Digital vs. Film,not just a debate!

[cassandra_eye]

I am starting out in photography.I am pretty young and I have been pretty much

raised with digital.

 

I recently started a Photography I class.2 months before the class I decided to

purchase a Nikon DSLR D50 to get familar with all the setting and get some

experience on photography before the class began.To my surprise on the first day

of class we were told we needed a 35mm camera!

 

I think there are benefits to both film and digital,however,my teacher says

Photography classes(at my college) almost always deal with film and not

digital.I understand we needing to learn the basics,however now I am

frustrated.I am borrowing my dad's AE-1 35mm camera.Is it worthwhile to invest

in a nice 35mm camera?Or to just keep borrowing my dad's for the classes and

shoot mainly with my digital?I like my digital much better for various reasons.

 

In which instances is film better than digital?(and vice versa)Where does

digital lack that film doesn't?Can you learn photography properly with

digital?Do all photography classes use primarily film?Or is it just dependent

upon the teach and/or college?

 

I always ask too many questions,so please excuse me.

[Matt Laur]

<i>Can you learn photography properly with digital</i>

<Br><br>

Yes.

<Br><Br>

<i>Or is it just dependent upon the teach and/or college?</i>

<br><Br>

No, it's dependent on <i>you</i>. You'll need to do what the teacher says, when it comes to achieving that teacher's specific goals in that class, and the grades that go with it... but film vs. digital does not equate to a learn vs. not-learn situation, whatsoever.

[tomweis]

<p>Hi Cassandra. I work at a university and we feel that students benefit from doing

B&W darkroom work in the first class. It seems that the hands-on experience makes

them better photographers. However, there's no reason you couldn't learn

photography totally with digital because the instant image review is a great teaching

tool.</p><p>Many schools have abandoned darkrooms due to the perception that

"film is dead", and/or due to the expense and hassle of meeting EPA standards for

ventilation and hazardous waste disposal... so yes it depends on the school.

Fortunately, my employer dropped $400,000 on new darkroom facilities only a few

years ago. My colleague is convinced we did the right thing and feels that there is

actually a resurgence in the popularity of "traditional" processes.</p><p>You can

invest in a "nice" film body for cheap now... try keh.com</p><p>What does film do

better than digital? I would say that because film generally has a shoulder at the top

of its characteristic curve, it handles highlights better. If you don't know what that

means, ask your teacher. :-) </p><p>Try some Fuji Acros 100 B&W film. Great

stuff.</p>

[yann1]

I'd say, do what you're told by your teacher without trying to understand much about film/digital, when the time comes, you'll have a very clear idea about it, and about what you want and what you need. No need to be frustrated, you can still use the D50, and buy a Nikon film camera, you can use you lenses on both cameras then. Using a darkroom is very interesting.

[James G. Dainis]

It is probably easier and more intuitive to learn on an old film camera. There. are only three settings, ISO, shutter speed and aperture. You look through the viewfinder and as you adjust the shutter speed or aperture you can see the effect on the meter in the viewfinder. Once you have that down pat, it is easier to move to a digital with all the various option menus.

[don_e]

A manual 35mm camera is a common requirement for photography classes. The reason is that the cameras are optimized for setting 'by hand' the common functions that operate in all cameras including electronic film and digital cameras. So, they are great teaching tools.

 

The common functions are: the interactive relationship of iso, shutter speed, and aperture size; setting the focus where you want it; composing in the frame. The more electronics a camera has, the less attention the manufacturers have to pay to providing optimal tools for setting those manually. For example many manual cameras have bigger, brighter finders with better focusing aids than dslrs, which have autofocus, instead, even if they have a manual "mode".

 

It isn't a matter of digital vs film, but electronic vs manual. The manual camera is simply a better teaching tool for the basics of photography.

[spanky]

Pick up a medium format camera. I was in the same boat you are in now. I already owned a 35mm camera but after learning to develop and print b&w I bought an 2nd hand RZ67 ProII system rather then a DSLR or expanding my 35mm camera. Best move I could have made. However that's me, so you may want to give it some thought and even rent a 6x6 or (my suggestion) a 6x7 camera.

[alan_rockwood]

There's nothing wrong with the AE-1 camera. In fact it is a fine camera. Why not keep using it for your class, and then decide later if you want to buy a film camera. If you end up buying a film camera you might try buying one that is as close to your nikon digital as possible, just so it is easy to switch back and forth between the two.

