Actual Film Cameras vs. Digital Cameras

[Disney DieHard]

Okay, first I am glad to be here ... always nice to see a board that is current with active members! YA-HOOOOOO!

All right ... I know I am in the age of technology and, for the most part, I am a tech geek with all the new toys that come out but am I the only person who actually prefers a regular old film camera to a digital???

When digital cameras first came out I bought a new HP C200 that had a whopping 1 Mega Pixel and that was hot stuff back then and even since I have tried many different kinds of camera with varying MPs and none of them seem to hold a candle to my film camera.

I have a Canon EOS Rebel T2 and the pictures that I take with it are FANTASTIC! Even compared to my mother's 7.2MP Digital Canon camera. Mine look so bright and clear and crisp compared to the digital pictures. Both my mother and I have tried to adjust the camera's settings to get better pictures but nothing matches the clarity of the film camera!

Tell me I'm not alone in the film world ... Hello? HELLO? Is anybody out there???

Looking forward to some replies!!! Have a magical day everybody!!!

Frank
Disney DieHard

 

[YesDear]

Hi Frank and welcome!

As an old film photographer, I would agree with you that film does have a supperior look and feel to it when properly exposed and printed. I am an old slide shooter than I would have an internegative made for anything I had printed because I liked the color saturation of Kodachrome.

That being said, I am very happy with the images I get from quality digital pictures. I love the flexability it gives me in shooting in RAW and me being the processor in the computer. I like the instant factor of it, and I certainly enjoy the ability to play with settings and not worry about processing costs.

I would say that 95% of the images you see in a magazine and 100% of the images in newspapers today are digital. Since the latest round of Canon's and the D3 and D700 Nikon, the images are rivaling those of film. Film, in MHO will always have a richer feel to them, but digital is what is being used today and will only grow into the future.

I have a friend that works at a professional printing house and I asked him how much film they printed today and he said less than 2%.

That is my story and I am sticking to it!

 

[Tickla]

Me too!! I LOVE my film camera. I have a Nikon D40 also, & used it on my last vacation to Charleston & Savannah this past December...I let my 14 yr.old son use my Nikon film camera, well let me just say..his pictures were AMAZING!!!! He took color & B&W, & I was actually jealous they weren't my pictures! I even asked if he'd like to switch cameras, but it's a no go. I do LIKE my D40, but really LOVE my film..even the waiting to see the pictures after they are developed instead of reviewing them all over & over--theres no surprise left. So you are not alone!

 

[ZephyrHawk]

I'm a big film fan, and for the same reasons you mention. You just don't get the same look and feel with digital cameras. My friends think I'm nuts for carrying around 3 bulky film cameras on vacation when they slip a single digital point and shoot into their pocket and are good to go. However, DSLRs have recently gotten to the point where there is very little difference in the quality of photos from my perspective, so I'll probably be getting one soon. I'll still keep my old film cameras for B&W's and other beauty shots.

 

[jann1033]

agree and probably would never have gone to digital if my film slr hadn't broken but
now that i am into digital for a few yrs i can see some benefits that at least compensate for the "look" of film
1)i love post processing, i can do all sorts of painterly things i couldn't have really done nearly as easily with film
2) i can try different things for "free" and see the results right away, which might have been possible with polariods but have you seen the cost of their film lately? and my polaroid camera wasn't a slr
3) i can only print what i want in what size i want, ie do to seeing it before i print it...

the cons of digital to me are still just not as happy with black and white, color i think is pretty close
and like i was just thinking today, i don't think film cameras got out of date as fast as digital does. i had mine for yrs but maybe i just didn't have the "need to upgrade" mentally i do now

if you do ever go digital you might want to pick up alien skin exposure...it has all kinds of color and b&w film tweaks you can do( ie different types of films, cross processing etc) post processing to digital photos

 

[gokenin]

Grew up in the age of digital pictures but have found I like film as much. Have 3 film SLR's ranging from fully manual spotmatic to a fully autofocus PZ1-p as well as 2 digital Slr's makes deciding what to take down to Disney a little hard sometimes

 

[alan]

I have a colleague at work who is into landscape photography. He's good. Good as in "if Duncan's been there I just won't even bother taking my camera with me" good. Now, he's recently gotten back into film and swears by the richness and tonality of Velvia. And I believe him totally. Because he's good. Very good.

