Digital vs. film

[ifics 0]

I have seen some debate on this subject. I have read some places that film (depending on camera/film/lens) takes better quality photo's, the colors are more vivid. Is this the case?

[quade 4]

Although the two are similar they really are two different animals.

The question of which is "better" depends on what you mean by "better" and what it is you're trying to do.

At this stage, neither could truly be said to be more "vivid" since both are usually only a single step in the process of creating a final image, unless you're talking of using transparency (slide) film and viewing it directly.

That said, because of a number of reasons, most news and magazine photographers have made the switch to digital.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[ifics 0]

I C, after the picture is taken I guess the quality would depend on the development and scanning process for the film as well as the type of camera/lense you use. I will stick with digital, I was just curious. I am just starting out with all this.

[blazetailman 0]

Well said Quade........

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[murrays 0]

Blake,

I bought myself a Nikon film scanner (Coolscan IV) a while ago with the intentions of digitizing as much of my old slides, colour negatives, b&w negatives, etc, that I have accumulated since getting my first SLR in 1975. God it is a huge time consuming job.

The time spent scanning is considerable..add to that the time sorting through boxes of slides, binders full of slides and negatives, the time in Photoshop spent fixing the inevitable damage that happens to negatives and slides. (I'm pretty surprised as most of these negs were put into sleeves right after processing.)

Stay with the digital....it is far easier to catalog/organize your shots and as long as you are fastidious about making backups of your backups your shots will be as pristine in 10 years time as the day you took them.

The flexibility of a digital photo is awesome....for me, using iPhoto on my Mac, within instants of having taken the shot, I can:
- print a copy on my inkjet printer
- e-mail the photos
- add them to a slideshow to watch onscreen with any music I have on my computer
- order prints on-line
- put them into a book, order it online and have it delievered in about a week,
- upload them to my .mac homepage
- create a .mac screensaver that other Mac users can subscribe to
- put them on my desktop
- export them to a Quicktime file
- export them to a webpage other than my .mac homepage
- export the files in smaller sizes, same size, etc.
- burn them to a cd or DVD as a datafile
- export them to a DVD as a slideshow

.....all with a couple of mouse clicks. It sure makes it easy to share your photos
If you're starting now, I think you're getting in at a very good time...the quality for an affordable price is there, and the computer storage and manipulation costs are low.

Enjoy your photography!!

--
Murray

"No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey