Pros and cons for digital photography/new equipment? (1 Viewer)

Hi everybody,

Judging from the posts I have read (only a small portion of course), most people, especially the more advanced, are using digital cameras. I have never tried that, and I am still not really convinced, although I clearly see some of the advances. But apart from all biases (esp. from my fiance ;-)), I would like to know more about the pros and cons of digital photography. Only from an amateurs view, besides from birds I would like to continue taking shots of building, landscapes, close captures of flowers and insects, snapshots of people etc. My current camera is a pretty old Canon EOS 650 (Must be more than 15 years old now), and since I am seriously thinking of buying a new lense with 500 or 600 mm (300 just is not enough for most birds), I also have to consider if I should not invest in a whole new equipment. At least now that I have some more money to spend for that. Although I do not like the thought of buying new thinks as long as the old ones are still functioning, and I also know that handling two cameras wil be to complicated for hiking or bicycling trips...

Sorry about this long and chaotic thread, but it shows that I am quite at a loss and still very undecided. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Marcella

Digital every time for us. No more waiting for prints and slides to be processed, no more money wasted on loads of shots that are not worth keeping - I can't think of any reason for not going digital, though probably someone will be along soon with a different opinion!

I'm an amateur and I'm not moving to digital until they (mfrs) can figure out how to resolve the problem of no detail in reds, yellows and whites. I have yet to see a single digital photo that has these colors in them where the texture isn't mushed, especially the reds. (No, that's not meant to be a challenge for all the digital folks. Although... ) Don't know what it is about this part of the color spectrum that can't be interpreted digitally, but it badly needs to be addressed IMHO.

For any other colors, digital is phenomenal, particularly digiscoping where you can see right up a bird's nostrils! The photos that don't have much red, yellow or white are breathtaking in their detail and sharpness. And probably impossible to get with any standard lens that doesn't cost a small country's GNP.

So I'm sticking with my Canon EOS-1N system and, for dodgy weather conditions, my old AE-1 Program that's 24 years old. Yes, I hate the film processing costs, particularly now that Kodachrome 64 is practically impossible to find much less get developed. But I sure love the recording fidelity of film vs. digital across the entire color spectrum.

I think you have to decide first of all, what finished product do you want? If you still like to look at and show slides and small prints, mostly, then film continues to have much to offer. If you do a lot of sharing of photos on the web and via email, however, and if you enjoy making larger prints routinely (but perhaps selectively), then digital has definite advantages.

Another issue is how much you feel comfortable manipulating images via computer. In digital photography this process is all-important. The difference between success and mediocrity is tied to the skill with which you can learn to prepare images using Photoshop or another image manipulation program. If you think this is a burden and a chore, then perhaps digital is not for you.

Personally, I switched over to digital about eighteen months ago, and I now only rarely shoot film. I have no particular use for slides anymore, and I am constantly frustrated by the lack of creative control one has if prints are prepared by even the best commercial lab.

In terms of bird, insect, and other types of nature photography, digital has HUGE advantages, inasmuch as you do see your images instantly and can therefore correct your mistakes on the fly in many cases. You also can simply trash the (many) images of birds that don't work out. I recall with film getting maybe two or three good slides in a roll of 36 and trashing the rest. With digital, you can trash the bad images without feeling guilty about how much money you just wasted.

Yes, there are aspects of digital imaging that still need improvement. Katy mentioned reds and yellows. I don't really see this problem so much, but whites are another story. There remains a serious issue of digital sensors "blowing out" white tones, which forces the photographer to engage in all kinds of compensatory changes in exposure to prevent this. The next generation of DSLR's apparently will handle this problem better.

And hey, getting deeply into digital photography is EXPENSIVE. Yes, you save money on film and processing, but a good DSLR, Photoshop, a photo-quality printer, ink, paper, etc., will set you back a bit.

Still, I think that for many, MANY longtime photographers, digital has reinvigorated their interest in taking photos, so the expense has been worthwhile. I include myself as one of these.

