Digital or Tradtional?what do you use? Poll

[Laberin]

hello every one.i was thinking to myself the other day .Is Digital taking over? Is film photography dieing out? Please enlighten me.what do you prefer and why?and do you think you will ever change your mind?

[Steph_B]

hello every one.i was thinking to myself the other day .Is Digital taking over? Is film photography dieing out? Please enlighten me.what do you prefer and why?and do you think you will ever change your mind?

Actually, I use both. I use film for its color saturation and fine details, and I use a digital darkroom for post -processing. The only bottleneck in terms of quality and processing time is located at the level of the scanner in this case. You need a damn good scanner! I think that most landscape pros are now using this mix of traditional and digital. John Shaw for one.

I now find myself to increasingly drool over the new digital cameras. I might jump to the other side in the near future.

Cheers,

Steph.

[walterick]

Digital is taking... has taken over! I don't mind, that just means film bodies are coming way down...

I use 35mm film SLR's for anything serious. I shoot Nikon, 1 manual camera and 1 autofocus camera. A series of auto- and manual-focus lenses.

My "walkabout" camera, always with me is my point&shoot digital camera. It's tiny and good quality, I use it probably 85% of the time (i take lots of casual pictures)

When it's serious shooting for me, it's tripod - SLR - Velivia 50 - f8 - mirror lockup.

When it's casual shooting, it's p&s digi.

Hope this helps.

Rick

[opus]

I've talked to serious professionals who sell for publication, and most of them say that digital is the only thing that publishers want these days. They love film, they hate digital, yet they are forced to switch.

But if you're not selling to publishers, I think film still has a strong following.


Personally, I use mostly digital for casual use, but for serious use I use film as a backup and rely on it heavily.

[racingpinarello]

I still have to use film for many of my applications, since my stock/commercial agency that I provide work for needs resolution high enough for a 11x17 @ 300 dpi.

I've never heard of a publication that "hated" film, but many news and sports magazines need immediate photos, and digital is perfect for it.

I love both formats. My walk about camera is my Mamiya 7ii and then for stock I use my Mamiya RZ or my EOS 3. Digital is perfect for everything else, and that includes doing some fashion/portrait work.

Digital is taking over and that's okay. I would should 90% digital if I could afford to have the Canon 1Ds Mark 2.

Loren

[opus]

Let me clarify: The photographers I talked to loved film, but were forced to switch to digital, at least for the publishers they worked with. One photographer has 50,000 slides languishing in a file cabinet.

[mtb'n ski]

I shoot equal of bolth.

[Franglais]

hello every one.i was thinking to myself the other day .Is Digital taking over? Is film photography dieing out? Please enlighten me.what do you prefer and why?and do you think you will ever change your mind?

I've had a digital camera for less than a month, so I'm still feeling my way here. I have both films and digital and I will shoot whatever is appropriate.

Advantages of digital: get the results immediately, no scanning, no film cost, same camera can do 200-1600ISO so you have to carry around less gear.

Advantages of film: the "look" of slide film, the ability of negative film to handle difficult lighting situations, no need to carry around battery chargers and portable disks to unload CF cards, etc.

Future evolution: digital cameras will get better and film will get more expensive with less choice. I'll probably wind up doing more and more digital. But who cares as long as I get the results I want?

Charles

[Asylum Steve]

Hi L,

Maybe this topic is new to you, but it is one that has been discussed here often, sometimes with more than a little venom towrds each other.

Regardless of personal preferences, the truth is digital cameras outsell film cameras by a large margin now. Digital "took over" quite some time ago...

This has nothing to do with image qualtiy, or artistic integrity, or which is "better". It's simply an economic fact.

I think the more pertinent question is: how could you not have noticed???

BTW, like some of the others, I still use both, but the digital workflow makes it much more logical for most of my work.

[almo]

hello every one.i was thinking to myself the other day .Is Digital taking over? Is film photography dieing out? Please enlighten me.what do you prefer and why?and do you think you will ever change your mind?

90/10 digital/film


I love both, and once I have some more money I will most likely increase my film usage.

almo

[Lionheart]

hello every one.i was thinking to myself the other day .Is Digital taking over? Is film photography dieing out? Please enlighten me.what do you prefer and why?and do you think you will ever change your mind?

