Railroad Forums 

  • Digital V Film: Something to Consider

  • Discussion of photography and videography techniques, equipment and technology, and links to personal railroad-related photo galleries.
Discussion of photography and videography techniques, equipment and technology, and links to personal railroad-related photo galleries.

Moderators: nomis, keeper1616

 #226580  by Long Island 7285
 
In the end, sadly one will win, but some how digital and film need to co exisist, film for the more inportant things, and uniqueness in life and digital for any aspect for photography.

I was shooting the circus train today and shot a roll and a half of film on it. did all the shots come out "GREAT" most likely not, but a majority did. even if they are not purfict i still have them, sometimes that purfict shot is not always the winning picture, it's one of them "off" shots or "oddballs" that become the unique shot.

 #226631  by pgengler
 
Long Island 7285 wrote:... there is not a single one or zero that will replace the uniqueness of film ...
The "uniqueness" of film is one thing I usually don't see addressed in digital vs. film arguments. Plenty of people will (and have, here) argue that digital images can be lost with a computer crash or a CD/DVD going bad. This is true, but it leaves out the fact that with digital images, you can back them up to multiple places. Film, being a physical object, can only be in one place at one time. If, for example, my apartment were to catch fire and I were to lose my computer and my slides, the greater loss to me would be the slides. My feeling about photos is that if it's worth keeping, it's worth showing, so nearly all of my digital shots are on my website (hosted on a server that, thankfully, is not in the same place as my apartment). I could quickly and easily get back at least 90% of my digital photos from that; the slides would still be gone.

If you stored a CD of photos alongside several slides in an "ideal" storage environment (cool and dry) for ten or fifteen years, then yes, it's likely that the slides are still going to be viewable while the CDs will have gone bad.

The fact that digital images can be copied so easily is a great thing when it comes to archiving images, because it's possible to have a large number of copies in a large number of places, with no degredation of image quality.

 #226845  by Srnumber9
 
I think what a lot of us are really driving at is that the choice of film is an artistic one (even if you don't think you're an artist). Whether it be for the look of the images or just the experience of using the equipment.

The problem is that the vast majority of people shooting pictures aren't worried about photography as an art and the ease of use and direct connectability to their PCs makes it a no-brainer for them. The arguments we're making here have little impact on folks who just want some pictures of their kid's birthday party.

Unfortunately, this is a big chunk of business....

For the rest of us that can get more worked up about the difference, film and/or digital is a more complicated (and emotional) choice.

 #226951  by RailBus63
 
Srnumber9 wrote:My attitude on going to digital is to keep enjoying Film as long as I can, and go to digital when the time is right. I'm in no rush.
Well put. That pretty much sums up my feelings exactly.

I've also heard those same 'Film will be dead in five years' comments from salesmen at camera stores, but I take those remarks with a boulder of salt - their job is to sell you a nice expensive digital camera, after all.

While I'm saddened about the coming demise of Kodachrome, I'm not ready to concede the death of E-6 slide films. Kodak and Fuji have both heavily invested in developing new E-6 films in recent years, and there are still a number of labs in the U.S. that will develop this film. Slide film is a niche market for sure, but I believe it will remain big enough to convince some savvy folks that they can make a few bucks catering to hobbyists like myself.

I plan to eventually purchase a digital camera and use it alongside my film camera, but that day will come only when DSLR cameras come down in price from where they are now.

Jim D.

 #226952  by RailBus63
 
pgengler wrote:Plenty of people will (and have, here) argue that digital images can be lost with a computer crash or a CD/DVD going bad. This is true, but it leaves out the fact that with digital images, you can back them up to multiple places. Film, being a physical object, can only be in one place at one time. If, for example, my apartment were to catch fire and I were to lose my computer and my slides, the greater loss to me would be the slides. My feeling about photos is that if it's worth keeping, it's worth showing, so nearly all of my digital shots are on my website (hosted on a server that, thankfully, is not in the same place as my apartment). I could quickly and easily get back at least 90% of my digital photos from that; the slides would still be gone.