Hi MBP.....I've gone completely digital for all of the above reasons, as well. I might also add, that one of the things that I enjoyed most about my early film photography, was working in my basement black and white darkroom (now my computer room). I loved to take the negatives and crop, dodge, burn, etc...to get varying and improved results from the original image. It was expensive, smelly, and time consuming....but I loved it, none-the-less. Digital photography gives me that same rush that I experienced in the darkroom as I watched an image appear on the photo paper in the chemical developer tray. I realize that you can also scan film negatives and slides and manipulate them digitally, but using the digital camera and memory cards seems to provide the most direct route. I guess I also like the instant feedback equally as well. I sometimes shoot birds out of the window of my house...rush to the basement lab (computer room), check out the images....reformat the card...and run back to the window to take more shots with the hope of continually improving. What I guess I'm saying is: Digital photography has rekindled my passion in taking pictures and rarely a day goes by, that I'm not shooting a flash card full of images and manipulating them on the computer. You don't have to spend a fortune (although that is easy to do)... there are a lot of good, but reasonably priced, cameras on the market to help you get started. It seems from your message that you have a background in photography and I'll bet you would love going digital. I know I have!!!
Muskrat

The nature of digital, being able to delete bad shots has led me to try to be a more adventurous (amatuer) photographer. You find yourself taking more pictures that may or may not work, trying new things. Trying to capture fast moving subjects for example is difficult, and with film you may well decide not to bother trying due to wasted film and developing. But digital - I just keep snapping on full automatic - over half the shots will be empty sky, a quarter will have no head, an eigth will be way out of focus. But it doesn't matter as I can just ditch them and try again.

Another big plus for me with my camera is lens size. My Fuji S7000 has an optical zoom built in, equivalent to a 35-300mm lens - but the whole camera is only about 120mm from front to back with lens extended. If I add the 1.7x telephoto converter, this is somewhere near a 500mm equivalent, with far less weight and much more manageable than those huge heavy 500mm slr lenses. I can hang it with lens around my neck no problem - try doing that with the film camera equivalent! It has full manual controls as well as all the priority options, so offers easy automatic through to full manual if I want it. My point being that you dont have to buy top-end digital slr to get manual & creative features.

I, like you also take pics of a great many things - landsape, buildings, people, and macro (S7000 has macro and super-macro features too - 2cm close focus if I remember right) and the same applies - you take far more pictures, and are far more likely to end up with more good ones. From an amatuer point of view, many digital cameras have such varied things included, is is in fact far less costly than buying macro/wide/std/tele/zoom lenses for an slr, and you dont need a huge gadget bag to keep it all in.

Unfortunately the only limit I have found with my camera is that its lens is not compatible with digiscoping, but thats another story........

Thank you so much everybody for your replies. :bounce: This was far more than I expected. So to resume, most of you indeed have switched to digital photography and really enjoy it. I must admit, the fact that one can take much more pictures and throw away the bad ones with no additional costs is really tempting. I have not been too much into bird photography yet so that the film processing costs are still reasonable, but it is probably the most convincing argument, especially for such fast moving objects like hummingbirds . And digiscoping of course seems to be just made for birding! So I guess I will have to switch to digital imaging sooner or later. Luckily, there is a large photography shop near my workplace which also rents a lot of different equipment, so I think I will take the chance to try different systems before making the final decision. This will also give me a chance to look for the problematic features Katy mentioned.

Again, thank you very much for all of your help,
Marcella

Film vs Digital

I own a Canon Elan II and one of the original Rebel SLR. The Elan was used exclusively until last year. It now sits inside the camera bag, unused. As a regular birder, I already had a spotting scope, an older Kowa TSN-1, and after much research I purchased a new Nikon Coolpix 4500 and the Kowa Prominar 823. I have since added the Coolpix 990. These little cameras are relatively easy to use and can produce decent images, including close-ups of small subjects such as insects and butterflies. However, I missed my SLR and after much research, I invested in the Canon DSLR 10D to use with my existing lenses and external flash. Not surprising I began immediate return on the investment. I was saving big $$ from not having to pay for roles upon roles of slide film and processing fees. There is the initial cost for a large capacity compact flash card, but the savings have more than paid for camera and large capacity card in less than a year! More importantly, the image results are quite impressive. Yes, I love to digiscope, but I also love my DSLR for landscapes. And, I've been successful in capturing some decent birding moments with it as well with use of an older 300mm USM with a 1.4 teleconverter. I have not tried using the 10D for digiscoping and need to research it a bit more. As for my Canon Elan II, maybe some day I'll pull it out and give it a spin, for old times sake.

Best wishes,

Brenda

I'm thinking it's like having a propane barbeque- the flavour isn't quite as good as charcoal but you end up having way more meals cooked on the grill because all you have to do is hit the switch and - presto! there's your dinner.

It's become a common story... old film guy (no offense!) buys digital, and wonders why he waited so long. In the words of famed bird photographer Arthur Morris: "Yes, digital photographers DO have more fun!" He was once a staunch proponent of Fuji Velvia and thought he'd never switch. Check out his site at www.birdsasart.com for the whole story...

