Digital vs Analogue

[crashedman]

Hello all,

How many people believe that digital cameras will eventually replace analogue cameras?

I'm thinking of trading in my analogue camera for a digital one, but am interested to find out whether they are really worth the time and effort? On the plus side, I think one can save a lot of money on film and the use of hazardous chemicals used in conventional film developing as well as computer enhancement programmes virtually eradicating the need for enlargers, and manual hand tinting.

What does everyone else reckon? What digital camera brands are the best, and which ones are best to be avoided at any cost?



Crashedman

 

[VWPETE]

Hello all,

How many people believe that digital cameras will eventually replace analogue cameras?

I'm thinking of trading in my analogue camera for a digital one, but am interested to find out whether they are really worth the time and effort? On the plus side, I think one can save a lot of money on film and the use of hazardous chemicals used in conventional film developing as well as computer enhancement programmes virtually eradicating the need for enlargers, and manual hand tinting.

What does everyone else reckon? What digital camera brands are the best, and which ones are best to be avoided at any cost?



Crashedman

I belive they are worth it. I got my first digital camera this last christmas in order to take pictures of the get togethers and stuch. ive taken about 2000 pictures from the day i got it with only spending about $350 usd ( camera, NMH batteries, bigger memory card )

Digital is a good way to go but you have to spend a bit of money to get rolling, there are alot of little things that make having a digital camera a whole lot better. rechargable or spare priority battery, more memory...buy a bigger memory card. ( the more mega pixls a camera is the more memory you will need to buy)

that said i don't beleve digital will over take film in a long time...at least not for the average joe. really expencive digital SLR camras are great but carrie a big price tag.

If you really want to get one i will recomend the brands i feel are the best when it comes to digital camreas...other may differ in opinion but these truly are were its at
-Nikon
-Canon
-Olympus
-Kodak( good point and shoot cameras )

i feel if your going to step into the digial camrea world you should just do a cannon ball....spend over $250 usd and get a good camera you will be happier and it will pay its self off. if you want to read some reviews go to www.steves-digicams.com there is some good info an what direction you may want to go....but if this is of no help get what you like and are comfortable with.

 

[Mr Hako]

Without a doubt, digital will replace film. I think, already, that digital cameras outsell film cameras.

But that still beggars the question, 'What is best?'. It all depends on the quality you want, and how much you want to spend. At the moment there are no consumer digital cameras that surpass the quality of 35mm film. But it's not that far off. The new Olympus E-1 is absolutely superb, and the technology used will allow consumer cameras with 40+megapixels very soon. My business still uses film, but I will be getting the next generation Olympus digital technology.

However, if you want to rival the quality of medium format film, you're going to wait a looong time. As for large format - wait till NASA markets their 400megapixel cameras.

 

[koppee1]

That link given above is a good link which was one of the sites I used to research on what camera to buy. I also think that digital cameras will eventually replace film. Maybe not really soon...but eventually. Once I got my digital camera (an Olympus c-740z), my Canon SLR was never used again....hehe.., well, my brother in law borrowed it for a trip to New York so I guess it's still being used. Just remember, with film cameras, you buy one, you can probably use it for years and years and years....i even know some people using 10-15 year old SLR cameras. And the pictures come out reletively similar to pictures taken with modern SLR cameras. But with digital, technology is improving still, and a camera you buy now might be outdated in a couple years or even less.

 

[Mr Hako]

it's interesting that you think 15 year old cameras give "reletively similar" results to modern cameras. The biggest advance has been in automation (auto exposure, auto focus, flash etc.) rather than in image resolving quality.

I'm a professional photographer; the lenses on my 35mm gear are 25 years old; and I haven't bought new ones, because the new ones aren't optically better.

What has changed, because of cheaper technology, is that there isn't such as thing as a bad camera now.

 

[michabo]

I've got the new Canon Digital Rebel, so I'm a bit biased, but digital is huge in the professional market and growing fast in the prosumer. My instructor is a magazine photographer for Macleans (sort of a Canadian "Time" or "Newsweek") and everyone is digital. Virtually all news photography is digital now:

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7-6453-6821

From my perspective, I've found that I can take many, many more photos with digital and it really frees me to experiment. Plus, the instant feedback can be a lifesaver in tricky lighting situations.

