Film Cameras slowly going "out of business" ??

[deletetacount123]

I was talking about Film Cameras and Digital Cameras with some of the guys on bisexuals chat the other day.

It seems more and more people are perfering digital over film... people that own both cameras tend to use digital more while the film camera is sitting somewhere collecting dust (or gave it away to someone else)

Which do you perfer?

Digital Cameras or Film Cameras??

I pick Digital cause:

1. You can upload the pictures ANYTIME.... unlike film cameras you can only get the pictures developed when they are opened which can be a pain if businesses closes when you get off work. (unless you develop your own film)

2. Digital allows you to take more private pictures that you probably wouldn't have taken with a film camera cause you don't want people developing the film to see the pictures then give you a look when you pick them up.
(this can be anything... nude pics, sexy pics and sex pics are the common three)

3. Digital you don't have to worry about film while a film camera sometimes you can forget to bring more film and not realize it till you discover theres only 1 picture left on the roll of film you have!!! Digital also lets you take up to 100 or more pictures a time while you only have a small limited of 24 or 36 pictures on per film (then pay even more money just to develop the pics)

4. Film Cameras .... I have noticed LOTS of times when I get my film pictures developed... theres always 2 or more missing... I check the film strip and the picture is on there and looks just fine... they just didn't bother printing it and charged me for pictures they never printed.
At least with digital, you have control and can view all the pictures... even the bad ones lol

5. The only thing film cameras are good for is for actual photos but these days with people getting printers that can print photos..... film cameras seem to slowly be vanishing.

If you still have a film camera somewhere getting dust... KEEP IT :-) It will someday become an antique when digital has taken over and could be worth a lot of money to antique collectors that seeks old cameras. :-)
Im still keeping mine.... never know when Ill use it... I think its nice to have a backup camera just in case :-)

Tasha

[photogr]

Ah film, loved it, took the shot, developed the film and printed the photograph. An art. All gone now. You have to move with the times. Although I suspect these new digital cameras are not as robust as the old film cameras, just my opinion mind.

[arana]

I love both but alas with digital being so popular now many of the manufactures are discontinueing many of the cameras, accessories, films and so on for the older type cameras. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. It's a personal preference like everything else.

[Herbwoman39]

At one point in my youth I was a photojournalism major. My baby was a Pentax K100. It has, at one time, been my Mother's and she gave it to me as a Christmas gift the winter before I went off to college. I loved that camera. It was So versatile!

That's the one thing I love about film cameras versus digital: The settings have a MUCH wider range and there is more versatility involved. Now keep in mind I have not had an opportunity to play with the new professional digital bodies and lenses. I've only used the less expensive digitals and found them to be rather limiting as far as range of exposures.

To my knowledge if you are doing a special fx shot, digitals won't allow you to intentionally over- or underexpose a shot. Now things that could be done directly on film has to be done in Photoshop.

I miss my K1000 :(

Lord Gme (hubby) used to be a professional photographer. He's got older cameras dating back to the 1930's. He's got a really nice collection of cameras that were simply given to him. But with all that nostalgia, he still prefers digital. I'll let him elaborate later.

[codybear3]

Digital camera?!?!?

I still use an Etch n Sketch... :bigrin: ...

Digital is my personal choice...I current own a Sony Cyber-shot 3.2 Mega pixel with 2x optical zoom...It takes great pictures but I print my pics at Walgreens cuz its cheap and has 'em ready in an hour...I do not care for the picture printers and all the crap that comes with them. I am also looking into getting a Digi-camcorder cuz I have this neat program that allows me to do all kinds of fun and interesting things with pictures and clips...

See the attached pics that I took with my Cyber-shot of our skies when mother nature was giving us alot more rain than I cared for...

[smoothshaft]

Digitals offer a lot of advantages. And then again, a lot of digital camera models have some serious disadvantages, the ones that auto-focus too slow to get the candid shot, for example.

For those who want images for the web, the digital camera is the natural thing. It is fast and easy, and typically makes very sharp images. Scanning film photo prints is always cause for at least some loss of detail.