If you stored a CD of photos alongside several slides in an "ideal" storage environment (cool and dry) for ten or fifteen years, then yes, it's likely that the slides are still going to be viewable while the CDs will have gone bad.

The fact that digital images can be copied so easily is a great thing when it comes to archiving images, because it's possible to have a large number of copies in a large number of places, with no degredation of image quality.
Many of us film photographers have taken to scanning our favorite images, so those can be preserved in the same way in the event of a disaster.

JD

 #226961  by bshrdr
 
Let's play a little game. Which is film, which is digital?

1
Image
2
Image
3
Image
4
Image
5
Image
6
Image
7
Image
8
Image
9
Image


All shot by me. No fair cheating & looking on my site :-D Also, not exactly what I'd call "snapshots" or "tossaway" photos. In fact a couple of those are hanging in a restaurant in Willimantic, CT, and one graces the cover of the 2006 P&W company calendar.

Each format has its advantages and disadvantages. Currently I shoot 99% digital with a Canon EOS 20D. The beauty of that system is I could use all the same lenses I had for my Elan 7. I've printed both Kodachrome 64 and Provia 100F slides and digitals from the 20D up to 20" x 30" in size. I'll tell you right now the 20D absolutley blows away the K-64 or Provia by a wide margin. The detail it can capture is unbelievable. Now I'm not debating comparing the 20D to a 4x5 because that's not a fair comparison - of course the 4x5 will blow it away, just as it'll blow away a 35mm slide.

I started shooting film in the late 80's, starting out with T-Max and Tech Pan, doing all the processing & printing myself. I started shooting trains around 2000, and was a die-hard slide shooter, resiting the urge to move to digital. That is until the 20D was out for a while and proved itself to be a formidable camera. I made the switch in December 2004, and haven't looked back. In that time I've shot well over 15,000 images, having quite a few published in Trains, Railfan & Railroad, CTC Board, Railpace and other publications.

As for keepers from the 15,000 (about 10,000 of which are train photos - the remainder are my kids & other stuff), I'd say I'm at about a 55-60% keeper rate - much higher than my slide days, which was somewhere around 35-40%. The one thing digital has allowed me to do is to experiment more. With two young kids, budget is a key factor in my shooting. When I was shooting slides, it was $6 a roll for the flim, and $8 for processing. That would always be in the back of my head. Now I just fire away as something strikes my eye. The only cost is about an hour of post processing in my digital "darkroom" - something I can do after the wife & kids go to bed. And the cost of a few DVD-Rs and a couple hard drives - relatively cheap.

Do I still shoot film? Yep. I carry my Elan 7 with me in my bag - currently loaded with a roll of Ilford Delta 100, and my old Minolta XE-5 makes it's way out of the closet every now & then. But by far, my film consumption has drastically dropped. I'd say about 1% of my shots are film, if it's even that much.... For me, it's mostly economic - the amount of money I've "saved" from not shooting film has already paid for the camera. I think breakeven was about 4,500 images. Well over that point now...

Again, to each their own. Just making the point that both formats can co-exist, even in a serious and/or artistic capacity. Shoot what makes you happy and gives you the results you desire. It's that simple.

And film isn't going anywhere. Yeah, it may get a bit hard to find, and the variety may be less, but it will never be discontinued - at least not in our lifetimes.

-Tom

 #226966  by Brad Smith
 
Srnumber9 wrote:I think what a lot of us are really driving at is that the choice of film is an artistic one (even if you don't think you're an artist). Whether it be for the look of the images or just the experience of using the equipment.
For the rest of us that can get more worked up about the difference, film and/or digital is a more complicated (and emotional) choice.
While I agree that issue was discussed here, what I came away with from the discussion was a concern over archival properties.
Regarding the quiz above on which is digital and which is silver halide, viewing them on a monitor is not a good test.
I'm not anti-digital, I'm just worried that, as one poster wrote, a whole generation of images may disappear. You won't find a photo of great grandma hidden in a trunk in the future, you'll find a disk with obsolete and faded code and no way to play it. Try finding a way to get data you stored on an old floppy disk or DAT, or play a program recorded on U-matic 3/4" video.

