Digital vs. film in the real world

[Dan Sroka]

Yeah, I disagree with many of his conclusions, but I at least appreciate how he keeps his conclusions related to his own needs (e.g. "In conclusion I discovered that much of the hype about the benefits of digital capture don’t apply to me"). Too many articles out there attempt to make broad global statements instead of realizing that many of these questions are matters of personal choice.

Speaking of personal choice, you gotta love the "I prefer film because I can hide it in my dirty socks" agrument.

[Dan Sroka]

He also complains about how digital has made photographers lazy and incompetent...

When I started as a graphic designer in the late 80s, my generation was starting to replace traditional tools with digital ones. Heard the same argument all the time back then. Still makes me chuckle. No tool makes someone lazy -- they are lazy or not all by themselves.

P.S. Oh and rock and roll music will turn us into delinquents.  

[John Camp]

I thought the author was trying to be fair in the sense that he emphasized that most of what he was saying applied specifically to him, and maybe not to others. I do think that most of his objections would have vanished if he were more familiar with Photoshop, and if he'd worked out a more rigorous "save" routine in the evening. I used a Flashtrax for a while, and it took about 17 minutes to download a full 1G card, but I didn't sit there and stare at the machine while it was downloading. I did other stuff, so I hardly noticed; you could do it while you were driving back to the motel...

But his essential argument is one that large-format photographers have made for years, that is, that the awkwardness of the (film) technology is a positive benefit, because it imposes a form of discipline on you. As somebody else noted, though, it's not the marginal photograph's fault that you spend an hour trying to improve it, when, if it were on film, you would have discarded it immediately...

I think he also glossed over some aspects of the problems of shooting outdoors. Most of my hard photography I do on a archaeological dig in Israel, under pretty bad conditions (dust, heat, harsh light modified by deep holes, etc.) The essential problem is that after an archaeological feature is recorded, it is destroyed -- you continue digging down through it, or, if it's an artifact, you remove it so you can continue working. You can't come back for another shot. When we shot film, which we no longer do, I always worried that something was going to get messed up -- the processing, or that I'd gotten the exposure terribly wrong, or that something had gone wrong with the camera. We did actually have a roll of transparency film developed as color negative, which didn't do it any good. (We had a backup.) With digital, we can immediately confirm that we have the shot. In fact, we can confirm that we have it on both cameras, so there are always two versions on different machines. This, for me, is huge. I would think the same thing would apply to a wildlife photographer or a landscape guy, that the benefits are so wildly in favor of digital that the other considerations would fade away. (And I shot film for 40 years...)

JC

[61Dynamic]

In my experience, a digital-captured image that was well exposed to begin with (with the help of the in-camera histogram, something not available with film!) typically takes about five minutes to process, including sharpening.  Not hours.

I (and others) regularly process batches of about 100 images in the time of 5-10 minutes (Running the batch to process them into tiffs doesn't require you to be in front of the computer so that doesn't count  ). If you want to perfect an image, that can take hours but most of that time is spent trying out various adjustments. If you know the look you want and you have some experience under your belt, it's only a matter of a few clicks to get a digital image set.

Are there ever raw conversions that can't be improved with some Photoshopping?  That's a matter of opinion and a matter of whether you want "reality fidelity" or something beyond that.

It is possable but it depends on the subject matter, intended output, your tastes and the RAW converter. With ACR, it's a fairly simple matter to produce studio portrait images that are ready to go strait from the converter. They can always benefit from some work however due to contrast and sharpening. C1 is one step ahead of ACR in this regard since it's handling of contrast is much more pleasant (it does not appear to be just a plain s-curve like in ACR) and so that's one less step you need to deal with later. Both converters can do sharpening well enough (with C1 slightly better) if the intended print size is small.

I think any landscape image generally needs a little PS work to make it shine; and any natural-light photography for that matter. If you don't have full controll over the light, your image probably will benefit from the tools available in PS in one way or another.

__..

An interesting article but flawed for the reasons that have been pointed out already.