There are two significant, negative issues with regard to digital. The first has to do with uninformed users choosing the lower resolution setting that allows them more images to be stored on their storage media. They examine their images on their computer and they look great. It takes little resolution, not a very large file, to successfully drive a monitor. The really tragic thing is when the grandparents want to take a few of their seven million digital images and have a large print made, and it all turns to mud. At that point it is too late. You can't put resolution and detail back into the file.

The other issue has to do with losing images, archiving images, storing images. People are notoriously bad about backing up their hard drives. The drive crashes, there goes all the photos. OK, so they put them on CD's. The shelf life of CD's is emerging as a problem. Manufacturer's literature likes to talk about lifespans of 25-50 years and more. The reality of it is that a lot of CD's that users burn are failing in 3-5 years. Properly stored negatives and film prints can last for 50 years or considerably more.

People seriously involved in photo archiving are expressing serious concerns about just how to implement long term, and stone reliable methods of storage. Bluntly, they are not there. Host them online? Sure, until something goes wrong there. The point here is that if you have images that you think you just can't stand to lose, you need multiple file copies stored in multiple locations, that are recreated every 2-3 years. Also, as we migrate into some new file format, you will have the conversion crisis.

A related matter has to do with folks who modify images to be emailed. They forget to do a save-as, destroy the hi-res integrity of their original image, and they can't get that back.

Digital images are really, really neat, and also capable of being highly problematic.

I am involved in publishing materials that include photos. Too often a person sends in a low-res image that looks just wonderful on their computer. It won't support the print media. Upon being told that, and being told that a good film photo would have worked, they print this low-res image on an inkjet printer and send that lined, grainy, poor image. That is even worse.

Too many people are using digital images without really understanding them and their limitations and frailties. Their perceived success pivots almost entirely on how something looks on their computer. To a large degree, it is mostly vapor. A digital image borders on the abstract, it is soooo very fragile. Camera media can be quirky at times, too, causing loss.

[gentlepen9]

I first got my creative feet wet through taking pictures with my mother's camera. I loved changing the settings, lens and using black and white film. The thought of going into a darkroom and developing your pieces creates a certain intimacy within the art of photography that I just don't feel is there with digital cameras. I now have a digital camera and I can say it really is convienent. But the thing that I really don't care for now in our digital age is that those things that were once a specialization is now open to anyone. Before a photographer was someone who learned the ins and outs of the process of shooting and developing photographs through training. Now anyone with a digital camera and a descent book on photography can call themselves a photographer. It's the same within the field of graphic design and illustration. The field is so oversaturated with many would be digital artists who know their way around Photoshop but don't having any background in traditional arts. I was greatly saddened when I took a digital illustration course at my local community college and discovered that myself and only one other student could actually draw or sketch out our concepts for our instructor's input.

Okay, I'm sorry about that. I know this is about digital cameras vs film but I just had to get that off my chest.

[taz67156]

I honestly like both cause of what can be done with either style and I have some of the old camera's that you never see getting used anymore that are about 40+ years old and still work but never get used cause you can't find the film they take to run them

[arana]

Digital camera?!?!?

I still use an Etch n Sketch... :bigrin: ...

Digital is my personal choice...I current own a Sony Cyber-shot 3.2 Mega pixel with 2x optical zoom...It takes great pictures but I print my pics at Walgreens cuz its cheap and has 'em ready in an hour...I do not care for the picture printers and all the crap that comes with them. I am also looking into getting a Digi-camcorder cuz I have this neat program that allows me to do all kinds of fun and interesting things with pictures and clips...

See the attached pics that I took with my Cyber-shot of our skies when mother nature was giving us alot more rain than I cared for...
Coooooool shots Cody!! I love the sky. Thanks for sharing!

[wanderingrichard]

cody,
thanks for reminding me how drastic and dramatic the area you live in can be when nature decides to throw a fit. been many years since i'd seen a red sky like that.

like many others i have both film and digital. actually prefer the film over the relatively [ to me] new digital formats.

call me old fashioned, but learning to develope my own negatives and what to and what not to print does lend to the intimacy of photography as someone else put it. yeah i'd rather do it the hard way [ gee i sound like tred barta! :eek: ]it's more fun and the results can be much more interesting

[DiamondDog]

I prefer digital mainly because the only thing I have to pay for are batteries and not film. ;)

[mistymockingbird]

Digital vs film...good question. I have mixed feelings. I like my digital camera cause its quick,easy and cheap, but the best vacation pics I have were all taken on film.

