Has anyone (professional or amateur) NOT made the change to DIGITIAL cameras? If not, why? Thank you.?

Answer 1

Perhaps I don’t really qualify to answer your question since I already use digital too, but I’ll share a few thoughts anyway.

I spent thirty years shooting film, mostly transparencies (slides) with the odd smattering of prints. In that world I used a professional SLR and many lenses and accessories. I also used two medium format cameras. It was, for me, a wonderful time. I still have that SLR and all its gadgets.

Then I switched to digital initially with a point and shoot camera which frustrated me to tears because it was so limited in what I could do. I got really good images but I had to leap tall buildings to do that. A couple of years later I went to a digital SLR and was happier but only temporarily since I was accustomed to a lot more functionality than even that SLR was able to provide. I quickly acquired a number of lenses and other accessories and a more professional digital SLR and finally I’m almost happy. The reason for saying “almost” is that I’ve not yet completely solved some of my problems. But beyond these few remaining problems, I’m really happy in this new digital world.

This exercise taught me a few things. The digital world is wonderful from a few perspectives. First of all I can tell immediately what my image turned out like, I don’t have to wait days to process the film only to discover that the image wasn’t optimal. Secondly, I have far more power. Now if I need a faster “film” I simply adjust my ISO where before I had to physically change films. Thirdly, while the capital cost of the gear was kind of pricey, the operating costs are low, it doesn’t cost me much to shoot a few hundred images in a day beyond the cost of a blank DVD to write them to after. In my film days my major cost was not capital expenditures, it was the ongoing cost of film.

Equally exciting is that I am able to take my images now and, with Photoshop, perform far more magic on them than I was ever able to do with film. These days I’ll go out on a shoot, return home with a few hundred images and before the end of the day they’ve all been edited and filed. That is a nice feature. Additionally, today I can do with a few mouse clicks, what took me years to learn how to do with film. And I can share my images via email the same day I took them with people all over the world. The digital images are also more permanent. With film I had to always be careful about how I stored it and handled it otherwise it would deteriorate. Digital images are forever as long as you make it a point to back them up effectively.

In the midst of all these positive experiences however, there were disappointments too. As you get more into photography you become very sensitive to shades and shadows, to sharpness, to hues and colour saturations. Despite having a really excellent digital SLR somehow my images just didn’t have quite the same quality that my film images have. They weren’t as crisp, my colours weren’t always as rich, sometimes my contrasts weren’t quite right. Most of the time these differences were subtle, other times they were quite clear. For all its magic, digital has not yet reached the level of excellent quality that you can get from film.


My other disappointment was my capabilities. In my film days I was able to magnify an image up to ten times which allowed me, in my macro photography work, to capture awesome images. That magic required a bellows unit, a macro lens and a bunch of extension tubes. It was fussy work but the results were so awesome that it was worth the effort and the cost. In my digital world at best I can get about a 2x magnification at the moment. That’s pretty good of course except that it’s not what I’m accustomed to.

I discovered an unexpected issue too. My film SLR was a real powerhouse. I used it in tropical heat as high as 45 degrees and I've used it in bitter cold as low as minus thirty. It didn't care what the temperature or the prevailing conditions were, it operated flawlessly all the time. My digital SLR however is only rated for zero to forty degrees. I have used it to minus ten so far and it's working ok but I wonder what happens when the temperatures go lower. On the high side I've only gone to thirty eight so far and it's been ok, but what will happen to it when the tempertures go above forty?

During this transition I also encountered another problem too, figuring out how to digitize my thousands of slides. That issue was solved with a specialized professional slide scanner. After I acquired that I began the scans and to my delight, the resulting digital images were as good as the originals. So now, increasingly, my slides are also preserved in a digital format.

With all that behind me now, I came to understand the strengths of film and digital and I came to understand that one did not obsolete the other. Having the ability as well to convert film to digital, I came to appreciate that both worlds need to coexist and for me they do now. Depending on what I’m shooting I will take my film SLR with me and I’ll shoot a roll or two of film along with a few hundred digital images. The film consistently gets me awesome results, the digital gets outstanding results too but not quite to that level of quality. Between the two of them however I have all the tools for producing wonderful images because each format has its strengths. And with the film scanner I am able to convert my film easily to digital without really losing anything.

So I have made the switch and yet I didn’t. I still use both formats.

What stopped me initially from going digital was the cost. The five mega pixel P&S camera I initially bought cost me $500, a cost that today would almost buy you an SLR. That was extortionately expensive. Then I needed a computer and a photo printer. Fortunately I had both but as I quickly learned, editing images demands a lot of computer resource so in time I did have to get a real powerhouse of a computer. And of course when you look at the cost of Photoshop CS, that too is extortionately expensive. As prices dropped and I was able to buy into an SLR my problems didn’t end. When you’re accustomed to a large range of lenses and other accessories to capture whatever it is you’re interested in, you quickly discover that you’re in for a really high cost. I have spent as much on my digital SLR in two years that I spent on my film SLR in fifteen years and I’m still not completely there yet. Thankfully all of that investment is paying dividends now because I am able to do thousands of images and it costs me virtually nothing. But it was a real struggle getting there.

I think there are three things that keep people with film, well at least people who love photography. One is the mistaken belief that only film will get you outstanding results. It’s true, it does get you outstanding results but then digital does too in many cases and the strength of digital too is that you have more opportunity to capture those fleeting moments. Another is the entry price of getting into digital which, thankfully is coming down at least with the cameras though the lenses have not gotten any cheaper over the years. The third thing is ignorance. I went through a horrific learning curve when I went digital. I’m outstanding at photographic theory so that was never a problem. But I didn’t have a clue how a digital image was created and how it could be edited. I had no clue of the issues in this genre and how to solve them. The learning curve, assuming you want awesome images, is as high as is the cost to get in.

I think too that even when someone does break away from film, as I and many others have, they will eventually discover that film is very much alive and needs to continue to be used too. Going digital to my mind is not a matter of giving up film, it’s simply adding another tool to my collection for capturing outstanding moments in images. So if you’re shooting film at the moment, don’t throw out your camera when you go digital, I think you’ll still need it after.

I hope this kind of answers your question.

Answer 2

I consider my self an advanced amateur and still use film. I simply like the results I get and enjoy using various cameras from my collection.

With the archival methods I use to store prints and negatives I know that barring fire or flood my descendants will be able to look at my photos 20, 40, 100 years from now. They may even be able to scan my negatives and print from them.

With digital technology, who knows if anyone will be able to view their images in 20 years. After all, it wasn't too long ago that the 5.25 "floppy" was state of the art - until the 3.25 floppy replaced it. Do you have a computer that can retrieve data from one of those antiquated sources? Then came the CD - and now the DVD. IMO anyone using digital needs to keep up with changing technology and be prepared to transfer their stored images as needed.

Answer 3

My photography teacher owns a mechanical Nikon as a main camera (he also has a digital canon 300D but not for main use)

His reasons:
- film has more fidelity rendering the actual image
- you can make perfect quality scans of any resolution (up to 40MP)
- film cameras have fewer electronic parts, you can take them anywhere, any conditions, kick them, etc, they work (don't try a digital up in the Himalayas).
- virtually no shutter lag
- you can shoot on a variety of media: classic film, IR film, dia ..