Oh, and he mentioned a friend of his saying how digital photographers were always buisy "dicking around" transfering CF cards and looking at their LCD. I wonder how many film photographers "dick around" loading film after every 36 frames... I use 1GB cards for my 6MP camera and can shoot 160 RAW images before I have to put the camera down to change cards and I know other photographers use bigger cards (and don't always shoot RAW).

Granted some digital shooters have their face glued to the LCD too much I have a hard time believing that film photographers can actually spend more time shooting than one can with a digital camera and a big card.

[didger]

Umm, as a vegetarian for about 40 years, I can handle silly photography ideas and rebuttals a lot better than hot dogs (yeccchhh!!)  

trying to do the same without it will take some learning

Yeah, like learning to click on the dummy buttons on the Miranda Velvia plug or the even easier dummy buttons on the freebie Adobe Velvia action.
These folks must have read somewhere that there's this newfangled electronic technology for making cameras and they decided to do an article to attack it and it ended up dripping with a charmingly naive quality.  

It is kinda fun to kick somebody's butt when they advertise that they're looking for that, isn't it?  Almost as much fun as chocolate chip ice cream, and more suitable for winter weather, and everybody gets a few licks in.  So what if it's always the same licks?  CC ice cream is about the same every time too, but yummy every time.

[Paulo Bizarro]

I find this article a very good summary of digital vs. film in the real world of stock photography.

Hope you find it interesting as well. It is not that often that we read the opinion of someone that has actually gone through the process of shooting with both media.Nature photographers forum

[Jonathan Wienke]

I disagree. His complaints about the color of the 1Ds are typical of  using and improperly RAW converter. And his arguments regarding time spent digital vs film assume that one doesn't have to scan the film--that scanning can be fobbed off on the stock agency. With a properly calibrated RAW converter, color correction generally consists of a quick WB adjustment and maybe a saturation or exposure adjustment. With film, you scan, clean up dust spots, adjust white balance, color correct, and then color correct some more.

Taking full responsibility for the finished file is NOT a bad thing. Instead of paying some other schmuck to scan your film and probably not end up with quite the result you envisioned, you do everything yourself, and if your fees dont reflect this you have only yourself to blame. It's not an extra hassle you're burdened with, it's an an additional billable service. Act like it.

[Kenneth Sky]

There is not and never will be a correct answer to this question. For me, most of my landscape photography involves plane travel. In a post 9/11 world the hassle of avoiding film irradiation is becoming a nuisance not just to me but those I am travelling with. I will still use my film cameras locally.

[Sfleming]

I found these comments of his very accurate:

****Because the editing process with digital is so time consumptive, it becomes difficult to discard a ‘mediocre’ shot when I’ve invested so much time working on it just to view its potential. I found myself keeping digital images that I would have thrown out had they been slides. I ended up keeping a lot of digital photos from the summer but overall the collection is diluted and weaker in content relative to the ‘keepers’ from my film shoots.


For me, shooting digital meant much more time in front of the computer both in the field and at home. With film, I spent less time in front of the computer and more time shooting and the results tend to be stronger and more cohesive.****

I shoot too much with digital.  I save too many not quite up to snuff shots.  I am a better editor (more ruthless) on the light table than the monitor.  From my limited eperience I believe I can see this in other's work as well.

[Bobtrips]

The author strikes me as someone who's on the way to mastering digital but isn't there yet.  

I don't see a lot of knowledge as how to batch process images prior to the first editing pass.

And I don't think he's at all correct about traveling into the boonies being easier with film.  I've done long treks with both and spare batteries are both less expensive and more portable than dozens and dozens of rolls of film.

[Lin Evans]

find this article a very good summary of digital vs. film in the real world of stock photography.

I think it should more accurately been titles "Digital vs Film in the real world of stock photography, an Opinion".

Showing identical frames from a 1DS and "Velvia" then talking about "rich" colors in the same breath simply reveals a preference for not adjusting one's images. The 1DS can be made to look like the Velvia capture with one click of the mouse in PhotoShop, not that Velvia is more representative of "reality" in any way.