 #226970  by RailBus63
 
Very nice work, Tom. I feel strongly about film photography, but I'm no Luddite - I have no doubt that the right camera in the right hands can produce some stunning images.

I've calculated roughly 6,000 as my breakeven point, which is about four to five years at my current annual rate of photography. I would very much like to begin shooting digital, but what stops me is the startup cost for a decent camera. The lowest price I've seen for a 20D outfit is $1,250 - I have a family and a mortgage and at this point in my life I just can't justify paying that amount of money for a new camera.

Jim D.

 #226978  by bshrdr
 
Brad Smith wrote: While I agree that issue was discussed here, what I came away with from the discussion was a concern over archival properties.
Regarding the quiz above on which is digital and which is silver halide, viewing them on a monitor is not a good test.
I'm not anti-digital, I'm just worried that, as one poster wrote, a whole generation of images may disappear. You won't find a photo of great grandma hidden in a trunk in the future, you'll find a disk with obsolete and faded code and no way to play it. Try finding a way to get data you stored on an old floppy disk or DAT, or play a program recorded on U-matic 3/4" video.
True, on a monitor it's not exactly fair, but prints side by side, I'll say here that my digitals far surpass my chromes that were created using the same glass. Granted conditions would have been different, but overall my opinion (key word) is that the digitals look better to me.

As for archival - true, media come and go. But the beauty of digital is it can be transfered to multiple media without any degredation of the image. Currently I store my images on 2 types of media, in 2 locations. Hard drives (mirrored) for live storage and DVD-Rs for archival. The DVD-Rs are stored in two physical locations - one at home for easy access, and one set at work (45 miles away). As media change, simply copy to the new format. If my house God forbid burns down, I've got a set at work, but my slides are gone forever. Yeah, I've scanned a hundred or so, but it'll take forever to scan the couple thousand I've got in the binders.

Either way, I can still read my old 8" floppy disks just fine...got an old Radio Shack Model 16 (with both TRSDOS and Xenix OS's) in the basement if I ever need my old Scripsit files. Pays to be a packrat, despite my wife's opinon... :-D

-Tom

 #226979  by bshrdr
 
RailBus63 wrote:Very nice work, Tom. I feel strongly about film photography, but I'm no Luddite - I have no doubt that the right camera in the right hands can produce some stunning images.

I've calculated roughly 6,000 as my breakeven point, which is about four to five years at my current annual rate of photography. I would very much like to begin shooting digital, but what stops me is the startup cost for a decent camera. The lowest price I've seen for a 20D outfit is $1,250 - I have a family and a mortgage and at this point in my life I just can't justify paying that amount of money for a new camera.

Jim D.
Jim-

Thanks! Yeah, the breakeven was the lynchpin for me. Initially I figured it would take me 2-3 years to hit that point, but I hit it in about 8 months. Actually, what really did it was I got it from Best Buy, and they had 6 months of 0% financing. Hey, I could stretch the $1500 out over 6 months without costing me anything extra. My wife loved the idea, and gave me permission to make the jump. Paid it off in the 6th month and didn't cost me a cent extra, and I didn't have the big initial investment right up front, so it really didn't affect the family budget (2 kids, 2 mortgages, etc.). Best of both worlds... :-D

-Tom

 #228605  by Penn Central
 
Dave Keller wrote: What would be around today, if Matthew Brady used digital?

Glass, on the other hand, lasts a long time until some putz drops the plate! (Then you put the basic pieces together and contact print it anyway!)
You make a good point, Dave. I have slides and negatives that are over 30 years old and still produce good prints but I have had CDs that were only a few years old go bad. As technology keeps changing from floppy disks (anyone remember tape backups?) to CDs to DVD-R (or DVD+R) to DL DVDwe have to ask what will be next?

Pierce

 #235318  by W.E.Coyote
 
Tom, I'm going to guess 3, 4, 5, and 9 are digital, and the rest film.

I was out shooting film for a few years, but had a chance to shoot some digital one day and found it didn't have the same feel to it as shooting with film did. However, once I saw how nicely my photos turned out, what I could do with the camera**, and how convenient it was without all the hassle of sending photos in, worrying and wondering if they would be lost, messed up, or come back to be write-offs, I decided to keep shooting digital.