I shoot digital exclusively for two reasons:
1: My film equipment (EOS-1V, A2, A1 and power winder, and $10000+ of "L" lenses) all got stolen 3 years ago. Since the majority of my "keepers" get scanned and saved digitally, I decided to just save myself a few steps of processing and costs of developing and printing by going digital.
2: I've got a 4 Mpixel photo printed 20x30 inches sitting in one of my operatories at the practice that is at least as good as any 35mm shot I've ever made with my 1V and "L" lenses, even at 4 megapixels, so why spend all that money on processing and printing with 35mm (which is the only format I shot at that point)?

Honestly, though, the cost savings have all been lost due to the rapid turnover rate at which I have been upgrading my digital camera bodies, but I still prefer digital simply because it simplifies my processing of the images (no more hand tank developing of slide, drying, mounting, scanning, or waiting for prints to come back from the lab, then scanning the negatives). In the end I like digital because I don't want to go back to an old fashioned darkroom (ugh!!!).

[CaSousa]

I still only shoot film, although it is more of a cost issue then anything. I find that my Elan 7NE allows me to do everything I need, and the cost was about 1/8 of what a digital body of the same quality and features would have cost me. I would love the have the instant gratification of digital, and get rid of the feeling that I'm 'wasting' 30 out of 36 shots on a roll of Velvia to get that perfect shot.
I plan on using my current gear, amassing a large supply of lenses and then upgrading to digital when I get the cash; and when the quality and color saturation of digital can match a large enlargement from Velvia.

Unfortunately I'm still in school (second bachelor's)... so the days of being able to afford one will be about 3 years down the road

-Chris

[Speed]

I still only shoot film, although it is more of a cost issue then anything. I find that my Elan 7NE allows me to do everything I need, and the cost was about 1/8 of what a digital body of the same quality and features would have cost me. I would love the have the instant gratification of digital, and get rid of the feeling that I'm 'wasting' 30 out of 36 shots on a roll of Velvia to get that perfect shot.
I plan on using my current gear, amassing a large supply of lenses and then upgrading to digital when I get the cash; and when the quality and color saturation of digital can match a large enlargement from Velvia.

Unfortunately I'm still in school (second bachelor's)... so the days of being able to afford one will be about 3 years down the road

-Chris

Like you, I have put off switching to digital because (a) They cost so much more than a film body, and (b) I hadn't seen anything that could match a slide. Then came the D70. While $1000 is still nearly three times what I paid for my N80, it's come down considerably from the $2000 the D100 cost two years ago. Also, the shots I've seen from the D70 look a lot like the color you get from slides.

I'm planning on getting a D70 early next year to suppliment my film bodies, but I don't see it replacing them anytime soon.

[Seb]

hello every one.i was thinking to myself the other day .Is Digital taking over? Is film photography dieing out? Please enlighten me.what do you prefer and why?and do you think you will ever change your mind?

When I have bought a DSLR (the D70) nearly 7 months ago, I have tought that I would keep using my film SLR on a rather regular basis (for all the B&W stuff at the very least)...
The truth is that the roll of film that was inside my SLR when I have bought the D70 still sit there. I have shot 10 frames since then at best...

At that point in time, I have saved the cost of the D70 body in film processing. Early next year, I consider that I will have saved the cost of my new primary lense and memory card in film processing. I will basically "shoot for free" after that.

Other than that, I have just learned to love the greater control over the whole process that digital allow. When I was shooting film, I would bring the film to my pro lab where they would process it which imply sharpening, colours correction, dodging and all kind of post processing that was out of my control. I am now learning to do those thing with Photoshop and I will eventually make my own prints when I get a printer later on.
Photographers who have all the knowledge for lab work and who have a free access to a lab may claim that digital provide no advantage here but they definately do not represent a majority....

Finally, it seems to me that DSLR's pretty much compare to 35mm in terms of picture quality. They may not be compared to large format yet but the comparison wouldn't really make sense anyways...

The only situation where my film SLR still is mandatory is when I go for a long exposure when night shooting (1 minute long and over).

