Digital vs Film Photography
Digital vs film photography: the historic debate. Here I'll tell you why I think digital photography is a clear winner over film photography. Film photography is not history just yet.
Advantages of Digital
Advantages of Film
Advantages of digital photography over film photography
Accessibility
Film photography requires access to a dark room and various chemicals or paying for it to be done professionally. It's not easy for a beginner to start film photography due to the huge expense and start up requirements.
Digital photography requires only the camera: most people will already have the "digital darkroom" - a computer.
Learning Curve
Photography has some challenging concepts to understand, and digital photography just makes it easier. When you take a photo, you can play with various settings on the computer and see what happens, instantly. You can see what "increasing the exposure" means, in real time.
Instant Feedback
Because of all the electronic gadgetry in modern digital slr cameras, there are many ways of getting feedback on how good your photos are, be it at the time or on a computer.
You can review the composition on the screen, check the exposure on the histogram (these are more advanced topics) and even share your photos with other, more experienced photographers over the internet.
This is one of the most important factors for me - digital photography helps you learn and improve quickly.
Convenience
Modern memory cards replace film as a storage medium. Memory cards can hold thousands of photos and the same card can be used repeatedly. A roll of film can hold only a fraction of this and you have to use a new roll each time, increasing costs.
Control
Modern digital slr cameras have more settings and you have even more control in the computer. With software like Adobe Photoshop, you can make extremely subtle and precise changes to a photo to make it look as good as it possibly can. Software like Photoshop really has exploded photography to its current dizzying heights.
Mistakes Are Allowed!
If you take a bad photo, you delete it and no one has no know! It doesn't cost you anything and you'll know long before you develop it. You save money and disappointment.
Has digital photography won the "digital vs film photography" debate yet? Film hasn't given up yet...
Advantages of film photography over digital photography
The digital vs film photography debate ought to be a balanced comparison, and film photography does win some rounds.
Style
While the quality of the final pictures can be just as good with digital cameras as with film cameras, film images do produce a different style. Many photographers still choose film because they prefer the type of images that it produces.
Hands-on
You may be a technophile and think your computer is the greatest invention ever. You may also find you are simply better at developing good images with your own hands.
A darkroom is a very tactile experience. I've never used a photographic darkroom, but I have developed holographic images with a similar method (aren't I cool?). It is great fun and very rewarding to feel that you are "doing it yourself".
Good for Purists
Film photography is how it all started. Without it, we probably wouldn't have digital photography to be its legacy. Film photography is for the purists, who are skilled enough not to need to check each photo and be sure of the results.
For most beginners, film photography would be a poor choice for this reason.
Guaranteed authenticity
Lots of people complain about digital photography because it is so easy to manipulate and "photoshopping" is almost expected. I don't consider this to be a problem - you're only doing in a computer what would be done in a dark room, but with more precision.
I'm not talking about swapping faces on people here! Just making a photo look as good as it can.
Film photography isn't going to go away just because digital photography is around now. The latter is not a replacement for the former. There is space enough in the world for both to fit comfortably. Maybe neither really wins the "digital vs film photography" war!
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