:: Mark
Well-known
Film and digital are just different media with different aesthetics and different equipment that can affect the results. It is not so much a question of disliking one medium or another as understanding what works in a given situation and then using that intelligently.
I also do not understand the comments about digital needing a lot of time in front of the computer. I find *film* far more demanding of digital editing time, since the majority of my images are viewed online and not in print. Finishing a scanned negative digitally to remove dust and then dodging and burning digitally takes more time and effort than doing the same with digital.
I think that there is a lot of potential frustration for individual cameras, but that is largely not a function of the medium itself.
I also do not understand the comments about digital needing a lot of time in front of the computer. I find *film* far more demanding of digital editing time, since the majority of my images are viewed online and not in print. Finishing a scanned negative digitally to remove dust and then dodging and burning digitally takes more time and effort than doing the same with digital.
I think that there is a lot of potential frustration for individual cameras, but that is largely not a function of the medium itself.
dmr
Registered Abuser
I would agree here. I must admit that digital images are cleaner. I'm still trying to get the dust spots and "ickies" on my processed negatives to an acceptable minimum.
JPD
Retina and Rollei user
Digital is convenient. I can take a picture and seconds after have it on my computer screen, ready to be saved on a hard drive, posted in an email or on a forum. I use a digital compact camera with a sensor that can't be changed and a mass produced zoom with no personality. It just takes pictures. It does what it's supposed to do, and that's fine.
Films have more personality, with different grain structures, different looks and "feeling". Chemical photography has a history of almost 200 years. Old lenses also have their personalities and "feeling". It's fun to experiment with different films, cameras, formats, lenses and developers. It's a combination of photography, history and chemistry.
Digital photography is computer tech, and I sit in front of a computer several hours a day. It's all well and good, computers are fun, and I build my own, but it's nice to leave the computer to do something else that isn't digital.
Films have more personality, with different grain structures, different looks and "feeling". Chemical photography has a history of almost 200 years. Old lenses also have their personalities and "feeling". It's fun to experiment with different films, cameras, formats, lenses and developers. It's a combination of photography, history and chemistry.
Digital photography is computer tech, and I sit in front of a computer several hours a day. It's all well and good, computers are fun, and I build my own, but it's nice to leave the computer to do something else that isn't digital.
traveler_101
American abroad
Rather than make photography easier, as everyone promised, digital made everything far more complicated and harder to do. Unless you were a programmer or loved sitting in front of a computer editing things compulsively, digital just was not as nice as film.
BUT...Now that someone finally got smart and put the camera in the phone where it really belonged all along, it is finally easy. Now I can take pictures of anything I want and instantly share it with everybody.
Digital photography finally has a purpose for being. Up until now it has always been the poor stepchild of film photography; always trying but never quite good enough to make the grade at anything but newspaper photography.
EDIT - I actually love digital and film. Both different but both are great fun.
Interesting take! Not saying I agree, but I agree that film has a genuineness that digital lacks and I also dislike sitting in front of my main work tool - the computer - when I am doing what for me is a hobby. Nonetheless, I do both digital and film and I find that switching back and forth keeps me interested. I would probably do 75% film but cannot because I don't have the time for developing and scanning. And now I want to do wet prints.
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TerryMcC
Established
I’ve been shooting film the past few years because it allowed me to shoot with a rangefinder camera (Nikon, canon, Leica all at various times) and this has given me much pleasure. Scanning then gets me into the modern age. BUT I did buy a Fujifilm X-Pro 2 recently, and I have found the film cameras are staying in the cupboard. The Fuji has all the benefits of a rangefinder and I find the controls intuitive. I love the optical viewfinder and the joystick a treat. If I want to scale focus I can do that too.
colker
-
Yes. The image is what matters. What i find enjoyable is capturing a good image.
I find digital color much better than film color. Digital made me take color as my preferred medium. I live in a world of colors and should express this reality. BW is an interpretation.. it´s no more true than color. Sometimes i want the BW atmosphere, most of the time i don´t so digital is a necessity for me now. I don´t like slides. Coould never have Kodachrime where i live and i find ektachrome pretty bad so digital came as a liberating thing for me.