Seb

[shutterman]

When I got the D100 I forgot about the N90s for many months. Took pictures like crazy. Used Photoshop like crazy. Filled up my hard drive like crazy.

Now I have tons of pictures that I hardly ever see and can't share with others unless we crowd around the computer. It's my fault for falling behind in printing them out. Now I have some many the cost will be in the $hundreds. Man is my wife mad!!!!

I miss taking the pictures from my good ole Reala out of the package from Ritz!!!!!!

Will start using film again for casual and digital for formal. Is that backwards?

[Michael Fanelli]

Pure digital. I've sold my film cameras except for an old Pentax LX and three lenses that I keep saying "I'll shoot some film for nostalgia." I never do.

Digital took over the 35mm market quite a while back and is eating at the fringes of medium format. The very top models already compete with MF. Cheap, versatile, and complete control over the image... You can't really beat that.

Many people still like film for "the look" while some need the quality that large format film produces and digital can't (yet) touch. That's OK, but it is a shrinking niche. Use whatever you like best.

[opus]

I've thought of something else ... at the time I bought my DRebel, it didn't quite have the entire color range that a pro camera has. I'm thinking that the next generation of prosumer cameras will be better at capturing, say, the the entire color spectrum of a sunset. Right now my film camera captures those nuances better than my DRebel, but I think the technology is already available to at least match film.

I'm not talking megapixel, I think I'm referring to the image sensor. Correct me if I'm wrong; I'm saying this from memory (and my memory is not very good these days!)

[Seb]

I've thought of something else ... at the time I bought my DRebel, it didn't quite have the entire color range that a pro camera has. I'm thinking that the next generation of prosumer cameras will be better at capturing, say, the the entire color spectrum of a sunset. Right now my film camera captures those nuances better than my DRebel, but I think the technology is already available to at least match film.

I'm not talking megapixel, I think I'm referring to the image sensor. Correct me if I'm wrong; I'm saying this from memory (and my memory is not very good these days!)

Interesting point Kelly,

I recently had few of my older pictures (35mm) enlarged in 8x12 (I haven't looked at these pictures for quite a while) and the first thing that I have told to myself when I received the prints is that there was a lot of nuances in colours. It seems to me that some of these details where missing when I was shooting jpeg fine but I am getting pretty close from it in RAW (which don't show in my posts as I loose a lot when converting back to jpeg to display here).

Anyways, we have all heard a lot about the sensors of the incoming Fuji S3 pro and Nikon D2X. They claim that their new sensors will capture fine details that were previously missing. It appears that the Canon 1Ds mkII do very very well too. Time will tell.

Seb

[Sebastian]

That depends on what "nuances" you're talking about. Digital is much closer to slide film in latitude, and as such will record seemingly less data than what you shot on negative film. Also, and this is VERY important, unless you ar convinced that the entire process is properly calibrated, there is no way of knowing if and where you are losing detail. As Seb said though, RAW will give you more to work with than a simple JPEG. Basically, many peope are getting BETTER color nuances out of their digitals than they did with film, but only because they invested time and money into learning and setting up worflows that let them eek everything out of their chosen medium.

[opus]

I guess I'm mostly referring to a class I attended, taught by Mikkel Aaland , where he was talking about presently available and upcoming digital camera features. He said the present prosumer cameras are going to be improving their image sensors, and then he explained what the improvements would be.

He explained it waaaay better than I can, but he referred to the sensor as like a "bucket", and something about how dividing the sensor into smaller surfaces (or something) would fit more information into that "bucket". And at that moment I thought, "Aha! That's why my favorite dusk and dawn shots are my prints from film, rather than anything I've gotten from digital." And I wish I could remember better, but that weekend pretty much put me on sensory overload. I could be mixing my metaphors.

Anyway, those of you with better cameras probably already have the better technology. But I think any upgrade of my DRebel will improve the sensor.


Y'know, I may just pop off an email to be sure I'm getting this right.

[Sebastian]

The "bucket" is the dunamic range, exactly what I was talking about. It's not the sensor in your case, your Drebel and my 10D share one of the best sensors out there, it's the processing. Unless you shoot RAW, the JPEGS are very limited because the Rebel does not allow you to mess with contrast and tonality as much as a 10D for example. A RAW file will give you much better results ith proper white balance, exposure and processing.

