This post is aimed at those final holdouts for “the good old days” of photography. When I first got involved with digital photography twelve years ago there was a rousing debate over the question of what was better – film or digital? While digital cameras were invented many years before, digital photography itself was still very much in its infancy. Truth be told, at that point in time, film was superior.
By the way, did you know that the first digital camera was built by Kodak 36 years ago – in 1975! It had a 0.01 megapixel resolution and took 23 seconds to record the image - to tape. From that point in time it took another 24 years before the first true consumer digital cameras were available that you could use to create prints!
But . . back to the subject. There were a lot of reasons why film was better back then. The type, size and quality of digital sensors was nothing like we have today. Likewise, converters, memory cards and the software to make the whole thing happen either didn’t exist or were incredibly crude compared to anything in today’s cameras. Digital photography just didn’t capture the image as well as film.
However, regardless of which you chose – film or digital – they both shared a common problem. If you’ve done much shootiong with film you’ll be familiar with the “graniness” that can occur when shooting in low light conditions and at high ISO’s. Digital cameras had – and to some degree today still have – a similar problem in low light conditions. It’s called “noise” and it was a major drawback to digital photography. You may not know what noise is – but if you’ve ever looked into the dark areas of your digital images [especially if you enlarge it] you may see little colored pixels of red, blue or green. That’s where the camera couldn’t properly process the light data and improperly assigned colored pixels to it instead of a darkening shade of a color or gray or black. When you enlarge the image it looks terrible. While this is still a problem for the smaller, cheaper and older cameras out there today, most of the new digital cameras now significantly reduce noise. The even better news is that the newer, professional quality cameras out there today eliminate it.
Of course, the debate wasn’t just about capturing the picture. Equally important was the processing. As far as film afficionados were concerned – who wouldn’t want to be in a small dark room, breathing smelly, toxic chemicals with permanently stained hands? While I say this rather “tongue in cheek” it was the darkroom that was held up as the “sanctus sanctorum”, the temple of creative art. It was all about making the final print. Unfortunately, for us digital buffs – back then digital cameras not only didn’t capture as good an image – but the editing software, not to mention the quality of photographic printer paper, was nowhere as good as what film had to offer.
However – just as with the advances in digital cameras and digital capture – both digital editing software and high quality digital print paper have now come into their own. My first digital editing software was Photoshop 5. As good as I thought it was then – it offered, at best, rudimentary editing capabilities. It would take several more years before we had editing software that would give us the ability to create images more easily and effectively than what we could do in the darkroom – but it happened! Today, I can create everything that can be done in the darkroom and more in a matter of minutes, not hours. If I don’t like it I can throw it out and start fresh all over again – or better yet, take the same image and make multiple, different variations in a matter of minutes. Here is an area that digital is not only got as good as film – but surpassed it in every way!
The same is true for paper. It used to be that photo-printer paper was very limited – shiny or matte. Really not much to choose from. Now, the choices are incredibly varied with literally dozens of types and styles of paper. If you don’t want paper, you can even print on canvas – or even metal.
As I started with in this post, there are those out there who still long for the “good old days” . They still shoot and process their film – though they probably use software to edit and/or make the final prints. If you’re one of them . . . God bless ya . . . but I think it’s time to finally make that change to total digital. There is no longer any question to debate. Digital isn’t only just as good as film – it’s better! Best – Bill.
Bravo!!!! Sorry it took awhile to read this. Hope all is well with you and just keep clicking.