Monument Valley, AZ
Film photography once ruled the world of picture taking, but with the advances in digital photography, it no longer dominates the world of quality photos. When digital photography first started, it could not begin to rival the quality of of even 35mm slides. If you wanted to get any decent level of quality from your pictures, it had to be with film, but as digital cameras have gotten more advanced and have dropped significantly in price in recent years, digital images are as good if not better than film. So good in fact, Kodak decided to quite making Kodachrome film because of the steeply falling market for film.
Digital Photography Advantages
One of the most convenient aspects of digital photography is the lack for rolls of film at different ASAs or ISOs. With a digital camera, you can now change the ISO before shooting each image, whereas before you had to rewind the film, take it out, and insert film with a different ISO, advance it to the next available unexposed frame and then shoot the picture. How archaic was that!
Most digital camera settings now are automatic, but you can still explore your creativity side and to change your shutter speed, aperture, white balance and ISO by changing settings on your digital camera. Memory cards have the unique ability to hold tons of shots, only to be replaced by another small card when the current one is full. This prevents the need to carry many rolls of film that are susceptible to light or heat damage during transport.
Printing Your Photos
When film was the standard medium of photography, darkrooms and photo labs were required to develop your film and print your pictures. Now, digital photography has given us the ability to print professional quality photos right from our printers at home. Of course, a photo-quality printer matched with the proper paper and ink is still required to create high quality results. While most of the editing was done in the darkroom when using film, and what you could edit was limited, all editing of digital images can be done with image-editing software right from your computer.
Instant Results
Digital cameras have removed the apprehension of waiting to view the shots you’ve taken until the roll of film was developed by allowing us to review images right on the camera’s LCD screen. Instead of filling a roll of film up with photos of unknown quality, unwanted image files on on your memory card can be deleted immediately and be retaken with a digital camera. And if a print is not actually required, the images you take can be shared instantly through e-mail and uploading.
While some photographers still prefer the traditional methods of film photography, digital photography has come a long way in eliminating the need for darkrooms, chemicals, light sensitive paper, and film. Developing your own images has become commonplace and in many cases, printing a picture isn’t required anymore to view and share it. It used to be that film provided the higher quality results, but with advances in digital sensors and lenses, the choice between digital and film is now more a matter of personal preference than it is quality.