Digital cameras become obsolete unlike film cameras. That´s the bad about digital but it´s not the end of fun. I have used phone cameras for a while too. NOt bad but too limited when it comes to capturing a moment.
bmattock
Mentor
I use both. I love both. I refuse to choose sides. It's religion and I won't play that nonsense.
True. Because I am color-blind, I find it much easier to work with digital for color - film for B&W.
Color is subjective, there is no physical reality to it as we experience it. That is true of all of us. We take it as a literal fact, but it's not.
Consider this - because I am color-blind, I see better at night than most people with normal color perception. So someone tells me they can't see something or other because "it's dark out." I see it fine. They cannot believe me - if they can't see it, it can't be seen. But I see it fine despite their disbelief. Make sense? Just because you see blue doesn't mean everyone does. Doesn't even mean it is blue. We take our senses as literal and accurate renderings of reality, but it's far from the truth. It's just *our* truth.
True. Because I am color-blind, I find it much easier to work with digital for color - film for B&W.
I understand what you are saying, but don't forget that the color you see is not necessarily the color others see. Even people who are not color blind perceive colors differently - perhaps not by a lot, but not all the same either.
Color is subjective, there is no physical reality to it as we experience it. That is true of all of us. We take it as a literal fact, but it's not.
Consider this - because I am color-blind, I see better at night than most people with normal color perception. So someone tells me they can't see something or other because "it's dark out." I see it fine. They cannot believe me - if they can't see it, it can't be seen. But I see it fine despite their disbelief. Make sense? Just because you see blue doesn't mean everyone does. Doesn't even mean it is blue. We take our senses as literal and accurate renderings of reality, but it's far from the truth. It's just *our* truth.
I am still having fun with my 2004 era DSLR cameras. I have newer cameras, but a 6MP Pentax *ist DS still does what I need it to do and I like the output. Eventually it will break and not be worth repairing though.
DougK
This space left blank
Digital offers opportunities to play with composition and exposure and receive feedback on those experiments much more quickly than was ever possible with film. I couldn't have learned photography basics as quickly as I did without that first Minolta Dimage 7i; I could read a lesson in a photography book, shoot the examples, and then immediately see what happened and why. Now I can apply those skills to shoot film with the confidence that I understand how to make the camera do what I want it to do.
You could also make the argument that even if you shoot film exclusively, you'll still end up in the digital realm at some point because of scanning, whether that be of the negative to the print. You just moved the digital capture a little farther downstream. You did want to share those images with people, right?
Take the best of what both worlds offer and enjoy. It's all good.
You could also make the argument that even if you shoot film exclusively, you'll still end up in the digital realm at some point because of scanning, whether that be of the negative to the print. You just moved the digital capture a little farther downstream. You did want to share those images with people, right?
Take the best of what both worlds offer and enjoy. It's all good.
Sega
Established
I don't hate digital at all.
Photography for me has always been a means of stress release and an old Manual film Camera needs you to stop and think to capture the image, it cuts the world out for a moment and the stresses melt away.
True there are Digitals that work similar but right now Film is still where my budget is and theres something in old negatives that means more than a computer file that can be wiped in a fraction of a second, as if it was never there at all.
Photography for me has always been a means of stress release and an old Manual film Camera needs you to stop and think to capture the image, it cuts the world out for a moment and the stresses melt away.
True there are Digitals that work similar but right now Film is still where my budget is and theres something in old negatives that means more than a computer file that can be wiped in a fraction of a second, as if it was never there at all.
ptpdprinter
Mentor
Not sure about the budget aspect of your reasoning. You have a Nikon D3400 DSLR so digital images are free whereas the cost of film, processing as scanning are all add on costs.
Sega
Established
Budget as in Camera that functions mostly like a fully manual Range finder, its similar with Cameras to the performance car world, the less is more models carry the heftier price tags.