DIGITAL CAMERAS VERSES FILM CAMERAS
by Heather Shimmin
About a year ago, I made an appointment with the owner of a local gallery to show him my portfolio. I was interested in having a solo show featuring the images I took of the Salt Flats in Utah. After looking at a few of my images he asked me if they were film or digital. I said that they were digital. He look at me and said, “I don’t show anything but film here. If it isn’t film, it isn’t real.”
I was taken aback by this statement. What does he mean, it isn’t real? I’m still recording light, only it’s captured by a memory card instead of a piece of plastic coated in silver particles. I shut my portfolio – maybe a little too loudly – and left. I was seething. I got in my car and drove away calling him a list of expletives. What an idiot. What a hick, thinking he’s so sophisticated, so high class that only film is acceptable in his gallery. Nothing but a small-town, backwoods nobody. Since then, I have shown my work to many other gallery owners. None of them have ever asked if my images were shot on film. It just didn’t matter to them.
So which is better, film or digital? Neither, because that’s not the right question. The question is, what is better for what purpose? There are pros and cons to both mediums. Understanding these will help you make the choice of which to use.
Quality is the center of debate between old school film photographers and younger, digital camera users, Comparing the quality of film and digital is rather complex. There are a myriad variables which effect quality in film and digital photography. For film, quality is effected by the film size (35mm, medium format, large format), the film speed (ISO), and the quality of the lens used by the camera. For digital, quality is effected by megapixels, the quality of the digital sensor, and the image processing algorithm used to interpolate sensor pixels to image pixels.
Because of so many variables, it’s hard to say what the megapixel equivalent is for film. For example, slow, fine-grained 35mm black and white film with an ISO of 50 to 100 has an estimated 20 to 30 megapixels. Color films (both negative and slide) are between 8 and 12 megapixels. This means that most film cameras are better than most point and shoot digital camera and vastly superior to any image taken by a camera phone. Film resolution decreases as the film speed increases. Dramatic differences can be seen from shooting ISO 100 and 400, the latter being of inferior quality.
So film is better, right? Again, it depends of the project. For instance, if your image is only going to be seen on TV or on a computer screen (whose output is about .3 megapixels) then the resolution provided by a low-end digital camera is more than sufficient. When looking at a standard 4 × 6 inch print, it is debatable whether there will be any perceived quality difference between digital and film when it comes to resolution.
I took of series of images on a 6 megapixel DSLR a few years ago and enlarged them to the standard poster size (16 x 20) and they are flawless – no pixelation, no distortion, nothing. The reason for this is that I shot on ISO 50, had good lighting, and a good lens. For most consumer needs, any of the high-quality consumer or prosumer DSLRs are all you’ll ever need as far as quality goes.
However, there are still some things I still use film for because I can’t replicate it with digital, the main one being cross processing. Yes, there are filters and plugins for Photoshop that “replicate” the cross processed effect, but I don’t think they’re good enough. They still look off. So, I schlep my film camera around and keep my fridge stocked with film to use on those special occasions when I want to experiment with cross processing.
Another thing to consider when weighing the pros and cons of film vs. digital is convenience. Convenience is the main reason why the digital revolution has taken off and is still going strong. Before the digital age, you had to take the full roll of film (usually 24 or 36 shots) before you drove all the way down to the photo lab to have it developed. You would then have to wait in anticipation to see how the images turned out until you drove back to pick them up an hour or a week later. With digital, you can see the image immediately on the LCD screen. If you don’t like it, you can delete it and try again – new angle, different exposure, maybe change the WB. Keep the good ones, chuck the bad ones. You have instant feedback and see what’s working and what’s not.
When it comes time to transfer images from camera to computer, digital is by far the most convenient. A cord and a few clicks and there you have it. With film, you have to go through the arduous process of scanning each and every image you want digitize and store on your computer. And we haven’t even talked about the time required to remove all the specks of dust from the scanned negative.
Another point to discuss is price. With digital photography, cameras are significantly more expensive than film, like for like. This is remedied by the fact that the taking of photographs is free – no film or developing costs required. Some extra items are needed such as special batteries, battery chargers, memory cards, and extra storage space.
The price of digital cameras continue to fall and it could be argued that film is more expensive than digital.
Film cameras are less complicated and therefore less expensive. But with the cost of film and developing to consider, the average cost of each shot is between $1- $3. Some polaroid films cost $5 per shot, like my favorite,Type 55, in all its silky, sexiness, impossible to duplicate with even the finest DSLR.
So what’s better? It depends on what you’re doing with the image.
