In Which I Counter an Argument
I find it harder and harder these days to be tolerant of digital photography and its supporters. I really don’t like to argue for one medium over another when, realistically, either one can be valid for an artist or craftsman to create a meaningful image. If you want to deal with the headache (in my humble opinion) that is digital photography in order to make a great image, then that’s your right. But I just read this blog post that argues why digital is supposedly superior to film. As The Dude would say, this aggression will not stand, man. Allow me my own list as a rebuttal.
- Top 10 Reasons Why Film Photography is Superior to Digital
10. It’s cheaper. Yeah, you read that right. I can get a film camera—a good one—for under $100. EBay it if you like, or head over to KEH.com if you want to pay a bit more for reliability. You have to pay $2700 for a full-frame dSLR (Canon 5D Mark II) or $18,000 for a digital Hasselblad. Conversely, I spent $400 for my Hasselblad outfit. The difference is $17,600, or maybe a thousand rolls of film and processing. Heck, I’m even saving $2,300 versus the 35mm camera, which is about a thousand rolls of film if I choose to do bulk-loaded black and white. I don’t think I’ll ever shoot that much, and I shoot a LOT. And what’s key is that I don’t have to pay that all at once. Furthermore, if I start a photography business, then the client pays for it. More on that later…
9. Film doesn’t go obsolete. Sure, it expires (and looks awesome when it does), but 120 roll film is the gold standard of quality, and it’s been around since 1901. One hundred and ten years, or at least 55 times the span of time that a top-of-the-line digital camera is actually top-of-the-line. More resolution than you’ll ever get out of a dSLR, at least at the time of this writing. And if the digital sensors catch up, be prepared to sell your kids on the black market to pay for it. Or at least their more important organs.
8. Film cameras last. Dealing with film means you have to have a more robust camera. I can break your foot using a Kiev 6C and gravity. Drop a digital camera and you’ll need a second pair of underwear after your panic session is over. Did your camera survive? I know mine did. If not, I can open it up and fix it. (Especially if it’s the Kiev that I accidentally broke your foot with.)
7. You take better photographs. Seriously. When you’re restricted to 36, 24, 12, or even fewer shots before you have to change the film in your camera, you get selective about what you shoot. Operating a digital camera like a machine gun only leads to more thrown out shots, which means more work and, more importantly, more snaps of the shutter. The shutter isn’t built to be robust like it was when it had to be a part of a much more mechanical device. More shots and weaker shutters sounds like a double whammy to me—making the camera work harder for crappier photos.
6. No dust. That’s right, no dust on your frame (unless you are just starting to learn how to load large format film holders.) That’s the beauty of having your “sensor” roll up into a take-up spool and get replaced by a new one for every shot. If you scan your own film, you might have some dust on your scan, but you can always clean it and try again. I had some recent dog portraits taken by a photographer with a digital camera, and every shot was ruined by sensor dust.
5. Digits are volatile. Don’t look now, but your kid (the one you now don’t love as much) just put a bar magnet on your hard drive. So long, photos! When you have film, you have a tangible asset. Sure, something catastrophic could happen to it, and if it’s color, the dyes can fade or shift. But it’s preferable to the phenomenon of data rot, wherein whatever digital medium you’re using is going to eventually fail. Hard drives are the worst, and even DVD-Rs and CD-Rs eventually go bad. Backing up is a never-ending chore.
4. You’re probably cheating yourself with digital. Either one of two things are happening when you shoot digital – you’re not doing enough post-processing work, or you are. If not, then your images are sub-par. If you are, are you charging enough for all that extra work? Or are you trying to price your services cheaply enough that maybe someone will hire you for their wedding? If you’re doing digital photography for fun, do you really want to waste that much time in Lightroom, Aperture, and Photoshop when you could be doing other stuff like enjoying your life?