Yes, I'm sure that my camera will be old news in five or ten years, but I've made my money back already and when I wish to enlarge a photo, it can go larger than I've ever wished. And I can do this all at home, without dealing with the frustration of labs.

From what my instructor says, if you already have an SLR, your next one will be digital. If you're looking at buying one now, he strongly recommends it (which I also endorse), but it's still not for everyone. Very, very soon though.

BTW: right now, the only obvious choices for digital SLR are Canon and Nikon, and Canon is still the only line with a prosumer digital SLR (though Nikon is coming out with their D70 soon).

 

[Mr Hako]

You're right - most (if not all) news and sports photography is digital nowadays. But that's because quality isn't an issue - speed is. Photos can be on a news desk seconds after the event.

But very few professionals would use a digital camera instead of their medium or large format gear. There are digital backs for large format cameras, but they cost a fortune. And the quality of large format film is peerless, so why they bother, I don't know.

I'd have to disagree that Canon and Nikon are the only digital SLRs worth getting. There will be a shift in technology very soon. Current SLR lenses are just not up to the job of resolving light onto a tiny CCD. They were designed for a different job - getting light onto a 35mm piece of film.

 

[koppee1]

yeah, I have an olympus digital point and shoot c-740z and it has taken over all of my family's picture taking needs. It used to be a Rebel 2000 but we've gone digital One thing I've noticed, most wedding photographers still use film cameras, but there are a few I've seen with digital ones....but probably around 90 percent or more use film.

 

[Piano Player]

Like digital music took over analog music, Digital photography will take over film. Someday (soon) it will all be cheaper, better, and faster. Film won't disappear (after all some photographers still use wet plates for the effect), but it will be like finding an LP.

 

[NerdySurfer/rick]

ya i know how you feel crashed man. i love my old old old canon f1 , you just cant beat the manual control and feel of the camera. but i also use digital because it is much less expensive. my advice: use a little of both, the new digital rebels are very nice : )

 

[PR1NCESSoftheK1NG]

undefinedi think digital cameras will somewhat eventually take over.. although, manual cameras usually produce better pictures
but brands such as nikon i believe are coming out with digital/manual cameras which cost big bucks but are probably worth it... prices may reach up to $1000+! if you have the money, GO FOR IT! =D
they'll eventually start bringing more of those out sooner or later and at cheaper prices. i'd wait if i were you. but i think you should stick with manual... =)
if you wanna go quick and easy, go for digital. but with manual, you have more control over the shot![/COLOR][/COLOR]

 

[Stonjie]

it comes down to personal preference.

I like manual cameras. They tend to carry a better weight when shooting. I want to tell the camera what to do, not the camera telling me what should be happening. My camera is older than I am, but still takes good photos. When you change over to digital you do away with a lot of equipment(if you want to develop yourself), but I personally would prefer to get my hands dirty (even with 'hazardous' chemicals)

I was told that analogue cameras have a general pixel number of 25 million. I don't know how true that is, so take it with a grain of salt

 

[datan]

I think digital will eventually replace analog.

but I'm just thinking of darkroom stuff, and whether such Photoshop can rival different darkroom techniques like burning/dodging, using different contracts filters, using different developers, warmtone/sepia/cool papers etc.

well okay I guess I'm really thinking in terms of black and white photography.

For colour photography I think digital is definitely the way to go.

 

[Mr Hako]

Datan, Photoshop can definitely do all of the things you listed; plus more.

As for the resolution of film compared to digital. You can scan a 35mm slide at 4000dpi. (more than this just enlarges the grain, not the detail; but some might disagree with this) This scan produces a file equivalent to 14 megapixels.

However, if you scan a 11x8 slide, you'd need a digital camera with more than 128 megapixels to capture the same detail. (These digital cameras do exist!).

Digital is getting better and better, and IT will replace film. Most new cameras sold are digital. Most (nearly all) professional reportage, news and sports photography is digital. Professional studio photographers are replacing their kit for digital. When a 11x8 piece of film costs a tenner it't easy to see why. It's getting increasingly difficult, if not impossible to source traditional (cibachrome) prints.

