Film or Digital

[SmartStageAmerica]

Which is the type of camera people prefer more today? Recently I heard that most camera companies are making more digital cameras because they are selling less film cameras, so I guess the future is digital. Does anyone here still use film?

[tanyasha]

i use digital. here is some pics, that i made. http://tanyasha.com/photos.html

[Kevin]

A year or so ago, I could hardly buy Provia fast enough to keep up with shoots. Now, most of the Provia in the fridge is over six months old. And I can hardly buy disk space fast enough to keep up...

[Freelance-Designer]

For professional photographer they use film...some photographer use digital but they will end at film or manual camera because of the focusing problem.

[Rob C]

[Kevin]

I've been doing a lot of experiments under various conditions to get used to the low-light characteristics of the Digital Rebel XT. The latest Canon metering characteristics are a big change from an OM-4 I used after dark for many years - an old film SLR, but a low light champion.

The quick feedback with digital facilitates experiments and learning curve. And there's no film cost along the way!

Here's some playing around at late dusk, taken in January, shot RAW but posted in a quick batch without image adjustments:

http://www.greatbuildings.com/cgi-bin/gbi.cgi/Pfeiffer_Chapel.html/cid_20060103_kmm_img_0264_1.gbi

[Kevin]

This Digital Rebel XT experiment, shot just in JPEG and without tripod, was taken in Olympia, Washington, late October 2005.

[surbaharji]

I'm just about fully digital now. Like several guys have mentioned, most of the film in the freezer is in tupperware that is freezing shut. I use to shoot a lot of stuff with my Hasselblad (120 format) and have it roto-scanned. This yielded a high resolution. But the new wave of digital cameras (or digital backs for medium format) yield such nice results, that the film industry is basically shutting down. Kodak no longer produces a B&W paper if that is any indicator to you. With the new hi-res D-SLRs on the market, a good photo editing software and a photographic printer, why would you ever want to visit a photo lab ever again. Using a Nikon D70s, Photoshop and an Epson R1800 Photo printer, I am getting amazing results that are on par with the prints that I would get from shooting film with a Hasselblad. BTW, Hasselblad has been in the digital game for a while now, although a bit out of my league. $22,000 for their 22MB resolution H1B camera and back. I'll keep my film based 500 C/M, just as a collectors item, remembering to trip the shutter a few times at the various speeds every few months to keep it in good working order.

[lekizz]

In answer to the question, I prefer film cameras because they allow you to shoot-from-the-hip, no waiting for seconds while it focuses itself etc., by which time the subject has moved/gone. Digital is dreadful for taking photos of people, children, street scenes.

However I mostly use digital - my life seems to revolve around taking millions of photos as a record of sites, buildings, projects, so a small digital camera is rarely far away. Batteries run out far, far too quickly, unfortunately.

[surbaharji]

It seems that you must be using point and shoot cameras as the D-SLRs are ready to shoot in less than a second of turning them on, and once armed, they can shoot much faster than any manually focused film camera. Yes, I guess batteries can be a pain if you don't have a backup, but I get about 300 shots per charge and carry a spare, so for me, it's no problem. Point and shoots are good for the job site though. You can get something in the 6-7 megapixel range that can be taken to sites where the treatment of said camera can be brutal. Once it has too many battle scars, just chuck it in the trash and go replace it for $200.

[worldfly]

hi, what did you use before you got one film machine, if you acturally lived at the age of the film coming. for me, only use the film to save my works, but digital for the average shoots, then i will delete most of them. all kinds of machine is the tools for human, even building and architect, for the other people's demand , everyone should keep themselves to be taken advantage for this real world.

[sunsetsam]

Well, I now use a digital camera, BUT Film cameras are just as good but you will need better lenses. The reason I prefer digital over film is that digital is way more versatile. You can load films quicker, ontop of that, touch up the images your self. The camera I use for photography and my soon to be arch. portfolio is a Canon Powershot S3 IS. All you want to have for a point and shoot digital camera is good optical zoom and high MP, the rest you can touch up. SLR's are amazing, but way to expensive. Film SLR's are way cheaper than digital, cus its film. All in All, I love digital.