Comparing Digital and Film


by Mark Sincevich - Date: 2007-02-20 - Word Count: 648 Share This!

I attended a Jazz, Dance and Arts and Crafts Festival this past weekend. It was mostly for children and it was great to be there with my son. During one of the demonstrations of modern dance, I immediately noticed the director of the dance program taking photographs with his Nikon 2Dx digital camera with a 35-70mm f/2.8 lens. This lens allowed the director to capture the dancers at the equivalent focal length of approximately 42mm - 105mm.

As the dancers went through their motions, I kept hearing the firing of the camera's shutter, almost in rapid succession like a machine gun. Certainly this is nothing new and the new 2Dx has large buffer. However, what was interesting was the man on the other side of the room taking photographs of the same event with his film camera. He was using an older Nikon FM3. This is a fully manual camera. He was taking photographs with both a 28mm lens and a 50mm lens. Both of his lenses were of fixed focal length. While he wouldn't be able to get the close ups of the other photographer, he was taking his time and only pressing the shutter at the most opportune time.

What a study in contrasts! The one photographer shooting in rapid succession with his digital camera while the other photographer only pressing the shutter at the right time - definitely anticipating the photograph due to a limited resource, film. Perhaps I was observing something deeper. Would the skill of anticipating a photograph be lost by photographers who have a large memory card and who just keep the shutter on successive exposures? At the same time is the film shooter missing out on the ability to make his photograph a little better by having multiple exposures of the same subject?

First, there is no right way or wrong way to take photographs at an event like this. I actually liked the motivation of the film photographer as he wanted to send some photographs of the event to the director with the digital camera. What I do want to say is digital photography shouldn't take the 'thinking' and anticipation out of photography. When you are using your digital camera, keep the following in mind.

1. Anticipate the photograph - wait for the right moment and snap the photograph. Don't always rely on multiple exposures to get the shot you want. Often you only have one chance to take a great photograph. You ought to practice for this and not overly rely on technology.

2. Match the resolution with the result - if you know the use of the photographs, then perhaps all you will need is JPEG fine or JPEG super fine. This will take up between 2 - 4 MB of space and will get you results on paper of up to 11 x 14 inches. The film camera will allow you to enlarge the final result (with the quality of the light as the wild card) beyond 20×24 inches. While the digital camera will probably match the resolution with the result, you get the added safety factor with film. You can always enlarge the photograph later.

3. Keep work flow in mind - the film photographer is going to go to a lab and get his roll or two of film processed. If he's smart about it, he'll get the images scanned directly onto a CD at the time of processing. Once at home, he'll look through a minimum of 72 images and possibly send 4-5 to the dance director. Conversely, the dance director will have hundreds of images to sort through. He may have a few that are nearly identical and the time spent to get the top 4-5 images will be considerably more than the film photographer.

Bottom Line: Digital is a great medium, but keep in mind the hidden costs and time that you will need to invest in order to produce the anticipated end result.


Related Tags: photography, digital photography, cameras, jpeg, film camera, megabyte

Mark Sincevich is the Executive Director of the Digital Photography Institute (DPI) as well as a world-class professional photographer. He regularly speaks about photography and related subjects, is frequently quoted in the media and is the founder and Chief Perspective Officer of Staash Press. Mark is also the creator of the Staash Perspective System (SPS). The SPS takes its inspiration from photography and teaches that simplicity leads to more powerful communications. He can be reached at 301-654-3010 or http://www.digitalphotoinstitute.com.

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