[httpwww.someantyx.coma]

I'd say keep borrowing dad's AE-1. Film isn't as forgiving as digital and therefore an excellent teaching tool. Don't think that film is dead either, Like you my background is mostly digital but lately I have been picking up and using film and enjoying it. It can be challenging and rewarding in ways the Digital cannot. Now 35mm film probably not as rewarding as Medium Format film or Large Format film.

 

Each is a tool and used in the right manner can achieve spectacular results. Personally I think black and white with film still exceeds black and white in the digital world. That's my personal opinion and after delving into medium format film I'm glad I did. Lots of people will tell me I'm wrong which is ok, first this is art so its subjective there is no right or wrong. Secondly, you can show me the math, you can show me the technology that illustrates where digital outperforms film and by the numbers it does. But film has intangible qualities that digital lacks, which is ironic when you think about it, it should be the other way around! HA!

 

Learn first, then decide to toss the film camera for digital. Film is teaching me patience that digital cannot. Film is teaching me about budgeting because a piece of 4"x5" film costs $5 or more overall. Digital tends to lean to a rapid fire, quantity vs quality approach, shoot 10 shots, keep 1. I don't agree with that philosophy. Shoot 1 shot, keep 1 shot. I'm learning to be more prepared for the moment, right settings, right exposure, good composition, look at the scene, frame the scene in your mind, see the scene as over or under exposed in your mind. Digital doesn't really promote discipline like that, digital promotes trial and error, which is good too. But if you're at the Olympic games, its too late for trial and error. A diver isn't going to dive 5 times so you can get the shot just right. And photoshop is becoming a crutch for people that don't expose right or compose right. Photoshop is far too powerful to be used as just a crutch and fix mistakes that could have been done right 'in-camera' the first time.

 

Good luck and welcome!

C

[steve_dawson1]

It really doesn't matter whether you learn with digital or film since most of the issues are exactly the same, you know, angle of view, depth of field, what you focus on, where you point the camera and when you press the button.

 

But, unless you have a particular interest in film you may want to ask yourself how much time you want to put into learning about a medium which in your life is likely to be of largely historic interest.

[User_503771]

Film ain't dead yet, and who knows what will happen? Lots of pundits knew that Truman lost his election....

 

There are lots of art forms still around, have been for hundreds of years. I don't see why film would be any different.

 

Also, it still captures greater range and greater detail (at least in affordable cameras); of course the gap is closing.

 

But they are very similar, but not the same. You get different "look" and different sets of options.

 

Even if you stay with digital and don't pursue film much later, your knowledge of the *basics* of the photographic process will be superior because you've worked with film -- for all the reasons mentioned above and then some. You can see physically what happens with a negative or print when you under- or over-expose; you can't see that on the sensor in your digital camera, which also isn't very tolerant of over- or under-exposure.

 

Stay with it -- use your dad's fine camera or buy a Nikon for the lens mount compatibility -- study well, and your photography will be all the better for it.

 

And above all, have fun!

[stwrtertbsratbs5]

"Film isn't as forgiving as digital and therefore an excellent teaching tool."

 

Negative film is actually more forgiving than digital. Slide film, on the other hand, is not forgiving. So shoot some slide film if you really want to learn to nail exposures.

[johan_de_groote]

With digital it would end up learning to use a particular camera. With the film camera there are only 3 settings and they are all the same whatever camera (within reason) you take. So it makes it easy to explain "iso" to a group of students. If they would all have a different digital camera it would be a mess. Once you get the concepts you can figure the digital camera out yourself (with the manual).

 

Same as learning Word vs learning to process text.

[hillary_charles]

My high school physics teacher forced us to learn how to use a slide rule (remember those?) even though we all had our own calculators. He insisted that doing the computations manually would give us a "fluency with numbers."

 

I feel the same way about learning photography on a film camera. You'll develop a fluency with the imaging process that will carry you through any aspect of photography later on.

[charles_stobbs3]

You do computations manually with a paper and pencil or a stick and some sand, not with a slide rule. A slide rule is really a wooden calculator.

[matt_needham]

>"I am borrowing my dad's AE-1 35mm camera.Is it worthwhile to invest in a nice 35mm camera?"

 

The AE-1 is a great camera for Photo 101, but if you really wanted to get something newer/fancier then most 35mm SLRs are going dirt cheap.

 

>"In which instances is film better than digital?(and vice versa)Where does digital lack that film doesn't?"

 

Digital requires electricity to make the exposure. For very long exposures like several hours in some situations a fully mechanical film camera might be more convenient.