I still use film, but 90% of the time provide digital files to customers via a scan. Advertisers don't want slides anymore.

It's a shame, because regardless of quality, I like the "look and feel" of a traditional print.

 

[Extirpated Wildlife]

DELETED

I deleted what I said because i was wrong. I was reminded in my Camera Club what Photography is.

Photography is a language.
Its not much different than speaking English, except:
1) Photography transcends all language barriers.
2) It can be translated to mean as many different things as their are languages in the world.

What a photograph can capture, a movie can't.

For some photographs, like a picture of your bestfriend, has a much shallower meaning (in language) as a Ansel Adam photo, which for many can be almost emotional.

All photographs are a language, but how well you take a photo can be the difference between "DaDa" and "Romeo, Romeo".

 

[datan]

Datan, Photoshop can definitely do all of the things you listed; plus more.

As for the resolution of film compared to digital. You can scan a 35mm slide at 4000dpi. (more than this just enlarges the grain, not the detail; but some might disagree with this) This scan produces a file equivalent to 14 megapixels.

I disagree.
here's proof.

http://www.xs4all.nl/~bvdwolf/main/foto/scan/se5400/se5400.htm

there's a clear difference between 4000 dpi and 5400 dpi, espeically the bricks on the house.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~bvdwolf/main/foto/scan/se5400/se5400-5.htm

I'm eying the Minolta dimage 5400.

 

[Qyöt27]

I definitely think digital will eventually overtake analogue, but it's gonna be a long while.

I used to be avidly hard copy for the pictures we were using in my school's yearbook, while everyone else in the class was using the Olympus digital cameras that were being supplied to us (C-720 Ultra Zooms). Of course, this was a big disadvantage on my part because my little Pentax point and shoot couldn't keep up with them (while it can take excellent pictures with clarity and precise high resolution transfer when digitally processed to a CD-ROM, it suffers when the light is not-so-great to extremely poor). The digital cameras they were supplying us with didn't seem to have as much of a problem with the light unless it was dark in the room and a lot of light was shining through a nearby window. Looking at my yearbook, the pictures I took were great in terms of action, but severely lacking in terms of quality. I wished I had the foresight to use the digitals they had, and I wouldn't have wasted so much money getting the film rolls developed. Not saying this is the issue here, but for someone that doesn't have the money to shell out on an expensive analogue camera I'd much rather go digital and take pictures with that.

I also do quite a bit of digital video editing, and as an extra project for the yearbook's end of the year media show I decided to pull out some of my hard copy pictures from a few years back, scan them, and put them into the video. There was still a roll of film in my camera, and I got that digitally processed. The difference is quite large, even with the HP scanner we have at my house. Photoshop did help fix the scanned pictures quite a bit, but the ones on the CD-ROM were practically on par with the ones straight from the digital, but the color seemed strange, possibly how it was developed (is the film developing process aimed more at RGB or YUV? Or am I totally wrong in that respect?). Generally, the massive resolution of the digital images from the yearbook cameras was unneeded for the video, since we were editing in DVD-res dimensions. The pictures were about 2.5x to 3x larger than DVD-resolution, so doing a downsampling using a Bicubic or Lanczos3 resize wasn't going to hurt anything.

I think it's easier for me to have the images readily available and digital since the casual consumer analogue cameras my family have had so far are blown away by the quality of the Olympus digital that my parents are going to buy me for graduation.

 

[datan]

if you're going to go digital, you might as well splurge and get a dSLR.

 

[Mr Hako]

the examples of the brick house aren't that good - the photo is blurred (or the scans are) and the film stock is ****.

Kodak themselves suggest that you won't get more detail out of their hi-res slide film above 3600dpi

 

[Extirpated Wildlife]

Digital photos are a "one lense" process basically.
Analog photos are a "two lense" process.

When you take 35mm shots you take the photo with your camera(first lense). The film is then developed and then basically shot with another lense from film to paper.

Digital photos use only the lense on the camera. When you go to print, it transmits directly to printer from computer. This is why, IMO, Digital has a more alive look to them.