Someone tweaks each image whether it be film or digital. Few seriously good landscapes come unaltered from either film capture or digital capture. The "advantage" of digital is that you don't have the step of scanning and creating a file before you make changes. Velvia is oversaturated, and that's what many love about it. It's an "enhanced" view of the capture rather than an accurate view of the capture. Depending on one's intention and artistic bent it may be that the Velvia look sells better. That's quite likely why most consumer cameras tend to oversaturate every frame by default - people simply like to see brilliant colors where every person has a "tan" and nature is seen through a polarized filter.

There's nothing wrong with this, but there is a place for reality in a capture as well. For example, for those who have actually been to Upper and Lower Antelope Canyon, how many captures do we see with highly exaggerated saturation? Plenty, of course. How many have captured the Maroon Belles? How many have "tweaked" those images to enhance the contrast and color of the capture?

The bottom line is that with digital we have CHOICE.. after the capture. With film we must choose before the capture and someone, either us or a lab will adjust those images to get the ultimate from them.

Same with ISO. How many of us have started out in the mountains shooting on a beautiful, clear and bright day with ISO 25 or ISO 100 film or transparency only to have a sudden beautiful storm roll in over the mountains. To shoot it we often must waste what's left of our roll and choose an appropriate ISO rated film to continue. With digital we take about three seconds to change the settings and go for it. How much is "convenience" worth to us?

In the final analysis it's the quality of our product which counts no matter how we achieved it. Digital isn't for everyone, but there are many of us who shot film for 40 years and who wouldn't go back for any reason in the 35mm platform.

[didger]

I've shot many thousands of images with 35mm film and now several thousand with my 1ds.  The idea that film is faster seems simply preposterous.  Just the scanning process and then cleaning up the scans is incredibly time consuming.  If you don't bother with that and just make prints directly from slides or negative film the quality is nowhere close to what you can get with good scanning and Photoshop processing.  Out of my thousands of images shot in a period of about 6 months, I've thrown away hundreds and segregated about 900 as fairly sure keepers.  I know from experience that with film the work of getting that far with that many images would have been prohibitively greater and the percentage of potential keepers would have been far lower.

Film propenents often make the accusation that digital proponents lack sufficient experience in both media, but I generally find the opposite true, that film proponents clearly have not become sufficiently proficient in the digital work flow to be able to make a meaningful comparison.  Claims of better quality or greater efficiency for film are simply not plausible if both systems are given an extensive and fair trial.

[jd1566]

Thanks PBizarro for bringing my attention to this article.  I think it is a well written opinion on the film vs digital issue, with much information and little opinionating.  All too often the reverse is true in these articles..
I too find myself turned into a messy "clicker" because of digital, and although I praise digital for all it's advantages, am unhappy with myself for taking sloppy photographs, and am aware that I dedicate a lot of time in front of Photoshop.  This does not mean that I dedicate MORE time than in my film days - just that the process is not as short and pain-free as we all wish it was.  The image out of the camera needs to be post processed EVERY TIME!  Who has not spent hours on a photo to get it just right?  The fact that slides are so unforgiving means that you have to be a more concientious photographer with film.  Does this mental control result in better photography?
The same time issue applies, for example, in printing my own black and white photographs.  However if I look back into my portfolio there is not a lot of stuff, but what is there is quite good...
Now with digital I can print any shot I take.. it doesn't have have to be briilliant.. just stick another sheet of photopaper in the printer and print another....  I think that this sort of reaction to digital was what the author was trying to get across, and not fight any digital vs film battles.  If I am one of the few in this particular forum who shares the writers views then so be it.
I have also kept my film camera (because no-one will buy it!!! :-))  That's fine, when I want wide angle, and occasionally as a test of my photographic skills, I will still pull it out...

Happy photography to all of you out there.

