The death of film photography
“When I was given my first digital camera, I thanked the giver politely and set it on a shelf—where it sat, growing dust, for two years. I simply had no use for it.”, recalls John, a long-time Photocritic reader, who decided to share some of his thoughts about his (at first painful) transition from film to megapixels.
Take it away John…
Now, I have nothing against photography. Photos are great when you’re eager to relive that once-in-a-lifetime trip to Thailand, or when the sight of the neighbour’s bawling infant recalls you to the time your son crawled into your mother-in-law’s lap with his nappy falling off his bum. But film cameras immortalise such special occasions just fine, so why bother with digital?
Then I got on the Internet, and everything changed. My life went digital. I got e-mail. I opened a dot-com business selling books. And I needed pictures. My scanner was bottom-of-the-line and made my product look flat and dull, but it did the job. It showed every detail—every glaring detail, including the cheese smudge on the scanner bed. So I learned how to use photo editing software. The results…varied.
Then came the second Internet business. I now sold jewelry; that did it. I needed glittery, professional pictures that glistened and said, “Reach out and touch me.”
I hunted up the “antique,” as my middle-of-line digital camera was by then. And I began to take pictures. To my astonishment, I found that digital pictures displayed on the World Wide Web looked as professional as pictures from a glossy catalogue. And me without a day’s experience as a photographer! With its automatic exposure control and auto-focus, the camera made up for my inexperience—all right, let’s be honest, it did all the work. I just aimed and pressed the button.
Eventually I read the user manual and learned the camera’s ins and outs. I learned how to upload the photos from my camera to my computer. I learned how to make a blurry, off-center photograph into a star-quality photograph.
I also learned these basic truths I wished someone had taught me when I had first gotten the camera:
- Taking pictures with a digital camera costs practically nothing.
- In film photography, if you’re a professional photographer, you take a zillion pictures of your subject, develop them, and then throw out the ones you don’t want. In digital photography, you delete them–from the flash-memory card in your camera or from your computer. There’s no waiting, no suspense.
- Resolution is everything, yes, but if the image is to be viewed only on the computer, it probably shouldn’t be shot at too high a resolution. Pixels take up disk space, after all. Only use high resolution for pictures you will want to print.
- There’s little advantage to using the image-transfer software that comes with most digital cameras. Photos can easily be uploaded to your computer using your operating system’s file management software.
- When you own a digital camera and a computer, you can get photos developed without ever leaving your house. All you have to do is upload the edited JPEG images to a photographic developer’s website, order the pictures, and sit back and wait for them to arrive in your postbox. It’s almost as fun as ordering pizza.
- There are spiffier models to be had. My next digital camera may not have video and sound—yes, some new models actually do—but it’ll have an optical zoom lens and full manual controls. As nice as it is to have the camera automatically do everything for me, I’m beginning to get the hang of this digital photography thing…and I’d like to try a few things…
So for me, it’s a no-brainer. Digital cameras have not exactly brought on the death of film photography—there are cases where only film will do. But frankly, for me, without digital photography, I would not be where I am today—snapping pictures of my kid as he moves faster than the eye can follow.
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Insights, suggestions and comments
Digital is cool and all, but I prefer film for fine art photography. It has more character than anything digital. Artists will continue to use film as long as it exists, even if it’s dead to everyone else.
But for stock photography, product photography, etc. digital is definitely the way to go.
This is a pretty weak argument for the death of film photography. Poor article overall
It’s like vinyl and 320Kb/s mp3: now there are higher quality recordings, sound is more precise, mp3 are definitely more comfortable to have: they occupies very few space.
but they are really two different things, don’t tell me mp3 are “better” than vinyl discs!
digital and film photography are “different”, each one with good and bad sides.
isn’t it?
(ps: sorry for my english..)
I like both. In fact, two of the three cameras I use for photography are film. I do like the quickness of digital, but this article states the obvious. I think it depends on what you’re photographing and what for. Clearly people still use medium and large format for the sole reason of making large prints (I myself have a Mamiya RB67 and I love it).
