Why film is here to stay...

[Stefen]

I guess what has happened is:

more and more people are taking up photography, experimenting shots because digital cameras have become an immediate feedback on shots and exposures on a cost effective maner, and more are expected to improve their skills based on this as well.

Digital cameras have definitely made many non photographers into photographers, and this was a market that the film market was unable to penetrate before.

So i guess the market has become larger, and the gain of one format is not equal to demise of the other. not a zero sum game, i suppose.....

my 0..1 cents worth

 

[whoelse]

I place some of my slides on the lightbox and observe on loupe yesterday and the color/details are mind blowing. It's so wonderful that I went to make prints.

Digital is good for it's purpose but for my need, I think it will take awhile maybe a long while for me to own one. Other then instant result, it doesn't fit my need so far.

Also, why mindef/national archiving uses microfilm for archive and that is also reason we can find information like fullpage newspaper compress into tiny microfilm that are made 60yrs ago etc. Movies that are made 80yrs ago and still able to project. Tiny scratches, fungus on them affect quality let say on old movies film but when projected at most we see seconds of picture degrading.

A digital bit of error unreadable by the storage media or corruption can mean the media is unaccessible etc.

Try archiving a fullpage newspaper with digital technology instead of film technology and see how much you can achieve. Maybe the technology may be able to do that one day but the price/image size will kill you. Try keeping your digital album or CD for 60yrs under good dry condition and you might not be confident that it can still be accessible for the next 20 yrs. Maybe the media is ok but the format or connector is no longer acceptable.

That is why film will stay, digital will be popular too for it's convienences. We are consumer/user, use what you need.

People comparing digitized film image versus raw digital image are meaningless. They are mainly comparing the film scanner rather than the film image. Even the same film image will give you different result scanning with different scanners. Hence it is the same as converting a raw digital image by taking it as picture on a film and compare it with a real film image. Will it be good? obviously not.

Just my 2cts worth.

 

[ST1100]

read an article in a photogrpahy magazine on why film won't die.. share wif u guys..

1) Film SLR camera are much cheaper.
2) Film are Fast, wif ISO 800 and ISO 1600. Digital camera seldom have such high speed.
3)Film can be enlarged.. alot. To blow up digital image, u need very expensive camera, but not for a normal ISO 100 negative with can be enlarge wif decent sharp image.
4)Film is Power-Stingy. Batteries last much longer in a film SLR camera.
5)Film doesn't crash. Images store in harddisk and flash memory are subject to virus and other attacks. Film can be stored for a long time.
6)Film doesn't required infrastructure. After snapping a few hundred digital images u need to find a online system to store and show case ur pictures. Films juz need an album.
7)Film is the orginal Photoshop.Special effects are achieved not through photographic software but at the time of exposure.
8)Film is RAW. in film all the "data" is on the negative, and can be accessed with proper printing techiques, unlike digital where the images are larges and difficult to process.
9)Film does not preclude digital. U can easily convert film to digital. .

Juz some sharing wif u guys.. feel free to give ur views..

Ok, since we already got started...

point 2) film is faster - well, digital has reached ISO3200 quite some time back, and much more R&D is going into digital than film on faster response sensors. It is true that lower end digicams only reach ISO400 (and that usually sucks). i guess 'film is faster' is only valid if you restrict both to a similar budget. Top end digital is faster than film, or will be. The lastest Canon EOS 1D mk II also claims 9 stops of dynamic range, as opposed to film and slides doing about 7.

point 3) film can be enlarged. Strange that this is brought up - digital scales more easily and cleaner. Unless again, you're refering to lower end usage. In which case 'enlarge' means around 8R, which is too small to see a clear winner anyway.

point 5) and 6) Sorry - utter rubbish. Try storing the same number of shots (high volume) in film and digital. Film needs real estate and *expensive* storage gear - acid free sleeves and albums, acid free cabinets, humidity control, etc. i don't think any serious high volume film user is going to dispute this. By comparison, storing digital is a piece of cake.

point 9) maybe, but if the final intent is digital (ie scan every roll, every frame), then it doesn't make sense to shoot film from the onset. Also, digital does not preclude film - there are (expensive) digital-to-film and digital-to-slide services.

(Well, he did say 'feel free to share ur views'...)