JD

[didger]

This latest turn of the thread is most interesting, namely whether a digital take HAS to be extensively processed every time.  If you want the rather extreme exaggeration of color intensity that you get with Velvia film, then yes, raw conversion won't (thank God) give you that much color distortion by default.  However, "velvia-izing" a decently balanced raw conversion is a matter of seconds with one of several Velvia actions or plugs, but you have the big advantage that you can tailor the effect for a much better and better controlled end result than film if you want hue intensified images.

If you don't want the exaggerated colors of Velvia film, then many many times a properly exposed digital take will be fine straight out of the gate.  Because you can do field reviews of images and histograms, you'll get a very much higher percentage of good raw conversions than you could ever get of good film shots.

Having said all that, there is a whole different issue.  Are there ever raw conversions that can't be improved with some Photoshopping?  That's a matter of opinion and a matter of whether you want "reality fidelity" or something beyond that.  I've been finding that no matter how good a raw conversion looks, I can always get something I like much better with some creative Photoshopping; that's of course subjectively speaking for my personal taste and having no particular interest in being "true to nature"; only just "true" enough that my work can plausibly be marketed as "fine art landscape photography".

At this point for me, creative Photoshopping has become fully as joyful, thrilling and and inspiring as shooting in the most beautiful places.  Capture is no more than 50% of what I do now and Photoshopping is far far more than just minor tweaking so things look "correct".  I'm amazed over and over again what the complexities and subtleties of Photoshop allow you to do to make a good photograph into a wonderfully individually expressive work of art.  I got a big hint of this some time back when we posted various images for everybody to have a chance to process their way.  I was astounded at what people came up with and how much variety there was.  At that time all I could do was stare with envy and wonder how long it would take me to be able to do such powerful Photoshop Magicks.  Well, with so much generous help from so many of you, it ended up not really taking very long at all and now I'm soaring along with you and I have to kind of force myself to get out and do some shooting now and then in this cold weather.

As for digital capture causing sloppiness; see your psychotherapist.  Don't blame it on the technology.  I'm glad to have lost the unavoidable sloppiness of grain, low resolution, and the vagaries of processing labs, temperature related film deterioration, etc.  Digital has allowed me to become a far more productive and effectively conscientious photographer and photographic artist.

[Jonathan Wienke]

As for digital capture causing sloppiness; see your psychotherapist.  Don't blame it on the technology.

Hear, hear! Shooting digital does not enable one to shoot sloppily any more than film if one cares about the quality of the results. An exposure error of one stop can make the difference between optimum results and either noisy underexposed crap or unrecoverably blown crap. And in high dynamic range conditions, keeping detail in the shadows without blowing highlights is a very fine balancing act indeed.

I don't consider shooting a "polaroid" and consulting the histogram to be any sloppier of a practice than traditional LF film photography. I do shoot more frames with digital than I did with film, but it's more about trying to capture a "decisive moment" in situations where the nature of the "decisive moment" is not known in advance, like during a concert performance, portrait sitting, etc.

With a well-calibrated RAW converter that outputs colors closely matching what the camera saw, if one captures a reliable white balance reference and the light is consistent, then post-processing can be as simple as convert (with preset settings), sharpen (which can be done by an action), and print. This is particularly useful in settings where many shots are taken under similar conditions, like school portraits, product photography, etc. For fine art images where tweaking is desired for creative reasons, there is still value in a well-calibrated RAW converter; you can focus in creative enhancement of the image rather than being forced to fix what the camera got wrong.

For the record, this is the only digital image I've spent hours post-processing:



The reason is that there are 5 different light sources illuminating the scene, all with radically different color characteristics: incandescent (upstairs left 4 windows), fluorescent (upstairs right 2 windows and all downstairs windows), sodium vapor street lights, the sky, and the tiki torches. Finding a single white balance that worked for everything in the frame was absolutely impossible--something was always ridiculously pink or green or orange or blue. So I ended up making 5 separate RAW conversions white balanced for each light source, and then stacking and blending them together by hand in Photoshop. Total processing time: approximately 8 hours. The client was very happy.