Digital photos are more practical, definitely. But film photography isn’t dead. I see many digital artists going back to film, finding new ways to express themselves. Film isn’t dead, it just smells funny. This is a poor way to attract readers, saying “film is dead”.
Film isn’t dead. It’s only dead to the consumer who views photography as an expenditure rather than a creative output. Fine art photography will always be shot on film until the art market gets saturated by Andreas Gursky’s messy pixelated photos. The same way the art market got saturated by colourful spots and sharks in tacky gold cases.
I also doubt that film is dead, but I always roll my eyes at anti-digital-as-art snobbery like I see in some of these comments.
Digital photos can have just as much character/warmth/expression/etc/whatever as film, whether they’re printed or viewed on a computer screen. They’re slightly different medium, that can produce slightly different results than film, but neither is a “better” art form.
“Fine art photography will always be shot on film”? What? Just because some tradition-snobs are indignant that it’s easier and more affordable for the grubby masses to shoot and display photos doesn’t mean that there aren’t quality artistic photos being shot digitally.
Art buyers don’t buy digital prints because they’re not proven to be archival so they don’t see them as a solid investment. That’s basically it. In a hundred years when people see that digital prints can be archival, then sure, digital prints will be more accepted in the art world. There’s always Lambda/Lightjet prints I guess, but digital just doesn’t have that same quality and feel as a traditional C-Type from film. Just look at the whites on a digital print and a C-Type and you’ll see a massive difference.
Unfortunately, yeah, the art world is a snobby one. Digital has it’s uses, but the point is that film is far from dead, even though it may seem like it is (Polaroid).
I use both film and digital and while the digital is more convenient in many ways I still entrust my have to get right and hard to get right due to lighting shots to film. Many would say in arguing digital attributes I could see the image and just redo till I get it right. To me photography is like capturing a “Moment in Time”. Thus there is only one moment that you can capture that particular shot, after that something changed and it will be impossible to go back to that particular moment.
I think there is a large sector of our population here on earth that has totally been robbed by the digital age of photography. Cheap 35mm point and shoot cameras that were totally automatic can take great images, the quality of those was declined by all the 1 hour photo labs and inferior poorly maintained equipment with poorly trained underpaid employees. Grandma and Grandpa could handle this and all the other non computer literate people out there. It is a well known fact,( ok maybe not well known, but it’s true!) that no digital camera out there puts out an image that is really ready for print, it requires post computer processing…..and of course we all know most Grandmas make better pies then being photoshop experts. But no one hardly notices because most of the 1 hour places put out junk with either medium.
I set up a little test a while back with a Canon 20D(not exactly state of the art but still considered a decent digital SLR) and my Canon EOS 1v with cheap 200 color print film….some cheap off brand no less. I set up 2 tripods and shot a series with both cameras shooting the same landscapes. I used the same lens on both cameras and the lighting stayed fairly consistent throughout the tests. Then I used a cheap 4490 epson scanner to scan the film. I only had the film processed, not printed. I was blown out of the water by the results. Across the board the film was still superior on color and handling the light spectrum and yes I shot raw on the digital, but I couldn’t get them to pop like the film ones did coming out of the scanner without hardly any fiddling in photoshop. Yeah I know neither camera is a true landscape camera and this test doesn’t seem realistic to some, but that’s what happened. I actually shot a second series with the digital, same landscapes, with a lens designed for Canon digital only and it was a little better, but still lacking.
Yes with more fiddling and practice the digital might be improved both on the camera and the computer, but my moment is gone! I just scanned so old memories from 20 years ago..good times…and the film was fine…but I’ve lost images I shot less then 6 months ago…yeah yeah I shoulda been more careful, but we know everyone that just want’s to shoot pictures is a digital wizard.
Robbed I tell ya robbed! When you gave Grandpa a digital camera for his birthday last year…was it a gift, or a theft?