Me, I like to shoot photographs of stage shows (as well as being in those shows). That generally works better at higher ISOs.

When I look back at scans of film, I see how horrible the pictures were. Very noisy - indeed a high quality 35mm ISO800 film comes out to be about as noisy as a digital compact camera running at the same ISO today. Even my lowly Canon 350D (Rebel XT) creates dramatically smoother ISO1600 images than I could ever get from film.

So I think it rather depends on what you shoot. For what I do, digital works better. But I trust my colleague who tells me he gets better landscapes from film!

regards,
/alan

 

[jann1033]

I have a colleague at work who is into landscape photography. He's good. Good as in "if Duncan's been there I just won't even bother taking my camera with me" good. Now, he's recently gotten back into film and swears by the richness and tonality of Velvia. And I believe him totally. Because he's good. Very good.

Me, I like to shoot photographs of stage shows (as well as being in those shows). That generally works better at higher ISOs.

When I look back at scans of film, I see how horrible the pictures were. Very noisy - indeed a high quality 35mm ISO800 film comes out to be about as noisy as a digital compact camera running at the same ISO today. Even my lowly Canon 350D (Rebel XT) creates dramatically smoother ISO1600 images than I could ever get from film.

So I think it rather depends on what you shoot. For what I do, digital works better. But I trust my colleague who tells me he gets better landscapes from film!

regards,
/alan

interesting although the lower iso film photos i have don't have that problem at all, i don't think i have many from 800 but wondering if the scanner quality could have had anything to do with it( just thinking the scanners have probably come a long way as well)
and my digital is only good to 400 as well so guess i am in the same boat as i was with film

 

[MarkBarbieri]

Put me solidly in the digital camp. Digital is better in pretty much every way. Your problem is probably that you are comparing digital shots taken with a sensor size much smaller than the film you are using. Compare a "full frame" digital camera with a 35mm film camera and you'll come away preferring the digital camera. I just about guarantee it. That's why the overwhelming majority of pro's shooting MF and 35mm are using digital these days.

Digital gives you better color fidelity, higher resolution, substantially lower noise/grain at higher ISO, dramatically lower cost per shot (assuming that you shoot a lot), EXIF data, and the ability to review in the field, and generally higher shooting rates, etc. The only advantage that comes to mind for film is the wider dynamic range of print negatives.

 

[boBQuincy]

Sign me up for digital too! After over 30 years of developing and enlarging film I can't see one advantage. HDR has allowed digital to completely surpass film in dynamic range too (and the newer full frame sensors are better in this area as well).

Film had it's run, a good 100+ year one, and that ain't bad!

 

[handicap18]

I loved shooting film. I went digital with a little PnS 7 years ago. After a while I went back to my film SLR because the images produced was much better. I still wanted the convenience of digital (no rolls of film, no printing every print to see what was good, getting instant feedback with the LCD, ALL EXIF data saved for each and every shot, etc...) 3+ years ago I bought a dSLR and haven't looked back. I have since upgraded to a entry level pro dSLR and couldn't be happier.

I have over 3,000 images that go through the screen saver on my compter (only about 20% or so of all the images on my computer), its so much easier to share pictures with friends and family. I can get more higher quality shots since I don't have to worry about having only 24 exposures on 1 roll. I can take 4 or 5 shots of the same subject with different exposures and not worry about the cost for processing the roll afterwards.

Our last trip to Disney I brought my film camera and a roll of B&W film. I ended up only taking 5 or 6 pics. I used up the roll around the house afterwards and still didn't like the final images as much as with my digital.

But that being said, to each his own. If it works for you, cool.

