Comments on: Film is dead: long live the digital SLR

By: GrahamEMitchell

GrahamEMitchell — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 06:40:28 +0000

I recently bought a DSLR to replace a digital compact that had given up the ghost. As an owner of an old Nikon SLR I wanted a Nikon so that I could continue to use the excellent 50mm lens. After plenty of research, and being on a very tight budget I bought a second hand D40. With just 4 megapixels of resolution available I find that this camera captures all the detail I need to be able to produce very good quality 10×8 prints, and even up to A3-ish in size the results remain sharp. Whilst I can understnad the theoretical benefit of oversampling by capturing an image in much higher resolution, I don’t see the practical benefits of such an approach unless you want to produce very large prints, and the downside in terms of longer processing times, making your camera less responsive, or ramping up costs to allow for faster processors, for me outweigh the theoretical benefits.
The excellent Ken Rockwell’s advice on resolution seems particularly apposite in this thread: http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/mpmyth.htm

By: vanessajw

vanessajw — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:31:31 +0000

I too have found that my Olympus tough, which I won in a competition is out sharpening my Nikon SLR F50. However what worries me about the digital age now, is as I have a picture library collection based on historic photography from 1850-1960 how are digital images going to be viewed in 100+ years time and what format and machine will be flexible enough then to read the jpegs and tiffs of today? Is it true that Getty are making transparency hard copies of their digital images with this problem in mind? Could our domestic and amateur image history disappear due to this real worry? CDs and DVDs do not last for ever and do not hold information on them for that long do they? How would someone open a CD of images in 80 years time? Or memory card?

By: rabrooks

rabrooks — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 13:07:41 +0000

The article misses the point completely. It is not a war between film and digital – they are different tools with their own benefits and failings. Would you tell a painter not to use oil because acrylic is more accessible and flexible? To acknowledge the ‘quality’ of film is to appreciate the aesthetic, much like the difference between analogue music and digital music. While I appreciate the particular quality of my vinyl I also appreciate the increasing quality and convenience of digital.

As an artist I choose black and white film because I appreciate both the limits and the focus that it gives me – I am working with tone, light and composition alone. If the shot is not right when I see it framed through the camera then I am restricted by the manipulation I can make in the darkroom. Using this method a shot either works or it doesn’t.

I have been to too many exhibitions of award-winning photography and been dismayed by the fact I can see that the photographer has succumbed to the overuse of post-processing – bracketed exposures, over saturation, exaggerated dodging and burning. I can see the shape of the curve they have used, the position of the levels, the use of HDR. Personally this distracts from, what you correctly state is the most important part of a photograph, the subject. The truth is that you really can make a boring shot more interesting through manipulation and post-processing.

But, and I say this as a very accomplished user of photo-manipulation software, one can mimic film but not reproduce the aesthetic quality of film – in this respect it is distinct. But it’s just another tool in the hands of a creative person. I would never deny that digital has surpassed film in terms of hardware quality and flexibility. Fashion, photojournalism, sport and wildlife photography benefit immensly from digital advances. In this respect digital is the tool of choice for most.

I would suggest your brother save his next couple of tenners and buy a couple of chemicals and a darkroom changing bag and develop his next roll of black and white film at home. It is a very simple and much more rewarding experience. To process it at Jessops is a bit like serving tinned spaghetti to an Italian…

By: Steve421

Steve421 — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 17:05:13 +0000

I’m a professional photographer of twenty years. My first digital camera (Canon D30) had 3 megapixels, which most folk wouldn’t entertain on a mobile phone these days. My work then was mostly for corporate brochures – including A3 spreads. Did I ever have any complaints about lack of resolution or sharpness? Not one. I couldn’t wait to be free of incompetent processors and haven’t looked back since. Goodbye film.

By: rp454

rp454 — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 13:41:06 +0000

It’s true that digital is far more flexible than film now, with as you put it the “possible exception of resolution”. But resolution should not be so underplayed. Digital’s limitation in this respect is still huge, with no real solution.