TV while it does its work. It's partly a cost issue.

I ended up buying a $400 HP solution and I am very pleased with the results. High resolution, high color.
 
Old Dec 5th, 2002, 12:28 PM
  #28  
joanneaj
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I use a Pentax 35mm traditional camera, and also a Sony DCR-TRV11 combination still digital and video camera, which alternates between still and video with one little switch. On Mount Vesuvius last week, my still digital wouldn't operate, but the video and traditional camera did! Go figure. I don't plan to give up either cameras anytime soon, as the combination let's me do anything I want.
 
Old Dec 5th, 2002, 12:41 PM
  #29  
Aad
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Slider,

for good quality scans you will need a dedicated 35mm scanner. The construction of such a scanner differs from the flatbed type.

My electronics shop sells about a dozen different brands and types, with prices varying from a few hundreds to some thousands euros. Well-known brands are Minolta, Canon and others. Their websites will contain more detailed information.

My scanner is a 3 years old Minolta, so not state-of-the-art anymore, and it produces scans of around 10 MP. Newer or more expensive scanners might perform still better.

In my view the quality is about as good as you get when you have your slides scanned elsewhere, and definitely better than when you scan a photo print.

And, with 10 MP scans you are coming near to the limits of the 35mm film itself (grains!), especially when you are using 200 or 400 ASA films.
 
Old Dec 5th, 2002, 12:41 PM
  #30  
Marilyn
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It's interesting that people responded to my second post above, suggesting that I was on the film side of this debate, when in fact I posted first to say how fabulous I thought digital was.

We take both with us when we travel (husband is professional photographer) but for myself, in a travel situation, I prefer digital, for all the reasons stated at the start of this thread. It must be said that we have excellent digital gear (Canon) with a variety of lenses. But I'm still not selling my "old" Canon 35mm -- I know I'll still use it.

 
Old Dec 5th, 2002, 12:45 PM
  #31  
xxx
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"The photographic image on film still surpasses the digital one in many subtle ways."

Precisely the point made by audiophiles who prefer the sound of music on vinyl, that analog surpasses digital in subtle ways.
 
Old Dec 5th, 2002, 12:47 PM
  #32  
Proshots
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As a 10 year-plus wedding photographer I concur wholeheartedly with Dixon. Kodak has set standards (the famous gray scale for black and white) that simply don’t exist in day-to-day digital, at least at this point, and yes, we often feel “chained” to our computers. Even with all the bells and whistles and with expert calibration in the monitors, the image one sees on the screen and the image that crawls out of the printer are often two very different things. By the way, the last printer we bought a month or so ago was just a tad over $2000. Do the math; two grand would buy a lot of film or prints from a professional photo imager.

In fact we’ve had to hire two full time helpers for that task alone so that the photographers can earn a living away from the “grunt” work. If a client finds out you’re shooting digital suddenly there is no limit to their demands. After printing a 20x24 print (at the cost of all that ink and special paper note that a photograph is still higher quality at a bargain price!) the client will say, “Hmmm, well, couldn’t’ my teeth be a bit whiter? I mean, after all, it’s only digital, it’s easy to change…”

Tai has some good points but really some of us are talking apples and oranges here. S. C. Dixon came in with the points of a PROFESSIONAL as opposed to a hobbyist or serious amateur. We try to recharge batteries but that simply isn’t feasible on a job site or in a church. Doing a quick count we figure we are running about 15 battery charges constantly and still cannot keep up with the flow. As far as saving “hundreds” of images on a memory card, well, not very serious images. On our end of things we can’t save little jpeg files, we’re talking portrait quality here. Using a jpeg file is the equivalent of taking an executive portrait on the little point-and-shoot 110 cameras from years back. You can do it, yes, but if you’re doing photography as a profession you probably won’t get paid for that kind of image. So the (partial) solution for us was to buy a laptop (extra r.a.m.) at a little over 3 grand MORE to download on sight.

There is still a LONG way for digital to go.
 
Old Dec 5th, 2002, 12:52 PM
  #33  
JP
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Digital is "free"?

OK, let's see. How much for a camera that will take pictures that come close to film in quality? $4000 maybe?

How much for enough storage cards to store the 800 or so ultra-high resolution pictures that I would normally want to take on a trip to Europe? Or make that 1600 pictures, since there's no way I would consider having just 1 copy of my pictures stored on anything as flimsy as a storage card (or disk or whatever).

Then how much to hire a security guard to be with be any time I ventured outside my hotel with thousands of $ of digital camera and accessories?
 
