BellaOnline Forums Hobbies and Crafts Photography Digital vs. FIlm!!

I've never heard anyone who was knowledgeable about photography use generic terms such as "Nikon SLR!" There are many, many Nikon SLRs.

Personally, I'm a Nikon N90s user. Digital's fine for quick snaps, but nothing can mold one into a better photographer than shooting positive film with a genuine SLR.

Rubbish. I've got a Canon digital SLR and the results and resolution have now surpassed that possible with a traditional film based SLR. The pictures it takes are breathtaking and much better than my old Olympus SLR film camera.

Why should printing your photos onto film make you a better photographer? You can still print your digital pics, and now at a higher resolution than film cameras. In fact using dgital makes you a better photographer as you can experiment freely without the worry of the cost associated with traditional film.

familychoice - i have no doubt that you take incredible pictures with your camera. In fact, it's true that resolution probably does surpass that of my dusty old film camera. I'm going on a cruise soon and am planning on taking my film camera. My entire family has already made fun of me and told me to live in 2006. However, this is all I have to say. There is something to be said for producing your own photos...i'm talking darkroom. When you put the paper in the fixer and watch the outline appear slowly...then tinkering with it piece by piece until it turns out exaclty as you want it. Photoshop is one thing, but the darkroom is a completely different experience, and I'm not willing to let that go just yet...

I never said it did. I said shooting positive ("transparency" or "slides" for non-photographers) film will make you a better photographer. Why? Because every mistake is amplified. When printing negative film, even through a professional printer's, the machines automatically adjust for color balances. With positive film, what you shoot is what you get! Digital cameras are great for those who didn't allow for proper exposure or need photos cropped. Ask any professional photographer which format is better for actually improving one's skills, and almost assuredly, he will say actual film. Plus, what someone else said -- there's something aesthetically pleasing about being in a darkroom and manually manipulating an image instead of just digitally doing it. I also print black and white images on pure paper (no plastic laminants, which are found on almost every other paper) and then literally paint them with oil paints -- no digital painting for me. I like the real thing!

I guess it's just personal choice. I studied photography at uni and did the whole 'develop your own' pics thing in a smelly dark room full of chemicals, but never found it that alluring. Also, if I've trekked up the side of a mountain to take a photo then it's nice to be able to check that it's in focus *before* I get home and develop it.

You could say the same for film developing, you can crop and adjust the contrast in the darkroom, just as you can with Photoshop.



I am a professional photographer, and earn part of my living through photography. I've used a film camera for over 20 years and digital for 4 years and digital consistently comes up with better results, especially with the new SLR's.



What does that mean...the 'real thing'? You're taking and processing a mechanically created image. It's no more real than if it was created digitally and edited on a pc.

I have a Canon Rebel EOS and several filters and lenses, but it is not always convenient for little me to lug around this stuff, so I bought a digital Olympus. They both have their place in my life and I like them. My grand plan is to get the hang of the digital thing, get a digital Canon that I can use my lenses and filters with, then see how I feel about things. The digital camera is a lot of fun to work with. And, it depends on what I am shooting. The digital has a slight delay, which makes a difference depending on the subject matter. The flower isn't going anywhere, <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> but if you want to take a pic of your son doing a trick on the snowboard (ha ha) it might be over with by the time the digital camera captures the image. <img src="/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />

That's very true. For those who are having trouble with photography, digital is great because it's so instant and easy to catch all your mistakes, no doubt.

I'm quite surprised that you don't understand the difference. Again, we're talking about someone improving his skills as a photographer. To crop and adjust a digital photo, you merely upload the photo on your computer, click a few icons, and you're done. For film, especially positive film, you need to find a lab that will do this for you. It has to be done by hand, and then for printing, you have to either print directly onto paper (which is a different process than printing onto negative film) or else make an internegative.

Adjusting the digital photo requires nothing but a few moments of your time on a computer. Adjusting the positive image requires a specialist (most likely, most beginners do not have a darkroom equipped for developing positive film and making prints from the transparencies) which will cost a pretty penny. Thus, adjusting dozens of digitals is not a big deal. It is a big deal for an entire roll of positive film!

When you receive the transparencies, there are absolutely no adjustments. What you see is what you shot! If you are a half or a fourth off of an exposure with your metering, it shows up on the film, so you will see that you need to be careful next time with metering. And, of course, with negative film, unless the person printing the images on paper does it all by hand and is an expert, you will get machine-adjusted exposures. Every little mistake you make on positive film is noticeable, which is good, so that you can improve next time.

With digital, you are relying on the computer monitor for correct color, contrast, and brightness. Same with the machine or printer printing those images. Instead of thinking, "I'd better be very careful when taking the shot," it's too easy to just think you can quickly correct it on the computer.

Most digital cameras have a capacity of shooting literally hundreds of shots on a tiny little disk. Generally, the most film you can shoot on one roll is 36 exposures. And it's expensive! It's like having X amount of money to feed a family for a week vs having a nearly endless supply of money. When your supplies are limited, you're going to be very careful with your expenditures. Beginners, on the whole, shoot dozens of pictures to what a more seasoned photographer will shoot. However, if you knew that every shot you take was going to be expensive, most people would much more carefully meter, compose, and focus their shots.

A top-notch photographers needs only to take a few shots of a subject because he has learned to not just quickly "point and shoot."

To sum up, when you view the positive film and see all the mistakes (and can't easily correct them), you learn better what you have to do the next time for a better shot. With a digital image, it's almost a crutch because you know you can always easily manipulate it later. And, probably more importantly, you have to hope that your monitor and whatever printing method you use will be exactly accurate with what you actually shot (it rarely is). Even with negative film, the printing is usually altered by a lab via the "shirley" negative (as a professional photographer, you obviously know what that is).

Hope this helps.

Oh really, just click a few 'icons' eh? I can see that you don't know your way around a pc. For your information it's actually quite a skilled job correcting the colour balance in Photoshop. Yes you can use numpty auto correction software, but digital professionals would use Photoshop manually.



That's a big assumption on your part. Actually, if you take a bad photo digitally, then sometimes no amount of tweaking later can rescue it. After trying, and failing, to ressurect images on the pc digital photographers soon learn they need to take better pictures in the first instance.



Rubbish. When I've traipsed up the side of a mountain to take a photo I don't just click away hundreds of shots hoping for the best. That would be stupid. I make sure that my pictures are in focus and corrctly metered.



How very patronising. Obviously you know what the phrase 'luddite' means, so I don't need to explain that here. Digital photography gives normal people the opportunity to learn and experiment with photography without the high costs involved in traditional photography. Because I don't have to process every image I take, it means that I can experiment and play around with composition ideas and techniques. This has increased my creativity and the more I experiment, the more I learn, and the better pictures I take. I don't care what the film snobs with their personal darkrooms say, digital gets better results and is a better way to learn how to take great pictures. So what if you can work on images later in Photoshop? That has now become part of the process in taking images, a whole new area of skill and creativity where photographers can take control from the expensive processing labs.