Hi everyone,
We can be both film and digital users. Depending on the situation, depending on the work nature and depending on the results wanted, we do have a choice.
It will be dreadful if there are only digital, or the other way round. We are pampered of choices, and we should count ourselves blessed!
Analog has developed for over 100 years, and it has its very strong points. Medium format and large formats still going on strong.
Digital open up a lot of new possibilities, flexibilities and also ease of operation and consistency.
And we can enjoy both.
For both professionals and hobbyists, both have a choice to suit their work flow and deliverable.
Analog comes with a price, and so does digital. The comparisons can never be fair.
Some people maximize their equipment to make money. Some people only shoot a few times then sell the camera.
Some people want it cheap and fast, some want it artistic and attention to details.
You need the right tools to do the jobs.
Analog film age and fade. I spend thousands of dollars scanning and archiving the old negatives. New scanning costs too.
Pictures album takes up space, and they fade also.
Not to mention some of the old scans done in 1999 was very bad, and need to rescan from faded neg+PS.
Digital files take time to manage, PS and can take time. Many do not understand how fragile the Harddisk is, and when the drive crash they lost everything!
(hard drives are now designed to be changed every 2 years. Note. Many leave the factory with a lot of bad sectors or media defects, crashing is only matter of time)
I keep 3 copies of my digital files, still some become unreadable after years. While many are computer savvy, not everyone into photography is savvy IT.
Especially the older generation of non technical people, all the technicalities are night mares for them.
While those complain about computer and software costs, setting up a traditional darkroom is also not cheap.
And most homes in Singapore do not allow that. Who else still have a complete dark room with an enlarger sitting around? Not many!
I enjoy shooting film, the process and the final results.
But most of my pictures in my computer were actually taken with a Nikon 5400! I have over 100,000 pictures from the 5400 since day 1.
Mainly family daily living pictures and also pictures of fishing/ golfing. Bring a SLR for fishing? Soak in sea water?
If my friends call me up for doing assistant job, I can choose between film and digital. And sometimes they do use me as an alternative form.
(they shoot digital, and a few shots get me to cover in MF; or vise versa)
And I always believe we don't need to buy the most expensive equipment to make nice pictures.
This is literally throwing in costs to prove the guy's point - never mind that he's paired a crop factor lens which is not compatible with both cameras he's using to compare;
He's also suggesting that:
1) Digital needs archiving on hard disks but there is no need to archive/backup negatives - I could just as easily ask him to scan the negatives for digitisation and he'd need both hard disks that he's thrown in, PLUS a good scanner AND the computer he's thrown in for the digital side
2) He assumes that photoshop and lightroom need upgrading every year, but film darkroom equipment that you have will never, ever break down - that's what you need to HAVE to have an equal comparison, because photoshop and lightroom allow you to adjust the image!
3) Why would you need 10 cards?
Another important point is that the computer in itself is a sunk cost, i.e. most people would have computers already. Same for the monitor. A better and more rigorous calculation would have considered INCREMENTAL costs, e.g. normal computer versus computer catering to Photoshop work; normal monitor compared to a IPU panel with decent enough specifications for working with digital photos.