 

Right now film gear is a great value, while digital tends to be expensive. For under $1000 you could buy everything you need to shoot 4x5 film. To get similar potential quality with digital (in a single exposure) today would probably cost well over $20,000. Of course once upon a time 250 gigabyte hard drives were $25,000 too. ;)

 

>"Can you learn photography properly with digital?"

 

Absolutely, it probably goes much faster with the instant feedback. But give your teacher a chance. The important fundamentals are the same whichever process you are using, and what makes a good photo has a lot more to do with the photographer and subject than gear and process. You'll get a different photography teacher someday who prefers to teach using digital. In the meantime you can apply what you are learning with film for the class to your personal digital work. It's good to learn different things. I prefer digital now, but film is good stuff too. I learned a lot using it.

 

>"Do all photography classes use primarily film?Or is it just dependent upon the teach and/or college?"

 

It's starting to change, but new digital photography labs full of computers and Adobe Photoshop are expensive. They paid off the wet lab 30+ years ago so many photography departments are still working mostly with film.

 

By the way, if you want to take some classes that will really help your photography take Design and Drawing 101. These classes are all about learning to see, composition, color, and how the 3D world renders in 2D. It doesn't matter if you can't draw, you'll still learn to see in a way that's invaluable for a photographer.

[marc_bergman1]

One great thing about taking a class like this is that you learn about the process from start to finish. You learn about film selection, composition, exposure, development, and printing. Once you have learned about and can control this process, you can apply it to your digital imaging.

 

One of the hardest things to teach digital newcomers is understanding image making as a series of connected steps. Each one leads to and affects the next step and the final output.

[a._valerio]

What I am about to tell you might sound unrelated to your question, and I may be beaten for saying it. However, it is the truth as I have learned it over the past 11 years. Not that long ago, I was in a similar position as you are now, just starting out and trying to learn photography. The main difference was that 10 years ago, digital was still new, primitive, and relatively weak (for the money you couldn't get a good digital camera like you can today).

 

So I used a Canon AE-1 and learned using film. Today, I use both digital and film, but am primarily film-based and still exploring. I just recently took a course on color photography (my first course in photography). In it, we shot color film and learned to make prints on a color enlarger in the dark. So that is my background.

 

Here is what I learned: photography is NOT about the technique or the equipment. I chose those words carefully. Yeah, technique and equipment can be crucial to a greater or lesser extent, but again, it's not ABOUT the technique.

 

I spent over a decade focusing on technique. It was all I knew, and every book, magazine, and website steered me in this direction. It was fun to learn how to do everything, but not too long ago, I felt like something was missing. There was a void in my pursuit and I wasn't sure what to fill it with.

 

Finally, at the urging of my photography teacher (the course was only several weeks long) I stopped focusing so much on technique, and started focusing on trying to create meaningful photographs instead. The technique I already knew turned out to be crucial, so I am not saying to ignore technique. On the contrary. Learn as much technique as you can, and practice it! But technique is a servant of art; it is not an end in and of itself, to be used for its own sake. It's designed to be used subconsciously to help you transfer your vision to a print. This is the experts actually mean when they say "learn as much technical stuff as quickly as possible and then forget it all".

 

I turned out ok, but only because I saved by a well-meaning soul before it was too late. I finally saw the light. In fact, I now see light, color, depth, texture, and can sense time whereas before I saw everything in two dimensions, with subdued color, and horrible timing. I already had the technical grounding and just needed a push. If I were doing it all over again, I'd focus on BOTH technique and art concurrently, right from the beginning.

 

What the heck does this very personal story have to do with digital versus film? My advice is to go with the flow and use whatever is available. Don't agonize over which is better when; just use them and experiment. Know how to use the camera so well that it "disappears" while you shoot (so that you can react sunconsciously and quickly).

 

I could get into a technical discussion about the merits of digital versus film, but that would tire me out. I just want to go out and make meaningful pictures that tell a story, teach us a lesson, or provide us with an intimate look at what's out there.

 

By the way, I ask lots of questions too, sometimes to the point of tiring people out. There are never too many questions...it's just that sometimes the answers are actually already inside of you and you didn't even know it.

 

So yeah, use the D50, use the AE-1, but most importantly, have fun and give yourself up to the flow of life.

[nolan_ross]

The Canon AE-1 is perfect for your class providing it works properly. Photography has many faces and your B/W film class is one of them. Enjoy the class and do a great job. The darkroom should be especially fun for you. I am sure the class will change your view of photography and you will for sure learn great things.