**Digital cameras have the wonderful benifit of being able to view your photos just taken on demand and the ability to adjust settings to compensate for any errors, thus being quite an efficient learning tool. You can try a different angle or play around with your camera. I've taken to this and have been able get a few interesting shots and learned some additional things to avoid and some things that work. In the time film takes to get developed and returned you would typically forget some of the things you did to get some images that may turn up to be rather unique. Additionally, the digital process is a far easier learning experience to beginners getting into the photography field, even though you may not learn some things that are really film camera specific.

Scanning: scanning film photos onto your computer results in further loss of quality, even if it can be "touched up". A benifet of digital is no quality loss from camera to computer to RR internet photo page.

Compatibility: an easy thing to do is buy an old used computer, most of which can be had very cheaply, access the photos and files through that, and copy it to your new one. Digital technology is usually made backwards compatable in the fact that all those dreadful 1's and 0's are still the exact same 1's and 0's on your old 1980's IBM as they would be on a modern day PC. Granted though, transferring them over from one to the other may involve a bit of thinking for those that aren't too tech-savvy.

Me, I'm planning on getting another hard drive just to store all my important files, photos, etc. on and keep it stored separate from my computer. The mention of making identical copies of the same quality is a big plus for digital. Right now I have most backed up additionally on DVD, even though the longterm storage is questionable, what can you do. Sure you could have all your CD's go bad and loose all your photos, or your hard drive randomly decide to die (cough cough IBM Deskstar cough) but you could also have your house burn down, have some serious water damage, your kids could get into your collection and damage it, your wife could accidently throw that box in which you're storing them out, or they could eventually fade away and be forgotten in grandpa's old box of boring stuff in the attic. It's a risk whatever way you go, 'tis life. Someone could maintain their film collection in immaculate condition for years by monitoring storage conditions and keeping them well hidden and safe, but someone else could maintain their digital collection for years by making multipule copies on hard drives and CD's and checking and recopying them every once in a while.

Bottom line, digital is not as bad as some say, although it is sad to see film photography turning into a specialized art form :(

 #235897  by MEC407
 
bshrdr wrote:Let's play a little game. Which is film, which is digital?
I would guess that the ones with the nasty cyan cast are film -- Kodachrome, specifically. :wink:

 #236189  by mxdata
 
I use both film and digital depending on the task to be done and the intended use of the images, and I find that each system has its advantages and disadvantages. However I have to admit that digital technology has been a major help in putting together presentations using photography, particularly from a standpoint of the versatility of image editing software. I recently took a 35 year old slide program, scanned it to digital images, cleaned up all the dirt and scratches, and then rebalanced the images to closely match the Ektachromes and Kodachromes. Having this capability is a tremendous step forward, and considering that some of my old Kodachromes are now approaching their 45th birthday and look nearly as good as when I shot them, going through the slides and converting them to TIFF files should keep me busy for a long time.

 #236402  by EdM
 
I have been primarily digital for almost ten years now. While I would rather use the 4x6 Bronica (more fun), history has that I just don't, and there it sits...All 35mm cameras are gone, along with the 4x5 graphic to the local school, the enlargers go next... I have almost 50 of the 80 or 140 slide carosels, sitting on the shelf, along with boxes of prints.
THE GREAT THING ABOUT DIGITAL is that I have a 300gig EXTERNAL hard drive, and I can broze thru my old photos EASILY and I have set up the "folders" by date, and if a photo fits a special catagory (trains) well, I copy it to that folder also. The external hard drive, about $200, plugs into the usb port and is very very transportable from computer to computer.(and much smaller than one carosel ).. Life has become a great slide show with the digital access. They are easy to access, move and file and I don't hafta get offa my butt to change carosels. That alone makes digital by far, the winner... And when I get the bux, I will back up everything on the 300 gig drive on another, and if the house catches fire, the drive goes with me... The next project is to go thru the carosels and get the best slides over to digital, then sell the empty carosels... Nothing is as constant as change... Ed