Photography: Digital vs. Film Discussion

“Computer photography won't be photography as we know it but it would be something else. I think photography will always be chemical.” 

-- Annie Leibovitz

A quote by one of my favorite photographers, Annie Leibovitz, got me thinking about film versus digital cameras. There seems to be a war going on right now between digital and film photography. In the year 2011, digital photography appears to be winning. It is used as the norm for most people from newspaper photographers and photojournalists to parents taking pictures of their children at birthday parties. However, there are several advantages and disadvantages to both film and digital.

Digital photography allows the photographer so much freedom. You can take virtually as many photographs as you would like. You can click click click and take one thousand photographs and store them on a memory card that that is smaller than a matchbook. Exposing or ruining the film is no longer a concern. Also, while you are taking the pictures you can instantly review them. If mom has her eyes closed in the once in a lifetime panoramic shot with the Grand Canyon in the background you and immediately re shoot it. It goes without saying that if you are planning on putting your pictures on the web or your computer, it is much easier to do so with digital pictures. 

Whereas film cameras can have manual backups for electronic and electrical features, digital cameras are entirely dependent on an electrical supply. Many digital sensors have less dynamic range (the range of luminosity that can be reproduced accurately. Highlights of the subject that are too bright are rendered as white, with no detail; shadows that are too dark are rendered as black.) Film is still the standard for landscape photographers and large prints because film records and reproduces a broader range of color than digital images.

I had the opportunity to take two photography classes in college. One class I took at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and the other one at Marquette University. For my MIAD class we used 8 x10 view cameras. Picture the type of camera that Ansel Adams used… completely manual and needs a drop cloth over your head to take the pictures. I had to lug this camera around in a box as well as a tripod (all over Milwaukee it seemed) and I could only take eight pictures on every trip. 

Everything on the camera had to be adjusted aperture, ISO,
shutter speed etc. It was not unusual for me to spend a half hour focusing, positioning the camera and framing my shot before taking even one picture. After that, I had to spend many hours developing my negatives, and then hours upon hours printing and developing my photographs. 

For the first month almost all of my negatives came up blank because I had done something wrong in the complicated process. It was the hardest, most frustrating and most time consuming class I have ever taken. However, I learned more about photography in five months than I had learned in my entire life. Even mixing the developer and fixer and making test strips became automatic. I loved the control I had in the darkroom. 

I could crop my image however I wanted and make it any size. 

I had complete control over the focus, contrast and highlights. Dodging and burning (a concept I never grasped in high school photography club) where you either hold back light by dodging or cover part of the photograph and add light to the rest which is called burning. 

My end of the semester project was to shoot and develop twenty photographs focusing around a theme. I chose architecture, and took pictures of buildings and houses all over Milwaukee. These photographs are definitely not perfect, or always in focus. Nevertheless, I still get a sense of accomplishment when I look at them, they are the work of blood sweat and tears. I have included a few pictures from my final project, let me know what you think of the photos.

  

        

The photography class I took at Marquette was focused on digital photography. We used digital SLR cameras that could be used in automatic or manual mode. Each week we had an assignment due with a different purpose.

Motion

Light

 

Portrait

Final Project

(I chose Marquette)

We spent many classes fine tuning our knowledge of Photoshop and digital manipulation. I learned many valuable things in this class, especially involving motion because showing motion was almost impossible for me to achieve on the view camera. While I appreciate black and white pictures, it was nice to be able to capture some color.

In the end I have come to the conclusion that digital and film photography each serve a different purpose. They really are completely different mediums, as different as oil paints are from watercolors. I prefer to use a digital camera on vacations and out on the weekends. However, if I want to take my time to be a little more artistic or shoot some nature shots I grab my film camera. 

I hope you enjoyed the post as well as some of the pictures. Do you prefer film or digital? Which one of my pictures was your favorite? Who are your favorite photographers?

BAS