Vox Civitatis the New Colonist weblog
08/21/2004: "Digital Vs Film Photography"
Often those who love cities love to photograph them, myself included. A tour through the Photo Antiquities museum on Pittsburgh's East Ohio Street re-ignited a mental debate I have been having for some time. Should I switch to digital? So far the answer for me has been no. One reason for this is I want a print out of every picture and I don't want to do it myself. As digital photography progresses it becomes more clear that at some point the transition may be necessary. The price on digital prints is coming down, and it is nearing a comparable price to have digital prints made or film prints made (actually, digital should eventually cost less because there is no developing involved.)
As the tour guide at the museum pointed out, there are other reasons to fear the digital age, however. Giving an overview of the history of photography, the guide provided a sense of how long each technology lasted. Each of those left us with many examples, both as far as negatives and prints. Most any existing negative can be printed today. More, each shot taken provides at least a negative for historians like those at the museum to dig through.
With digital photography, maybe ninety percent of shots are deleted. This eliminates any trace of the trial and error process of an artist. More, many of these photos may only last as long as the cd they are burned on lasts (less than ten years in some cases). Those that do get printed are not done professionally, creating physical images that don't last. If they are stored only on a hard-drive somewhere by some company that could go out of business at any time, well, the risk of losing the images is that much greater.
I asked if there will always be film. "Yes" was the reply. That may be true, but I wonder how long it will be until it becomes too expensive to use. Sooner or later I'm gonna have to switch and cough up the $1,000 or so for a good digital.
