In the first and second posts on my series of Digital Photography Myths, I discussed two of the greatest myths I regularly see with digital photography: Myth #1 – Digital Photography is Cheaper Than Film and Myth #2 – Digital Photography is Easier Than Film. The fact is, I disagree with both statements and belive they are both myths. If you’d like to know why, I suggest you take a look back of the previous articles. In this article I’m address the myth that digital photography is faster than film.
Of course, “faster than” is a relative thing. There’s no arguing that plugging a digital camera directly into a printer (e.g. PictBridge) is extremely fast. But, I’m not addressing the consumer aspects of at-home printing. Rather, I’m talking about the process of actually taking photos, processing/editing them and creating real prints using a process that exposes light sensitive paper and runs it through a chemical process, not one using an inkjet printer. The output from an inkjet printer is not a “photograph”, it’s a high resolution printed picture.
So, as I’m sure you’ve now quickly surmised, the process to create a photo from a developed film negative or processed digital file is the same. Once they’re both given to the lab, the time until the final print is in your hands is practically the same. If you go to a 1-hour photo place, you’ll get your prints in an hour; film or digital. Likewise, if you send them off in the mail to a lab on the same day, you’ll get the prints back in the mail … on the same day. Similar processes give you similar results. Clearly, the difference is in the process of taking that actual photo and getting it ready to give to a lab.
In the film world, the process was quite straight forward. Simply shoot a roll of film, rewind and remove it from the camera when the last exposure is taken, hand the roll to the guy behind the counter and the photo lab and wait for prints. However, now you have a computer to deal with. As I mentioned in my post regarding the myth that digital is easier than film, it is up to the photographer to white balance, color balance, crop and sharpen each photo. If you are shooting in a RAW format, the above steps are mandatory. Even if you are shooting your images in JPEG format, you still need to crop and sharpen each photo for optimal results.
On top of that, there’s the time to download the images from your camera’s SD/CF card, sorting through the digital “negatives”, cataloging and renaming them so you can find them again later, making a backup, etc. All of these take time. Once you get the prints back, you’re still going to review them in detail (whether digital or film) and separate the “keepers” from the “tossers”. Sure, you may have more “tossers” with film at that point, but pulling out photos once they’re printed is a quick process.
The point of all of this is that digital really isn’t any faster than film. I’m putting far more time into post production than I did with film. People expect instant results, but there are so many new steps the photographer must go through that don’t directly correlate to film, film really has digital beat. The color/white balancing and exposure adjustment steps existing in the film world, but it was up to the lab to take care of it for you when they developed the prints.
Even with all that, I’m a control freak with the photos I take. I want the absolute best for my clients! Digital allows me the creative freedom to create exactly the type of heirloom they deserve. But, let’s face it, the process is slower than it ever was with film.
What are your thoughts?
i’m with you on this one, brother…
Don’t get me wrong … I love digital. However, it seems like I spend 4x as much time “processing and backing up” images than I do taking them.
You’re entirely calculating the time as the time you personally spend on the process – not the time between taking the shot and getting the output. And I think that is the important part when you’re talking about time. Sure, more of YOUR time is spent. But less time is spent overall.
The other big speed benefit is not having to change film rolls. Admittedly, photographers who learned their craft on analog tend to shoot far fewer frames. But as a digital photographer, I shoot massive frames – and I often enough get cool results that I couldn’t plan for if I tried. If I shot 1000 frames in 2 hours at the park on film, I would have had to manually change a magazine perhaps 10 times?
You’re right, I am. Time is money. I’m going to pay a lab to create the prints whether I take the photos via digital or film. It’s a constant for me. However, digital photography requires more of my time in the creation of a finished product.
I find myself wondering if there is a market for ‘digital photo lab’ – where somebody goes through your shots and does for them what they would have done for them if they were on analog film.
What a telecommuter job.