Old Dec 5th, 2002, 12:57 PM
  #34  
Maurice
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Let me weigh in with my 2-cents worth:
-Digital cameras are still in the "next-year's model, twice as good" treadmill phase. (Has anyone noticed this has slowed tremendously for PC's?) Eventually, they will settle to an appropriate level, about the same quality as 35mm or better; probably in the 10-20Mpixel range. This should be almost as sharp as the best medium-format cameras, and make the lens the limiting factor in improved quality.
-The price of digital cameras is still unreal. A respectable 35mm SLR is in the $500 range, with all the electronic toys and such included. A Digital camera would require the same construction - maybe substitute a processor and card slot for the film advance mechanism; so it would eventually have to be the same price. I'm assuming the price difference we see today is the cost of the leading-edge sensor chips. If an autofocus/auto-rewind/autoflash 35mm point and shoot zoom camera costs about $100, why should a quality 1 or 2Mpixel camera cost more?
-When I describe digital to people, I always say "digits are free". I can stand by the flowering bush in my yard and fill up a card with pictures (75+) to get 1 or 2 good macro shots of the busy bees. I would never do that with film.
- I started doing darkroom work in 1971 with minimal equipment. I have had a full darkroom; I even tried colour a few times, using the Agfa filters instead of a dial-head enlarger. Eventually, chemicals were no longer available in this small town; if I didn't use the darkroom for 3 months, the chemicals were dead and I had to clean everything and mix new. Colour was even more of a challenge, and dubiously expensive. I loved the fun of developing, but not the hassle! I love the current crop of inkjet printers; for big print jobs, I have the online printing houses, or Costco in the big city. For large format, I have access at work to plotter-size inkjets if I felt the urge. (Rarely... it's not a novelty nowadays)
-I have lugged a twin-lens 120-format camera around Europe. (After 3 pictures... "Oh, yeah! This is a manual-advance camera!"); I have also lugged a laptop around for my digital. Now I have the Archos Multimedia Jukebox, a 20Gb combo MP3 player and Data card downloader. Much better!
- I have seen comments that 35mm is far better than any digital available today. But, I have in my office 2.4Mp pictures from my Fuji 4900z. One is blown up to 11x14 (photo processing), one to 8x10(inkjet). Both are very sharp, and I have not had that level of picture quality with many of the 35mm cameras I've owned. To get that sharpness from 35mm, I probably would have had to lug 10 times the weight of 35mm gear around. My digital is at the upper limit of how big a camera I want to carry.
- I've used my camera at the Macy's parade in a bitter 15F wind, and it lasted all morning. I lost a few shots because I didn't see when the mode wheel had turned as I pulled it in and out of my jacket. I have used it occasionally in outdoors here where it can hit -40F/C. I am aware that if I need to use it, I don't let the battery get cold. (hey, pop it out and put it in your pocket). It is small enough that I can use a tiny table-top tripod for those indoor low-light shots; and I can use the back screen instead of the eyepiece to get the shot framed right. Then, review it and maybe try again! Much more versatile!
 
Old Dec 5th, 2002, 01:00 PM
  #35  
slider
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Thank you, Snoopy and Aad.
I don't think I'd be paying $1800 for a slide scanner. I'll have to look into the less expensive models.

Aad, I normally shoot slides using 100 ASA, or less, film. On my last trip to Europe, I shot with Fujichrome Velvia ASA 50. I guess I'm still wondering how digital scans of these would compare to photos taken on a digtial camera or does that depend entirely on the quality of the digital camera, and the MP of the photos it takes?

Or, to put it another way, I wonder what kind of digital camera I would have to get to equal the quality of scanned ASA 50-100 slides using a slide scanner that is not top of the line, like that $1800 Nikon scanner Snoopy mentioned.

And to put it still another way, let's assume I would spend quite a bit of money. To get the best, or better, quality digital images, would I be better off buying an expensive digital camera, or the most expensive slide scanner and stick to taking slides?
 
Old Dec 5th, 2002, 01:02 PM
  #36  
Jim Tardio
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S.C. Dixon above says it all. There are just too many variables with digital to make it absolutely reliable. And that's not even taking into account the longevity factor that's still unknown.

Most of us have shoeboxes of old photos and negatives that have been around for decades, and will proably last decades more. Digital is a bunch of 1s and Os on a disc.

That said, I enjoy digital cameras, but my serious stuff is still on film. For one thing, I'm not ready to invest in an SLR style digital until they make an AFFORDABLE & LIGHT model with a full-frame sensor.

Plus, consumer digitals are just too slow when it comes to taking a picture. When I press the shutter I don't want to wait one or two seconds for the camera to respond...in that time the moment is lost.

And it's still much easier to drop your film off at any one-hour lab than it is to download and print on your own. It's cheaper, too.

I know I'll go digital when the products that I want are available. Until then I shoot film, and scan with a Nikon Coolscan.

http://www.jimtardio.com
 
Old Dec 5th, 2002, 02:12 PM
  #37  
Andrew
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This is obviously the wrong place to repeat for the 1000th time the "film vs. digital" debate, but I would like to clarify a few things. I'll keep it as short as possible.

While it's true that digital has yet to replace film, digital has made huge leaps in the last few years. People seeing prints from my 3.25 Megapixel Canon D30 for the first time are stunned. Perhaps they were expecting something that looked like a video screen capture? I sell enlargements up to 12x18 from this camera, and they look beautiful - they could be enlarged beyond that but the quality would start to deteriorate - but then again, so would 35mm.

