Digital Killed The Chemical Star
“Film is better than Digital. Period.” The Man says as he looks at my digital camera with disdain. “Film does a better job of capturing gradients, reproducing reality, and adding that wonderful old fashioned feel that only comes from real film grain.”
“I’m taking portraits.” I says as I position him for the next shot. “I use a five megapixel camera and don’t even shoot using RAW. The images are perfect for Assembly Line Portraits, we’re not going to be printing billboards here.”
“Pictures made with film are richer, cleaner, and just plain better looking.”
“Do you prefer the sound of an LP to a CD? Do you like the warm light of a candle better than an incandescent bulb? Did you ride here on a horse today or did you drive a car? In the end, it doesn’t matter if film is better than digital-once they stop making film, are you going to stop taking photographs?”
“They’ll never stop making film.”
My first camera was a box that used 620 film (still available online) and took fairly desent pictures-consistering I was a kid at the time and did good to load the film. That was a Medium format camera. One of the biggest screw ups Film Camera manufacturers would make over the next thirty to forty years was making the film smaller and smaller with each new ‘improvement.’ Disc film had a negative the size of a dime and the camera that was going to be the Be All End All (APS) film camera had a negative smaller than the already too small 35mm that had been the industry standard for decades.
My first digital camera was a Professional model that was One Megapixel, which took amazingly good photos which could be edited with the click of a mouse. It was a point and shoot that talked to the computer using a SCSI interface. The consistent trend in Digitial Cameras since then has been to have larger Megapixels, multible storage options, and simple interfaces that talk to printers as well as computers. My current digital camera is a prosumer model with a ten megapixel sensor, automatic adjustments for all lighting conditions, a dozen presets for things like Portraits and Night Skies, and the ablity to shoot video.
I haven’t used a film camera in close to ten years and dearly wish that I could revisit all the places I have been with a Nikon D70 in my hands.
There are still fans of film, still people who insist that they are just different mediums and should not be compared. Just as you can still have a portrait painted in oil or pastel, I think you will be able to have a portrait made with film-at least until they cease all film production.
I didn’t mourn the passing of my Atari 400 or that first digital watch that everyone seemed so crazy about. Nor do I wish to go back to the days of Gas Lamps or Barber Dentists who knew the best uses of a leech. But I do understand why the Old Guard loves film and why they’re wearing black armbands-change is never easy.
Digital has changed the way people make images-it’s cheaper, faster, and easier than ever. You don’t need years of training and equipment priced out of the range of the common person. Everyone is a photographer. Everyone owns a camera, a cell phone, and a computer. The great barreirs are gone. The cost of film, processing, and user error are no more. If you screw up an image, you can just snap another one instantly, whereas the Good Old Days made you wait until the film was processed to see that your thumb was in all the shots or that the sun caused lens flare and ruined all the pictures.
DSLRs have seamlessly replaced the long roll cameras of The Assembly Line Portrait studio-and the occasional newbie who would expose an entire hundred foot roll of film and ruin three days work. The newer, high end, digitial cameras have image quality that matches film and in some cases surpasses it. Newer cameras will only get better and whatever perceived advantage film now has will disappear completely.
In the good old days of Assembly Line Portraits-about ten years ago-the common practice was to send a Photographer to take the portraits and then send a Passer two to four weeks later to sell the images. It was not at all uncommon to have 10-20 percent of the people not return to view their portraits. It was also common for those that did return to see 10-90 percent of the images with eyes closed, the Photographer in the photo, someone with their mouth open, or something wrong with the film that make the images unsalable.
So yeah, film is still the medium of choice for the Ansel Adams-and those that think they are Ansel Adams-of the world. The Assembly Line Portrait Studio is digital and has been for years-the masters of cheap production would not have switched if it didn’t make them more money to do so.
I like going to Ren Faires and I like watching people make clothes, blow glass, and throw pots by hand-but if I need a window, a glass, or a bowl I don’t want to have to make it from scratch myself. I feel the same way about Photography-I used film when there was nothing else to use, and I will use digital until something better comes along.
I wonder how long it will be before we are taking Digital Holography Portraits?