3. The hard stuff is done for you (if you so desire). When I’m done with film and the pictures are for someone else—portrait shoot, wedding, etc.—I send them to a lab. There, they are developed, scanned, and printed, with all the appropriate color corrections for a concrete fee which I can pass on to the client. Meanwhile, I have been doing other things and haven’t stressed out over my color profiles or monitor calibration.
2. It’s hands-on. If you don’t want the lab to do your printing, then you can do it yourself! Lock yourself into a darkroom for a wonderful experience away from the computer and eye strain. Put some love and care into the making of each print. Mix up some chemistry and get in tune with the miracles of science. If you complain about the smell of chemicals, then you don’t have proper ventilation, and you might have brain damage as a result. So should we really be trusting you at this point?
1. Film Looks like film already. No time in Photoshop in order to get film to look like film. It looks good as is once it comes back from the lab. Heck, most of the time I do my own scans, and they look beautiful. Shoot digital, and you’ve got to spend hours on every image to make it look good, or shell out hundreds of dollars for pre-packaged Photoshop actions. As my non-photographer friend said of Kodachrome, “Wow, it looks like memories.”
Now then, you may disagree with me if you shoot digital. That’s fine, and I wish you a lot of success with your digital work. Goodness knows photography is a hard art no matter what you’re using to create it. But film is where it’s at for me, and it’s a perfectly valid choice. And I’ll bet that many of those who are just starting out in photography would really enjoy shooting it if they would just try it, maybe even with someone to guide them. Furthermore, it doesn’t need more enemies at this point in its history. Don’t attack film, or I’ll attack back.
Amen to all of that. The one which really struck me when I stopped and thought about it was the cost aspect, because I’d always bought into the lie that “digital shots are free”. Turns out I’d have to own the same digital camera for probably 4 or 5 years to break even vs. film.
Then there’s #5. I’ve been around computers since 1984. I’ve gone through several major system changes and storage formats. I have data which might be perfectly readable, if only I had a working computer which could accept the physical media, read the formatting on that media, and run software which can interpret the bits in the files into something usable. Or the media might have deteriorated to the point where little can be recovered. Either way, it’s as good as gone. Experience has taught me that digital data is fleeting and temporary unless you go to considerable, ongoing lengths to keep it intact and in a readable format.
2011/04/06 at 12:34 am
Really great post!!! You nailed it Dan!
2011/04/06 at 4:54 am
Dan- thanks for taking up that “risky” film vs. digital mantle. I have been trying to make this clear to my brother, who I have since dubbed “Dan Digital”! As my camera shop mentor has told me several times, different weapons for different purposes. Will I stop shooting digital? No. Do I shoot more film than digital? Yes. Film really made me a better photographer. And it is, no question, more fun.
By the way, the “Han Shot First” bricks look just like the alumni bricks in the quad of my college. I had to do a double take.
-Arthur
2011/04/06 at 6:24 am
Some excellent points, Dan, and a lot of why I’m getting into shooting more film. I have my sites set on a system camera (probably a Bronica) as a high quality camera that will turn out amazing images for the rest of my life, assuming I shoot them well. Can’t really say that about the D700 I’m jonesing for, which will probably get updated this year or next year.
I will always shoot digital, but I will always shoot film too.
2011/04/06 at 7:38 am
haha, I finally went and read the article you’re refuting. Sounds like this guy is just looking for a fight. My favorite part is that he quotes Wikipedia like it’s an actual scientific source.
Props to the people who tried to argue the other side in the comments, but he’s not really listening, just regurgitating the same biased points he made in the article. The fact that people feel the need to make this argument is just silly, anyway. It’s like the Mac/PC or Nikon/Canon arguments – use what you want and what gets you the results that you’re after. Why does this guy care if I shoot film?
