Digital versus Film

I get asked many times if I take film pictures ... or not ... and why I like digital.

I took my last serious film photo on the top of the Seattle Space Needle on July 17, 2003.

It was memorable for two reasons. One - it was a rare day in the Pacific Northwest when you could see all three mountains from the top - Rainier, Hood and Olympus. This was my third trip to the Emerald City and the first time we had the visibility to see one, much less all three. Reason two - I was interviewed about being a tourist in Seattle and it was featured in a front page article on Sunday, July 20, 2003 edition of the Seattle Times. Okay, I've taken film pix using those Kodak underwater cameras since then, but those pix of "The Mountains" were the last photos on film with my Canon A-1.

No, I don't take film photos anymore. But that being said, I know that my 35 years of taking film pix up until 2003 (i started with a Kodak Instamatic and black and white film in the 1960's) gave me a tremendous background to go forward in digital. I, and many others of my generation, know the things we had to go through in taking film pix. We learned bracketing, over and under exposure, pushing ASA, and other tricks and tips. All of those elements combine to help me take better digital images. We couldn't see our immediate outcome and only had to guess we were doing the right thing to get a good photograph.

This doesn't mean you have to know and understand all of those items. But taking pictures is like anything in life - the more you know about what you are doing, the better you are going to be.

Why do I like digital? I like the immediate feedback. I can look in the viewfinder and tell how I need to adjust my exposure to take a better picture. I can see if someone's eyes were open or closed. I can tell if the flash was too strong or not enough. I can see mergers, lack of focus, and camera shake.

I don't have to worry about running out of film. I have a 16 GB class 6 HCSD card for my Canon XSi. At 12 megapixel resolution, that will give me about 3,000 pictures. If you drop your resolution to 6 MP .,.. which will be good enough for 4x6 standard prints and anything you want to post on the web, you'll be able to snap 8,000 images. I have two 16 MP cards and two 4 MP cards. I'm set. If you're using a smaller capacity card and you "run out," then you can go back and delete pix to make room. That's NOT something you could do with film.

Another reason I like digital is that you can change ISO and white balance from frame to frame. Again. that is NOT something you could ever do with a film camera. Shooting film, you were stuck with 200 Daylight, 400 Black and White, or 64 Kodachrome for 20 or 36 exposures. It's one of the reasons we had two (or more) camera bodies - for the different kinds of film. Now, if you are shooting in the State Capital in Austin (as I was recently), you can set you white balance to incandescent, then florescent lighting(depending on the room you're in) ... and when you go outside, you can shoot the building in full sunlight and take pictures of statues using the shaded sunlight white balance settings - changing your white balance (and even your ISO settings) from frame to frame to frame.

You don't have to have a mid-level or high end Digital SLR to be able to do this. Most digital cameras allow you to change ISO and white balance (if you read the manual or have someone show you how).

So point, frame, click ... check it ... and take a better photo!