[dave_redmann]

As long as a camera lets you manually control the shutter speed, aperture, and (for a digital camera) sensitivity, you can learn the basics with either. Digital gives you more instant feedback, more ultimate control, and less cost of experimenting. That said, a good argument could be made that the best student camera for an intro to photography class would be an inexpensive old 6x6 TLR loaded with Tri-X--it would <I>force</I> the student to think about aperture and shutter speed, and would encourage a slower, more contemplative approach (and of course encourage patience).<P>

 

<I>In which instances is film better than digital?(and vice versa)Where does digital lack that film doesn't?</I><P>

 

<B>Negative (print)</B> film is better than any affordable digital at handling subjects with extreme contrast. Digital images are substantially more likely to contain relatively large areas burned to white and utterly lacking in color or detail. That's film's only remaining clear advantage. Digital clearly delivers more accurate color (especially under other than open sunlight), less grain/noise, and more control via the digital darkroom than could ever be done in a conventional wet darkroom.<P>

 

However: (1) <I>I</I> can probably get better black and white results with film than I can with digital, but that is probably mostly a function of my relative inexperience with digital B&W conversions, and my lack of a good B&W printer (or willingness to spend big bucks for prints from a place like Elevator Digital). (2) If you want prints larger than 11x14, you can get good ones with a film rig that is much cheaper than any digital rig of comparable quality. You can buy a very nice medium format film system from KEH.com for under $300. I recently bought a perfectly serviceable 4x5-inch (film size) monorail film view camera with a decent lens for $140 on eBay (and no, contrary to a previous post, the film is not $5 a sheet; B&W is about $1 and color about $2, although I pay $2 a sheet to have the color processed commercially). Either can destroy my 6MP DSLR in terms of fine detail on a large print.<P>

 

<I>With digital it would end up learning to use a particular camera. With the film camera there are only 3 settings and they are all the same whatever camera (within reason) you take.</I><P>

 

In my opinion, that's nonsense. As long as you learn the effects of manually controlling the main settings, you learn almost the same things with either (with the possible exception of point-and-shoot digitals, which have very great depth-of-field at any aperture).<P>

[g._armour_van_horn]

My digital work is better as a result of having shot a lot of film in manual cameras. There are dozens, probably hundreds, of things I've learned to do in the past that I no longer do, but when dealing with even the best automated system it helps a lot to have done the same thing manually. Eventually the automatic camera lets you down, having done it manually gives you the background to solve the problem.

 

I don't know the AE-1, but I know it's a fine camera. My first choice for a student will always be a Nikon FM, but that's my bias. However, if you are going to stick with photography, and stick with Nikon, it makes sense to grab one. Then you can use a huge range of awesome, and now inexpensive, AIS lenses. They may not be usable on your D50, but they will work with the better Nikon digital bodies. (They will never autofocus, of course, but at least some metering modes are available.)

 

I will admit that I shoot far more digital than film right now, although I intend to go through at least a dozen rolls this month, but I just wouldn't sleep well if I didn't have my film bodies, and my manual-focus glass, as resources.

 

A full manual, or match-needle, 35mm camera is a great learning tool. If the school has a good darkroom, take advantage of it.

 

Van

[JDMvW]

It's like learning seamanship by starting on a sailing ship. It couldn't do any harm, but it's getting rarer all the time. Anyway, you can get some decent 35mm cameras for less than $30. I don't know what the Nikon equivalent of the Canon EOS 650 is, but you can probably find something that will interchange lenses with your D50--and it will be a nice backup too.

[JDMvW]

I meant to add, that the AE-1 is a fine camera, if your Dad's willing for you to use it. Its only catch is that it doesn't interchange lenses with any modern Canon camera, but if you already have a lens for it, fine. The benefits of learning on film will not be specific to make of camera.

[lorriman]

I also have found film to accelerate my learning, simply because it is expensive and I am forced in to a serious discipline of careful thinking, and careful examination of pics I wish to reproduce myself.

 

The reason I went for film is to get the best bokeh (background blur) for my people pics at the cheapest price. Good bokeh lenses for digital cameras are outrageously expensive. But you can pick up a very decent manual focus 135mm f2.8 for no more than $40 if you are willing to look.

[hillary_charles]

"You do computations manually with a paper and pencil or a stick and some sand, not with a slide rule. A slide rule is really a wooden calculator."

 

Okay Charles, then we shall dispense with any camera, and just draw pictures! You understood my analogy.