My quick synopsis is that for the most situations, digital's advantages outweight its disadvantages when compared to small format (35mm) film. There are exceptions, but they are usually pretty obvious. For instance, the need to project slides.

A 5Mp camera comes awfully close to 35mm level detail. 6Mp and 8Mp DSLRs are generally considered to have almost the same level of detail, but also have superior lack of noise (grain).

Film and digital are different mediums. And if you get down to the fine points of image differences, comparisons of detail and noise do not sufficiently describe the differenes between images. But for most people in most situations, a 4Mp or better camera will be a superior overall replacement for their 35mm point and shoot, and a DSLR or even an advanced fixed lens digicam will be a very good replacement for a film SLR.

The convenience of digital is what had me switch over almost entirely 3-4 years ago. I'm on my third camera and wanting a fourth. I got tired of having to finish off rolls or forgetting what was on the roll that was left in the camera. For day to day photography, digital wins. Keep your film cameras until you are sure you won't use them. As I said, film and digital are different mediums and you may want to use film down the road for something unique.

Ironically, digital technology has me shopping for a 4x5 view camera right now. I can now scan large format affordably and print it at home or send it out for very large enlargements. Very cool. And affordable digital does not exist to match 4x5 film - yet.

There are a lot of sites that compare digital to film. Try these for more details:
http://www.normankoren.com
http://www.clarkvision.com
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/

Katy Penland said:

I'm an amateur and I'm not moving to digital until they (mfrs) can figure out how to resolve the problem of no detail in reds, yellows and whites. I have yet to see a single digital photo that has these colors in them where the texture isn't mushed, especially the reds. (No, that's not meant to be a challenge for all the digital folks. Although... )

Click to expand...

Digital cameras use a Bayer mask that generally provides two Green samples for every one Blue and Red sample. This is why a digital camera also delivers less resolution than its nominal pixel count implies.

http://www.jayandwanda.com/photography/sensorRes.html

A typical digital image can be thought of as being comprised of a fairly high resolution black and white image overlayed with a green layer with almost as much resolution and with a red and blue layer that has about half the resolution of the green layer. Your television picture works similarly. This scheme works as well as it does because human vision is less sensitive to color detail than it is to differences in brightness and darkness.

Some images can make this lower red and blue resolution more noticable. But my experience has been that such situations are very rare in nature.

It is also my experience that digital suffers from what I call "the curse of 100% pixels". The nature of digital is that it is very easy for us to look at digital images at very high magnifications. We end up looking at our digital images at 70-100 dpi on computer screens when 200-240 dpi is closer to the right level of magnification appropriate for judging image quality at moderately close distances. So we start getting concerned about all that noise we see. And gee, that edge doesn't seem sharp! But if we print to a size that is the same as we printed our 35mm images, suddenly things don't seem so bad. In fact, they look pretty darned good!

Most film images never get looked at with the same scrutiny. For years, I used an 8x loupe on my slides to judge critical sharpness. And that is less magnification than 100% pixels present on my computer screen. I think this "curse" is behind the near obsession that seems to exist regarding chromatic aberrations as well. I've looked at my older slides after scanning and lens problems as well as other sharpness issues are much more noticable.

Anyway, as a practical matter, I just don't find the lower color resolution to be visibly noticable. I print images large (greater than 8"x10") on my Epson 1280 and don't find a problem. And I'm not even sure that I see the problem when viewed with 100% pixels.

This is a link to a digiscoped image of some desert brush. The orange and yellow portions don't seem to be mushy in this half rez image (and they technically shouldn't since the image is half-rez), nor can I see any lack of resolution in the large print I made of this image (warning 500kb image).

http://www.jayandwanda.com/coolpix/5000/Grn_Yel_Orng_0740.jpg

And when I can get a Northern Cardinal to stand still long enough, I don't find the reds to be problem there either.

http://www.jayandwanda.com/birds/cardinals/NorthernCardinal_M_9549_FHAZ_95_35.jpg

But if you do see a problem with reds, then the digital camera for you is probably a Sigma DSLR. Its X3 sensor samples red, green and blue at each sensor location and in this regard is very much like film.

In the end, film and digital are different mediums. I suspect that there are subtle differences that we don't yet fully appreciate. But to my eyes, these things are just that, subtle. I find such subtleties easily outweighed by the subject matter and how the image has been controlled and printed. But that's my experience. I strongly urge everyone to judge with their own eyes. Not mine and not anyone else's.