Billy Abbott wrote:
On Wed, 25 Aug 2004, J. C. O'Connell wrote:
35mm Film is EASIER than digital, that's why a lot of people still use 35mm. Take the pix with autoeverything camera, drop off the film, get a bag full of prints.
Or take your digital P&S, review the pictures on the screen on the back, deleted the ones you don't like and then drop off the memory card and get back a bag full of prints that you have chosen out of the ones that you took.
Yep. That means that digital can be just as simple as film, but the standard argument that says it's simpler still doesn't hold.
Most people I know who shoot digital with a P&S don't play around with their pictures in photoshop or anything - they treat the camera just like a film one, but with the ability to delete the ones they don't want and then also email/website-ify the pictures without having to scan.
You can also get your lab to scan the film; in fact, one I tried this week is doing it for free right now. I'm not sure how good the quality of the scan is, but it's definitely more than adequate for emails or webpages.
But the instant availability is of course an argument; like I said in my other recent post, probably the only one the way I see it.
This makes, in my opinion and that of my digitally enabled non-photographically obsessed friends, it easier to shoot digital. For the pro's and hobbyists I can see some elements that are more difficult (learning photoshop/whatever and then tweaking the images you want), but it has enough benefits (consumables cost, ease of storage etc) that i see those mainly outweighed in the long run.
I don't automatically agree with the arguments about storage and cost, either, for one simple reason - I've mentioned the magic word elsewhere: Backup. Or I might have said: Data Security. Film may actually be seen as a *very reliable* high capacity backup medium, with physical dimensions that are smaller than everything else I know (except perhaps SD card, CompactFlash or whatever, but keeping the data on those would, now, that would be really expensive.)
That said, I got my digital camera (a P&S that got me into taking photos again a little while back) out for the first time in months yesterday. I still shoot film because I like it as it's part of a different process (to me) than using a digicam.
Yep. Personally I'm inclined to stay with film just because I think some of the arguments for digital are bad, even though I agree with others - that's the kind of person I am. However, I still nearly purchased a DSLR recently, only I decided to wait a while to see if the marked stabilised a bit. Then I sort of rediscovered film. Now I even think I like *not* seeing the results immediately. I mean, waiting for the film to be developed does have a certain charm to it...
billy (who ended up shooting weird low light experimental abstracty shots with the digicam - the sort of thing that would burn through rolls of film in my "real" camera - and now has some new ideas of some things to try on film)