 

[Groucho]

interesting although the lower iso film photos i have don't have that problem at all, i don't think i have many from 800 but wondering if the scanner quality could have had anything to do with it( just thinking the scanners have probably come a long way as well)
and my digital is only good to 400 as well so guess i am in the same boat as i was with film

Well, my Coolscan is a pretty high-quality scanner and it definitely shows pretty severe grain when the photo is viewed at 100% - and the resolution is actually pretty close to what you get on today's higher-mp DSLRs (22-25 mp, like a full-frame DSLR or a 12-14 mp APS-size one.)

For the original poster... the problem is that you can't fairly compare a film PnS with a digital PnS. A film PnS could use the same 35mm film that every other 35mm camera could use, from the best to the worst. In the digital world, PnS cameras are regulated to ridiculously tiny sensors in an effort to make the camera as small as possible, whereas DSLRs have larger (usually at least 15x larger!) sensors, which produce a much higher-quality image. It's not just snobbery that makes DSLRs so attractive!

Today's DSLRs can generally outdo film cameras in pretty much any measure and you can reproduce the look of any film. The main area where film still has an advantage is black and white dynamic range, and that advantage may be going away as time marches on.

That being said, I still love using film cameras for the feel of them and the "look" you get (without having to do any manipulation), but really, for overall image quality, my DSLR can generally match or beat anything I can get out of film.

 

[jann1033]

Well, my Coolscan is a pretty high-quality scanner and it definitely shows pretty severe grain when the photo is viewed at 100% - and the resolution is actually pretty close to what you get on today's higher-mp DSLRs (22-25 mp, like a full-frame DSLR or a 12-14 mp APS-size one.)

For the original poster... the problem is that you can't fairly compare a film PnS with a digital PnS. A film PnS could use the same 35mm film that every other 35mm camera could use, from the best to the worst. In the digital world, PnS cameras are regulated to ridiculously tiny sensors in an effort to make the camera as small as possible, whereas DSLRs have larger (usually at least 15x larger!) sensors, which produce a much higher-quality image. It's not just snobbery that makes DSLRs so attractive!

Today's DSLRs can generally outdo film cameras in pretty much any measure and you can reproduce the look of any film. The main area where film still has an advantage is black and white dynamic range, and that advantage may be going away as time marches on.

That being said, I still love using film cameras for the feel of them and the "look" you get (without having to do any manipulation), but really, for overall image quality, my DSLR can generally match or beat anything I can get out of film.

what iso ? or are you talking across the board.
i know the "normal" shots i have ( probably 100 or 200 iso ) have a nicer quality than the digital shots i have taken at the same isos. you'd have to take shot by shot to really compare but imo the film shots of basically the same types of subjects look nicer/ sharper/ cleaner... i always assumed it was due to printing digital. the digital aren't bad in color but i know which of my shots were film just by looking at them....and if anything i'm using better processing places now so that shouldn't be an issue. i do know if i scan those same shots though they look bad but then again they weren't intended to be scanned. lots of stuff looks worse scanned than in real life

not sure it would necessarily be the same as something scanned but i have some old cds and photos of my husbands work( which is always inside, difficult to take since it's not very contrasty but more textural) that were from my film camera at 400 and you don't look at them and see noise like you can with some 400 iso digital shots. 800 i can understand since 800 film was grainy to start with, don't imagine it would be less so once it's scanned

 

[pjacobi]

Film? Ha! I perfer Daguerreotypes, especially developing them with mercury fumes! Now that's post processing!

There will always be nostalgia for older photographic process such as Daguerrotypes, Autochromes, color seperation process, etc. Film will soon be added to the list of obsolete technologies. Kodak has already announced final production runs of Kodachrome film.

Technology moves forward and it is up to the photographer to learn how to use available equipment most effectively. Great photographs can be executed using any technology.


-Paul

 

[wdwwishes]

Another digital lover here simply because of the fun I have with my photos. I got out my old film SLR one day and it seemed kind of odd compared to my digital SLR. I will say that sometimes when I see some older pictures taken with film I do think wow. I think the point about sensor size really matters when you compare film photos to digital. I also love the fact that I can take so many photos. It does seem that film has that long term staying power over digital but the technology continues to evolve and improve.