Disclaimer: Yes there definitely are some grandparents that are digital wizards for real!
i’m a student art photographer, and i don’t think i could ever let go of bw film, especially after learning how to use the imacons and nikons coolscans properly at school. unbelievable results. printed with the good printers on high quality paper, they are more practical and last longer than weblabs and fibre paper.
digi is making its way into the art word too, but only in post processing. many of my teachers now advocate to shoot film, print digital. i’d have to agree.
I do not understand the if-you-do-fine-art-you-must-use-film attitude.
Does making art harder to capture somehow make it better? for me it’s all about the end product I really don’t care how you got there.
Film is definitely not dead. On a consumer Grandparents-teenagers-average-Joe level, sure, but not for artistic work. Coming to school having a Nikon D80 and not used film ever, I was a little surprised when I saw that the first photo classes I would be taking were using film, darkroom and all and then I saw the example work and the reasoning and I was blown away. Naturally I’m not getting rid of my D80 any time soon, with a good lens and some good Photoshop skills you can get pretty damn close but film is almost certainly not dead.
As for B&W, as a concept as far as I’m concerned it was never sick to begin with, that said except for those scenarios where digital just doesn’t work using digital for B&W work is fine with the level of control you have in Photoshop over B&W if you have the proper skills.
A couple of points:
>Taking pictures with a digital camera costs practically nothing.
So your camera, computer, memory cards, software and internet connection were all free? That’s great! Tell me where I can get mine! And do the yearly upgrades required for all this stuff come free too?
Yes the incremental cost of digital photography is negligible. But the fixed costs are probably more expensive. Especially these days, with film cameras being so cheap on the used market.
My entire collection of film cameras – I’ve lost count on how many I have – cost less than my dSLR. So to shoot a little film here and there is fun. I think of all the money I’ve saved (well sort of, since i did actually buy the dSLR too).
> There’s no waiting, no suspense [with digital].
That’s as much a downside as an upside. Many photographs benefit from careful consideration, rather than using a tripods-be-damned and shoot-on-full-auto mode. Not being able to check your image instantly builds a certain amount of discipline to your work. You really have to know what you’re doing. With digital…not so much.
Digital has its strengths. I use it professionally 80% of the time. It’s convenient, and gives me instant feedback when time is critical. But when I’m shooting for myself instead of a client, I almost always shoot film. I shoot fewer shots, but I still end up with a similar number of ‘good’ photos.
Shoot both, then decide. If you haven’t shot *extensively* with both formats, you’re not really in a position to judge.
(And by you, I mean the reader in general, not the blog owner specifically)
I really don’t agree with this article at all. I love both digital and film. What I like about film is how quickly you can upload it to do post-processing, but making prints in a darkroom is fun and gives you more of a satisfying feeling of making an entire image from start to finish.
As far as I’m concerned, digital SLR’s are only designed and built for people that do not possess the brains to properly expose film. In my opinion, a DSLR is nothing more than a modern version of a Polaroid camera of yesterday. It produces immediate photographic results, no negatives for archival purposes and often times delivers “questionable results” when photos are put into print. I own two digital cameras and I find that both digital cameras are completely unsatisfactory. I have since fully returned to 35mm film photography with no intentions of looking back. For the life of me, I don’t understand the reason why so many people would choose to spend “big money” on a DSLR for a product (that even in Raw format) is only considered to be “almost as good as film” by most professionals. I’m still shaking my head as to how stupid and lazy America can be!
One thing that is never mentioned in any of these article about the death of film and advantages of digital is the time spent on the computer using photoshop. Yeah the cost is less but the biggest mistake people always make is not accounting for their time. Time is money- its a saying that been around for along time but we still fail to recognize it as real. Why spend 10 hrs fixing mistakes or lack of skill when you could get it right in the camera the first time.
Just wanted to share a short film I made for MOFILM which is somewhat related to the subject matter of this article. Enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSu1STyW3NM
Personally I wish film would never die.
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