[Dan Sroka]

Didger... yeah, its the same reason we eat hot dogs. We know they aren't good for us, but mmmmmm they taste soooo good.

I just scanned the article again, and this one comment struck me as typical of its tone:

Velvia gave me renditions that on the light table were snappy and dripping wet with color... he Canon 1ds produced renditions that were flat and pale by comparison

Well, of course. If you are used to creating your look simply by selecting a canned process (i.e. choosing Velvia film for its color), then trying to do the same without it will take some learning. Besides, a slide on the light table always "drips" with color... anyone who scans a lot knows that many colors you see on a light table nearly impossible to achieve in print.

Oh well, enough hot dogs for tonight.

[Dinarius]

I totally agree with him regarding the myth that digital saves you time. It doesn't!

For people shooting single shot, still lifes, digital is a no brainer.

But, anyone whose work involves shooting lots of shots soons discovers that taking the shot is just the beginning. No more just passing on the film to the lab followed by sending to the ad agency /designer. You have to provide the finished artwork! ;-) Now, multiply that 15 or twenty times......... Phew!

D.

[Lisa Nikodym]

There's both good and bad in this article.  He has some good points, but other comments are just narrow-minded and poorly thought through.  He sounds like someone who doesn't want to use any new technology just because his old techniques, which worked well with the old technology, don't work as well with the new technology, and he doesn't want to reoptimize his workflow for the new technology.  He also complains about how digital has made photographers lazy and incompetent (re missing shots etc.). However, I feel that most of those who can't use a digital camera well wouldn't have been able to use a film camera well either; improvements to the tools we work with (i.e. digital) let more relatively clueless people get into photography as a hobby, but that isn't a bad thing in my book (whatever makes them happy...).  Having more options doesn't make one a worse photographer (which is what he seems to be claiming), just a more versatile and possibly more efficient photographer, if one just takes a little time to figure out how best to use those options, which he doesn't seem willing to do.

Each person's approach is different, though, as previous posters have pointed out.  Me, I've saved a ton of time by getting my images 90% of the way there in the RAW converter alone (at about a minute apiece), compared with scanning film and then spending forever trying to tweak it to get the color balance and contrast back in the realm of sanity.  And sending it out to be scanned was worse - worse quality, worse color balance, etc. than what I can do myself (as Jonathan pointed out).

I agree with Kenneth's comment about digital being good for avoiding film irradiation hassles when travelling; however, for me, it's roughly offset by the need for carrying tons of battery chargers, cables, electrical converters, etc. with me for digital, not to mention the laptop to store the photos on.  Every silver lining has a cloud...  

Lisa

[Image Northwest]

I'm surprised that article was even included in the Nature Photographers' forum.  I thought these concerns have already been addressed a couple years ago, and needless to say, I do not agree with most of the arguments against digital.

However, I still shoot both film and digital, depending on situations.  I shoot a lot of wildlife, and for me digitial is the only way to go since I fire off about ten times the number of frames per day as compared with landscapes, with a much lower ratio of keepers.  With digital, I no longer wince when I lay on the shutter.  As a result, I do come away with more usable pixs without the high cost of film.  

With serious landscapes, I still use a medium format (6x9) only because I haven't made the plunge to go with an $8K body.  That's the only reason. Otherwise I'd be using digital exclusively.

Bruce

[Lisa Nikodym]

The image out of the camera needs to be post processed EVERY TIME!  Who has not spent hours on a photo to get it just right?  The fact that slides are so unforgiving means that you have to be a more concientious photographer with film.  Does this mental control result in better photography?

In my experience, a digital-captured image that was well exposed to begin with (with the help of the in-camera histogram, something not available with film!) typically takes about five minutes to process, including sharpening.  Not hours.

The ones I spend a long time on are the ones where the light was problematical in some way, so that they need extensive tweaking to come out well.  Those are the ones that would never have worked at all with slide film.  But, with digital tweaking, one can often take one of those problematical digital images and turn it into something that *does* work well.  It means I get far more "good" images than I would otherwise, and that's a good thing, not a bad one.

Lisa