2011/04/06 at 9:10 am
Unfortunately, digital cameras have become consumer electronics, and are no longer thought of as photographic tools, like film cameras were. I don’t really buy the “well, they have to do this because they no longer have film to sell’ concept. The Nikon’s, Canon’s, Hasselblad’s may have had marketing agreements with Kodak, Fuji, Ilford, etc, but certainly Polaroid stood as the vendor most likely to benefit back in the day. But, they are now taking the Apple iPod/iPad approach. And it is most unfortunate. How many landfills are they going to need to dump all of these dSLR’s and point and shoot’s someday? Yet, my oldest film camera, from the early 50′s, comes out to play today. No one will be looking at digital cameras someday with nostalgia. Just the very way they are built is cold, and soulless.
A
2011/04/06 at 7:47 am
Great stuff, Dan. Thanks for posting this.
What you said about taking better photos with film is definitely true. You don’t learn to be a better photographer by shooting dozens of shots of the same scene, and then erasing all the but the best one that you accidentally took in, like you say, your machine gun-style of shooting. Sometimes it’s what you *DON’T* shoot that makes you a better photographer.
I especially like the point you made about cost. A few times a year, I seem to find myself mixed up with someone whose chief complaint is how expensive film is compared to digital.
The last time was with a guy who made a point of telling me how much his new, fancy Nikon DSLR was. I tried explaining to him that it would take years and years for the $300 and change I spent on my Bronica SQ-A (the most expensive camera I own), which I had with me, with a couple bucks per roll for Shanghai GP-3, and pennies per roll to develop and scan it myself to come close to what he spent on his, admittedly very slick-looking camera and questionable zoom lens. By then, of course, he’ll have spent another few thousand on a newer DSLR with some zippy new feature that he’ll never use. I’m sure you can guess how well that conversation went.
Plus, he’ll never pull a roll of negatives out of the tank, and, no matter how many times he’s done it before, gasp and smile like it’s the first time he’s seen it… again.
2011/04/06 at 9:47 am
Well argued, sir.
2011/04/06 at 10:37 am
I guess this counts as the Negative Constructive. I guess we next move on to the First Affirmative Rebuttal?
Yes! Lincoln-Douglas jokes on a photography blog!
2011/04/06 at 10:46 am
You know, the U.S. History book I’m teaching out of this semester is fail city. It mentions the Lincoln-Douglas debate in passing in about a sentence, like it wasn’t no thang. Please!
2011/04/07 at 9:13 am
I only learned in college that the Lincoln Doulgas debates themselves were more mudslinging than anything else. Sort of like negative television ads in real time and without television. Quite different than the organized debates that we have amongst the nerdiest high school students (math geniuses excluded).
2011/04/07 at 9:35 am
You make a good point. And now I feel kind of crappy for using my digital camera all the time…
2011/04/06 at 5:48 pm
A couple things that I’d like to add, if I may.
Regarding the “film is cheaper” point – it’s certainly cheaper if you already have a film camera to keep shooting film, or to buy a decent one if you don’t, than it is to get a digital SLR. I was looking at getting a Nikon D40 a couple years ago, and decided against it. Why?
The camera itself was around $500 at that point. The software got mixed reviews at best, so I was probably going to have to pick up Photoshop or Lightroom or something to go with it and do some serious post-processing. There’s more money. My computer is old, slow…..so that would have to be upgraded. There’s MORE money.
So I opted for a Yashica Mat 124 instead. Saved a ton of bucks, and it’s a lot of fun.
As far as being built to last goes….the guy that runs the camera repair shop here in town told me a couple years back that camera companies – or, at least, Nikon – doesn’t support repair services anymore. He had a guy bring in a Nikon dSLR that had lost the little door that covers the memory card slot. He wanted it replaced. Irv figured, no problem, call Nikon, order a new one.
WRONG. Nikon wouldn’t sell him the part. They would, however, sell him a re-conditioned dSLR for $180 if he sent the customer’s camera in to them to be overhauled and re-sold.
The customer said, “Uh….no.” He slapped a piece of electrical tape over the opening and kept going.
2011/07/02 at 3:40 pm