This weeks question is a simple one, but it is probably going to get the amateur photographers throwing their toys out of the cot in droves. Or will it?
It is my belief that the 35mm film for photography is dead, in a few years we will not be able to go into the shops and buy our ISO400, or ISO200, to pop into our point and shoot camera’s, indeed the cheapo all-in one disposable camera’s could also disappear off the shelves.
Sorry to say this but the world of photography is going digital, but how soon before we all have to go out and buy a new camera? Well let’s have a look…
Seven years ago I went to a photographer based on an offer given that would allow my wife to have a professional make-over and photo’s taken as part of a package, the photo’s were fantastic, we bought 5 or 6 small ones, 2 medium size ones and a large one for just over £200 ($390), we then had a package for our first child and we ended up spending nearly £500 ($970), over a period of two years on some fantastic photo’s of her, but we were limited to how many we could choose.
Last year, we again had photo’s done by the same company, but instead of photo’s we purchased the copyright and CD of ALL the photo’s taken, at a price of £120 ($230). Now not only could we copy the CD and send it to family, we could print out the images we wanted to as many times as we liked. The reason, well 7 years ago it was 35mm film, or whatever the photographer used. Last year it was digital photography.
Here are the results;
Since that time unfortunately the company we used has gone bust, due to the competition out there, but it just highlights the changes now in photography.
Prices of camera’s even 2 years ago were pretty steep for a 3 Mega pixel camera with optical zoom, nowadays you can pick one up for less than £100 ($200). The photographs taken were easily determinable from a good SLR camera, and you could only get at most 30 pictures stored.
Now you can store over 50 images even in the highest resolution mode, which on some cameras is 16 mega-pixels, such as the one in the image below. They also produce pictures even with the cheapest printer, that I would defy anyone to be able to tell the difference between digital and film.
The Canon -eos-1ds-mark-II
But arguably the BIGGEST most singularly important thing about the digital camera, is the ability to manipulate and share.
As I said with the CD we bought we could copy it and give it to friends. For film you had to identify on the negatives which photo you wanted to copy, and then get the photo copied from the negative before sending it to friends and family.
If a photo you took was pretty ropey you would have to take another of the same thing, and hope that that one turned out OK, you also never knew how the others were going to turn out. When you went on holiday, you would have to take rolls and rolls of film with you, and then bring it all back to be developed, which would cost a small fortune and the results were not all that great. Also, what a pain it was when the film ran out just at the wrong moment!
But with digital, you can take the picture, look at it, and if you don’t like it can delete it, no more double pictures! You can then change the brightness on it once you have it on the PC, get rid of those nasty red eyes, even delete from the picture the idiot that decided to walk across the fantastic view you were taking. You can even change the colours, rub out imperfections, in short do just about anything you like. Then store as many as 100 photo’s on a CDROM, or countless images on the hard-drive.
Now all this has to mean that film is dead, and when they have the technology (and it wont take long!) to have movies of the same quality as the current format, (in fact I think it is probably BETTER now)then film makers are going to save fortunes on the cutting room floor.
Yes folk’s film is dead, long live digital! Unless any of you photographers have anything to say?
By the way, I DO NOT have my own digital camera yet, my mum is ahead on that one. I have a cheapo company point and soot, but that is it. So the next thing on my shopping list is a digital camera.
I am available to test them for Kodak, Minolta, HP, Canon etc, etc, etc!
5 comments:
My family has been digital for awhile now. Both Mick and Kim have picture blogs with great pictures. It would be hard to do the blogs without the digitalness. When we went to Italy to visit Kim we had 5 cameras between all of us and we took over 3000 pictures, just thank of how much it would have cost us to get all that developed.
Good grief! That will fill their blogs for the next 5 years!
I reckon the progress of digital is brilliant having said that I have still got a Yashica camera with a roll film which is even earlier than 35mm!! I might take a photo of you one day! All your photos as a baby in Singapore were taken withit. Would you like a digital for your birthday? You choose. Love mumxx
When we went digital, I said goodbye to film forever. For many of us, it's so much easier to just point, shoot, look at the screen and decide whether you want to keep the picture or not. Digital photography has made the photography industry soar and everyone has photoblogs or shares their pictures now. But, on the other hand, though digital has so many great qualities, there are a few cons as well. There are a lot of photographers that live by film and feel as if in order for it to be true art, you need to use film, develope your negatives and dodge and burn your prints like they've been doing for almost a hundred years. I don't think film is dead by all means, but digital has made the ordinary user a much better photographer. There will be those that perfer film over digital. You can always scan in your print and make changes to it in a processing software just like a digital. There are several photo blogs I frequent that still use film for everything they do. It just takes more of an effort.
Another thing that is an issue is what happens when technology does away with those CDs you've stored your pictures on, or that hard drive is dead and you've not printed out your digitals.
I agree that digital will the process of choice by 95% of the photo taking population, but that film won't go away for awhile yet.
I'm not good at making photos.. But I agree, the digital ones are taking the place of the "old style"photos, also thanks to the fact u can see them immediately and print them on your own. I love photography -- and I just hope that the fact they're all in digital format won't ruin all. I like to see things the way they are, not the "photoshopped" version..
I changed the name of my blog: new address is still-havent-found.blogspot.com
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