For me the difference between a good photo and a bad one will always be about the photographer. My mom is a photographer. An amateur, but she had her own darkroom when I was a kid. My favorite childhood pics are ones she shot and developed herself. She has since moved to a digital camera (a high end one, not a user friendly model where you have no control) and she still takes the best pics of me ever. Some of the pics on my profile are ones she shot.

I've done a lot of work with graphic design and publishing. I know all too well how important it is to have good source material for print. Most of the digital cameras out there are geared for the everyday user and don't allow you much control. If you're wanting to use digital photos for high quality printing, you need to shoot accordingly. Even so, to me, photoshop doesn't make up for what a skilled photographer can do.

So, digital vs. film. Depends on what you want it for. The nudie pics will always be digital and low res. The stuff I want to keep, film.

[canuckotter]

That's the one thing I love about film cameras versus digital: The settings have a MUCH wider range and there is more versatility involved. Now keep in mind I have not had an opportunity to play with the new professional digital bodies and lenses. I've only used the less expensive digitals and found them to be rather limiting as far as range of exposures.
If you have time to kill some day, go to a photography store and check out the Nikon D80 or the Canon EOS Rebel XTi. They're pretty comparable -- both digital SLR, high-end amateur/low-end pro, 10ish MP -- and they both do a pretty fantastic job if you've got a good photographer. I know a professional who uses both a D70 (the D80 is the upgraded version) and one of the Canon Rebel series, and is very pleased with both. He also has some high-end professional DSLRs and some high-quality film SLRs. For most of what he does, he apparently uses digital.

Personally, I have a Nikon D70, and I'm very happy with it. If you want to see some examples of the kinds of picture I've taken with it, go to http://www.salters.ca/photos.html... Everything from the Bush protests onwards was taken with the D70. (My current favourite is http://www.salters.ca/pics/20060826/slides/DSC_0128.JPG)

The reality is, even though I spent $1400 on my digital and the equivalent film camera would have been about $700, I've probably saved that much on film by now, and haven't had to deal with the hassle of carting around roll after roll of film, storing the negatives, storing the resulting photos, etc... Plus I get to share them online when I take a good set of pictures. Film still has advantages over digital, but most of the time, the things it does better aren't relevant to what I'm doing. So, like vinyl, I think you're right... Film cameras are on the way to become a collector's item.

[ScifiBiJen]

I think a big difference now is that, because there's so much less entry-level skill necessary on entry-level cameras now, there's a huge number of casual photographers who don't care to make the leap to more professional grade. The days are gone of your basic camera needing you to thread the film in and unwind it off the roll... then manually turn a dial to advance it after each picture. Now that it's ::click:: and DONE, people are seeing more of a divide between what they're doing and what the pros are doing, whether or not it'd actually be that hard for them to learn. They don't play around with under/over exposure or any of the under things film cameras can do because it's less accessible to them and they just don't bother. It's not like the technology is so radically different... I feel like there's a bigger "layman photographer" market that's drowning out the more advanced (plus companies would willingly change markets to getting the simple cameras out to people) and young photographers aren't getting to see what else they can Do with a camera like they used to.

[wanderingrichard]

Now that it's ::click:: and DONE, people are seeing more of a divide between what they're doing and what the pros are doing, whether or not it'd actually be that hard for them to learn. They don't play around with under/over exposure or any of the under things film cameras can do because it's less accessible to them and they just don't bother. It's not like the technology is so radically different... I feel like there's a bigger "layman photographer" market that's drowning out the more advanced (plus companies would willingly change markets to getting the simple cameras out to people) and young photographers aren't getting to see what else they can Do with a camera like they used to.


ahhh, now i think, there's the trick...to actually take the time learn how to use the sainted thing!! i must really be an anachronism in that i take to heart the lessons of my grandparents and take the time to learn my tools and craft. well, guess that comes from having 4 master craftsmen in the family, one of which was a pre eminent antique light restorer in the north east.

