Is Digital Really Better Than Film?!

As a photographer, I am constantly asked, “Aren’t you glad everything is so much easier with digital than with film?”

I usually just grin and nod, but the truth is, I’m not always so sure.  In terms of “ease” of taking lots of pictures, I believe digital beats film hands down.  However, in professional photography, there’s so much more to consider.

I’ve only recently converted to digital and sold my last film camera with all the accessories.  I probably would have done it sooner; however, digital quality has only started to rival film in the last few years.

While I enjoy the ability to instantly review shots for perfect exposure and depth of field, there just seems to be so much more to worry about with digital.  With film, all I needed was a few bodies, some lenses and I would be set for many years ahead.  I could just grab a pocket full of film rolls, shoot one, rewind it and start over with the next one.  But now, there’s a whole new set of things to consider including:  having enough batteries, recharging batteries, megapixels, pixel size/sensitivity/sharpness, sensor size, color accuracy, multi-gigabyte memory cards, multi-terabyte storage, multiple multi-terabyte backups, corrupt memory cards, camera burst rates, cleaning camera sensors, etc.

Ken Rockwell made have said it best with:

When you get back to your motel at the end of the day, you can just go to sleep. Your film is already in the can safe and sound. You’re done for the day.

You have no digital garbage to take out, like downloading, filing, cataloging, sorting, organizing, posting, backing-up, burning CDs or organizing.

You can get to sleep and get up refreshed, You’ll be out there the next day before dawn ready to shoot with open and excited eyes, which is what makes great pictures.

Night time is spent asleep, or planning tomorrow, not reviewing the day’s old photos. With film, we get to defer reviewing our images until we’re home and can enjoy them fully, and spend out time in the field on making photos.

With film, you can spend any motel time each night cleaning your cameras for a few minutes, researching tomorrow’s locations and activities, and getting to sleep.

With film, your entire nightly regimen is:
1.) Stow exposed film.
2.) Put new film in your photo vest (or camera bag).
3.) Clean your gear.
4.) Put all filters, lenses and caps back where they belong on your lenses and in your photo vest, so you know where it all is when you start out tomorrow. Just as digital cameras wind up set to ISO 1600 and blue (tungsten) WB at night unless you remember to reset them before morning, you’ll probably have your glass filters and lenses not where you expect them for dawn’s first shots.

Note that step 4 is the same for digital, except that there are far more settings on far more cameras to reset, and that digital shooters are usually too busy jacking on their computers to bother with step 3.)

Steps 1.) and 2.) take less than a minute, compared to the hours wasted by digital shooters downloading, jacking, backing and organizing files.

Ken’s comments may seem to come off a tad extreme, but he certainly has a point.  Still, for me, the biggest difference is the time spent after the shoot.  I never really realized it, but a photo lab can do a LOT of work for you in terms of color adjustment, etc.  However, when you shoot in a digital RAW format, all of the work lies on the photographer’s shoulders.  It is entirely up to them to handle the white balance, color balance, saturation, exposure adjustment … the list goes on and on!

So, which do you prefer?  Digital or film?  Why??