And the improvements you say he mentioned sound su****iously like Fuji's overrated high-dyamic range sensor. Where a sub-pixel is used to record highlight detail while a larger pixel records shadow detail. It might get better in the next few years, but it is not the promised holy grail just yet.

[opus]

Thanks, Seb!

It's true, at the time I attended the class I was still shooting jpeg. I haven't given it much thought since switching over to RAW. I'll have to take some dusk shots again and compare them to my prints. I'll have good opportunity next month.

[Lava Lamp]

hello every one.i was thinking to myself the other day .Is Digital taking over? Is film photography dieing out? Please enlighten me.what do you prefer and why?and do you think you will ever change your mind?

I have some good lenses and bought a D70 in May. I haven't used my N80 film camera once since then. Not once. The only reason I would use it would be if the D70 broke. I think the D70 has some limitations, but it is cheaper over the long run, easier to produce a good finished product, and generally produces more "keepers" -- at least for me.

[Outdoorsman]

Film.
The only time I use digital is when someone hands me one, saying "You know how to take pictures, right? Here, you take the picture- it'll turn out better if you do it." And then I have about 5-10 seconds to figure out how to use the stupid little thing. There are too many interfaces, menus, submenus, functions, etc. I don't want to have to read the manual cover-to-cover before I can make a decent image. This is not the case with film cameras. They are simpler and easier to use. I will not get a digital unless it's a DSLR. All these p&s digitals the size of a mouse are just not where it's at. I don't need a keychain that takes pictures or a phone that can send low-quality jpegs to my family in Oregon. I need an SLR that doesn't weigh a hundred pounds, takes better pics than film, and can accept all my current acessories with no change in performance. I will not switch to digital until the switch will be as seamless as buying a new film body is. I got my Elan 7N in late spring, and it was so smooth a transition from the old 650 I forgot I even got a new camera. Until I started to use all the new functions I now had. What a dream of a camera it is! I don't want to have to relearn photography just because digital is the new hip thing. I want to change to digital if it will improve my images, not my image. And it's just not affordable for a poor broke fool like me. I'd rather shoot film until DSLRs are the same price as film SLRs. It's not a "I hate digital 'cause I don't want to change" thing. It's a "I have no use for digital 'cause film still works perfectly fine" thing.
I'm not a pro or anything. I'm just a regular photographer, out there to have fun and make the images I like. To each their own!

[Seb]

Film.
The only time I use digital is when someone hands me one, saying "You know how to take pictures, right? Here, you take the picture- it'll turn out better if you do it." And then I have about 5-10 seconds to figure out how to use the stupid little thing. There are too many interfaces, menus, submenus, functions, etc. I don't want to have to read the manual cover-to-cover before I can make a decent image. This is not the case with film cameras. They are simpler and easier to use. I will not get a digital unless it's a DSLR. All these p&s digitals the size of a mouse are just not where it's at. I don't need a keychain that takes pictures or a phone that can send low-quality jpegs to my family in Oregon. I need an SLR that doesn't weigh a hundred pounds, takes better pics than film, and can accept all my current acessories with no change in performance. I will not switch to digital until the switch will be as seamless as buying a new film body is. I got my Elan 7N in late spring, and it was so smooth a transition from the old 650 I forgot I even got a new camera. Until I started to use all the new functions I now had. What a dream of a camera it is! I don't want to have to relearn photography just because digital is the new hip thing. I want to change to digital if it will improve my images, not my image. And it's just not affordable for a poor broke fool like me. I'd rather shoot film until DSLRs are the same price as film SLRs. It's not a "I hate digital 'cause I don't want to change" thing. It's a "I have no use for digital 'cause film still works perfectly fine" thing.
I'm not a pro or anything. I'm just a regular photographer, out there to have fun and make the images I like. To each their own!

Outdoorsman,
I hear you and you made some valid points but I just don't think that getting a DSLR body is that expensive. Indeed they are 2 to 3 time more expensive than their 35mm SLR counterpart but I think that the money that you are saving by not having your flms processed at the lab make it very worthy from a financial point of view. As I have said earlier in this tread, my D70 body paid for itself in 7 months.

Just some thoughts

Seb