[canuckotter]

Here's my theory on the near-term future of digital photography... :) In the next few years, we're going to see a continuing trend towards smaller, faster, lighter, better mass-market digicams. The continuing increase in availability of these convenient yet surprisingly powerful cameras will spawn an increase in interest in more serious photography. At the moment, constant feature improvements are causing a lot of people to invest in new cameras every couple years, but eventually the feature upgrades available simply won't justify that expense. After all, once you can print full-quality 8x10 photos, do further resolution improvements help most people? Shutter speed and light sensitivity are still improving, but they'll hit the same kind of "it's better, but not enough to justify $300" limit too. At that point, people will drop down to buying a new camera every five years, then ten, then fifteen...

So you've got two trends combining there... The point-and-click market will be getting more and more saturated and competitive, while at the same time there are more people than ever being exposed to the possibilities of more serious photography. It's only a matter of time before those combine to bring a lot of interest to the SLR segment from both manufacturers and consumers. Economies of scale will kick in and prices will drop. As these newly-serious photographers investigate the many intricacies of photography, a certain percentage of them are likely to invest in film cameras as well, to take advantage of the many things that film provides.

A decade or more ago, taking pictures required planning to make sure you had enough film of the right type, and once taken, you had to fork over a pretty decent amount of cash to get the pictures developed. Since inevitably about 90% of photos the average person takes don't turn out the way they hoped, even if you could get 24 shots developed for $10 (and I think it was more than that...) you're basically paying $4 per good picture. Digicams cost no more to buy than low-end film cameras, you can take more pictures with less planning, and you only have to print out the ones you really like. Even if you let someone rip you off and pay $1 per picture, you're still way ahead of the effective cost of printing film -- plus you can upload the pictures and share them with friends and distant family.

So yeah, the proportion of photos taken by people who just point and click has gone way up, and will continue to go up. That's because there are more people taking more pictures now. :) If anything, that's good for the real enthusiasts, because there's so much money now in the low-end market that there's major pressure to put all sorts of features into the low-end cameras rather than keeping them for the high-end, ultra-expensive cameras. In turn, that means that the high-end cameras need upgraded features and capabilities to differentiate them again from the low-end cameras, features that are then ported back down to the low-end cameras to help drive sales there... etc.

There's a bit of flakiness right now because the digicam market is so new and so huge, but soon enough things will settle down and we'll see renewed interest in the more interesting stuff that can be done. Nikon and Canon have already put a ton of work into their DSLRs, and I think other manufacturers are starting to take it more seriously again. We'll see.

(Umm... yeah, this is really, really long. Sorry. :) )

[12voltman59]

A great thread--one I am certainly interested in since I have always dabbled in photography and regularly take my own photos when I do freelance writing work.

I do have to say--I don't miss all of the chemicals that you had to use in developing your own film pics---

That is why some professional photog friends of mine who loved the end result of film pics did ditch that format---they developed severe reactions to the chemicals and could no longer work with them so they love not having that problem.

In terms of creativity---some of the older larger scale formats beyond 35 mm--which were going out thanks to that format--still provide some of the best pictures in my book.

Look at the pictures taken during the Civil War--I love the way they look and to pay homage to that--there was a group of photographers who found a working version of one of those cameras and took a series of photos in lower Manhattan in the days following 9/11.

Just as the photos of Gettysburg and other Civil War battlefields are still powerful, moving and evocative today--so were those photos taken on that ancient format of a modern day tragedy.

For me today though--I am going to have to vote for using a good quality digital---I had a good one or so I thought--a Sony cyber shot 3.2 megapixel --but it developed an internal software glitch that prevents transfer of the photos stored on its memory chips to my computer--

I also had found that doing work for magazines---I need a better camera anyway---while my camera was just fine for newspaper work--most magazine required pictures with larger sizes or something than what my current camera provides.

Now I am looking at getting a new one--hopefully one of those nice Nikons or Cannons that look like the film SLRs--with changeable lenses-someone else mentioned the models in another post---

I also need to get a full line version of Photo Shop-not the limited one I have now.