(My D30's sensor is low-noise sensor blue skies in prints actually look a lot better - no grain - than many 35mm films.)

Proshots: before mocking my comment about saving "hundreds" of images on a memory card: with my D30, I can save almost 300 RAW files (not JPEG's) on a 1GB Microdrive. And I have two of these drives and a few smaller ones. So it's quite possible to save "hundreds". Even so, don't knock JPEG til you've tried it; JPEG files out of this camera still look amazing when printed, and many D30 photographers don't bother with RAW because they can't tell the difference, but I still use RAW most of the time.

The cost of a multi-thousand-dollar digital SLR camera is a moot point to a true pro (which I don't claim to be - yet - by the way). The real investment in camera equipment is in the lenses, anyway. When you buy a Canon D30, if you want good glass you'll need to invest several thousand more. Then when Canon releases the next camera and you're ready to move up, you use the same lenses on the new body. And you can use the same lenses with film bodies if you want to.

I'm not sure why people are worried about "longevity" with digital but not with film. Digital files don't fade and can be backed up in multiple places; if your negatives are destroyed in a disaster, how will you replace them? Printing yourself is a moot point - I don't even have a photo printer. I get prints at the same lab I would get 35mm prints (off the same printer). "Longevity" of prints isn't even an issue.

Film is not dead, but film enthusiasts who stick their heads in the sand about all the amazing advances in digital technology are in serious denial. It's easy to run down a cheap digicam's quality. But you can get stunning image quality from a good digital camera nowadays, and the technology is really in its infancy. There will probably always be die hards who refuse to give up their darkrooms - well, good for you, but don't knock digital until you've given it a reasonable shot. Many a former film enthusiast has tried digital and never gone back.

Andrew
 
Old Dec 5th, 2002, 02:53 PM
  #38  
mel
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Wow, its great to read the interesting discussion & debate my initial little question has stirred up!
I have actually tried using my boyfriends digital camera (2mp canon ixus 2 I think?) & the prints he had developed professionally from that just weren't that impresssive (perhaps it was a dodgy lab?). I guess also in regards to travelling I don't want to have to be constrained by how much memory I've got (ie, its a lot easier to just buy another film than memory stick!) or compromise on resolution. I do have a scanner too if I do need a digital image.
I think mj earlier captured my feeling best in describing the 'instant gratification' of digital photography...I guess I'm just a 'long & slow' kind of girl!!
 
Old Dec 5th, 2002, 03:00 PM
  #39  
Jim Tardio
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I agree this isn't the place for a digital/film debate. There's no doubt in my mind that digital will replace film as the standard. For many pros, it already has.

But the gap between a pro-model digital and a consumer model...the type 99% of the people here will use...is very wide. Even the high-end consumer models suffer from terrible shutter lag and long write times. The Nikon 5000 I have is horrible in this regard.

I just think that for the vast majority of folks who want to take some snapshots on their vacation, film is still easier and cheaper.

Longevity is a valid issue. Stock shooters I know back up their digital files to guess what?...film. They shoot digital to begin with because it's just an easier work flow. Stock houses and most publishers want digital submissions. I haven't submitted an actual transpanency in over 18 months.

Sure you can get stunning quality from digital...but you can get this same stunning quality from film already. We're not getting anything new in this regard.

As I said, I'm sure I'll go digital when the technology levels off. I do think it's the future and I look forward to using it.

Whatever, you folks decide on, remember it's not the camera that makes a good photo. A simple, uncluttered shot with good light and a definite subject is still the ticket regardless of format.
 
Old Dec 5th, 2002, 03:29 PM
  #40  
Tim
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Film vs. digits cont'd....

An interesting thread. Anyone really interested in this topic should certainly check out the forums at dpreview.com, which contain thousands of critical comments and posts from legions of amateur and professional photographers.

My summary of all this:

(1) Digicams have improved more in the last three years than film cameras did in the last thirty. (OK, so film is more "mature" than digital). Ditto for consumer-level injet photo printers.

(2) It is pretty much accepted on the critical forums that the latest crop of thousand-dollar digicams produce images comparable to 35mm film cams.

(3) I (and others) have found it difficult if not impossible to discern a film-based 5x7" print from that produced with most modern $300 digicams.

(4) Numbers are FOREVER. Digital images are far less perishable than film (as anyone who has had to clean a transparency for copying or duplication can tell you). It's a shame we didn't have digital video twenty years earlier to archive a lot of classic movies that have deteriorated or been lost since then.

(5) Many movie studios have already begun to replace 35mm movie film with digital video.

(6) Film-based TV shows rarely look as good as video-based shows (check out Rudy Maxa's Smart Travels or Visions of Italy Southern Style in HDTV).

(7) Nonetheless: For overall impact, it's hard to top a projected 35mm slide show....
 

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