Is Digital REALLY Better than Film Part 2

Last time I discussed some reasons why shooting and printing with film can offer tangible advantages. Sometimes digital ISN'T as good as film.

Now it's time to get real. I contend that for almost ALL of us, almost all of the time, digital really is the way to go.

We all like to talk about "the old days". I, myself, am one of the worst offenders. I miss my Kodachrome slides and the excitement of receiving the "little yellow boxes". I miss the wonderful old cameras, the wonderful old darkrooms. I miss the mystique, the ceremony and the ALCHEMY of it all. Damn it. I miss the MAGIC. But perhaps what I really miss are the times that went with it. Maybe I just miss my youth or the traditional skill set.

"Here am I. I spend a lifetime learning the craft of traditional film photography. Along comes digital and any idiot with a computer, after five minutes on "Photoshop Elements", is better at image making than I am. My life has no MEANING anymore. It is just not fair."

Ring a bell? Be honest. Yes I thought so.

There are people that will tell you that film derived prints just plain LOOK better. They'll tell you that the COLOUR is better - or more natural or more vivid or more romantic or somehow less clinical. The fact is that many old diehards don't WANT digital images to be better, just like they didn't want flat screen TVs to be better than CRT screens or CDs to be better than vinyl records or jet planes to be better than propeller ones or "talkies" to be better than silent movies.

Someday we'll be hearing how petrol engined cars were better than these new fangled hydrogen fuel cell ones. 2D television sets were better than 3D ones or 3D with the old glasses was actually better than these "new" spectacle free 3D ones. etcetera, etcetera, etcetera yawn.

Lets pollute this discussion with some hard facts.

Colour fim emulsions were fixed to a particular colour temperature totally ignoring the fact that effective white balance changes with the seasons, the time of day, the atmospheric conditions and whether I had porridge or corn flakes for my breakfast. When we wax lyrical about the glory days of Fujichrome Velvia or Ansco or Kodachrome II, we ignore the fact that these films could only ever give an approximately accurate colour balance for any given circumstance. In reality, what we REALLY miss is one particular flavour of visual DISTORTION that one brand of film might once have offered compared with another.

The fact is that with digital imaging we can ultimately have any colour we want. It can be accurate or saturated or warm or cold or rosy or tinted or none of the above ... or any combination of the above or any graduated VARIATION of the above.

Furthermore the effective ASA rating of film would vary as rolls of film got older. We could "nail" the exposure settings for a particular shot only to EVENTUALLY find that dated emulsions would underexpose the picture. If a particular roll of film was loaded into our camera, we were stuck with the characteristics of that emulsion until the roll was used up - fast or slow, fine or grainy, warm or cold, daylight or tungsten light balanced, colour or black & white. People would wander around with multipe cameras in great discomfort just in case one needed to shoot with a film having different features.

Using digital, accurate sensitivity settings and any OTHER image characteristics can be varied between individual shots and the eventual result previewed on the spot. Shot one can be a superfast grainy black and white documentary style image. Shot two might be an exquisitely fine grained still life image. Shot three can be a fast moving glimpse of a championship volleyball match etc etc.

How can the results from film POSSIBLY be better - when with digital imaging, the results can be anything we WANT or NEED them to be?

In the end, the proof of a pudding is in the eating. Every kind of photographer has better RESULTS under digital. Anyone can see it. What can possibly be better about a former system under which the final results WEREN'T as good.

Back when I was young I remember that every time I pressed the shutter release it represented 20 cents which was effectively the per unit cost of colour transparencies (film plus processing). I rationed my shooting by what I could afford. How can this situation POSSIBLY have produced a better result than one in which I can go on shooting from any angle, at any exposure etc without restriction?

At the end of the day, under digital, we KNOW we have the shot we want, or at least a shot close ENOUGH to what we want, prior to finishing the job back at the computer.

Digital imaging has given us so many advantages, it sometimes makes we wonder how we managed without it. Spoiled aren't we?