{"id":392,"date":"2009-09-02T18:50:27","date_gmt":"2009-09-02T22:50:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paulmanoian.com\/photography\/?p=392"},"modified":"2009-09-02T18:50:27","modified_gmt":"2009-09-02T22:50:27","slug":"digital-photography-faster-film-myth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.paulmanoian.com\/photography\/2009\/09\/digital-photography-faster-film-myth\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Digital Photography Faster Than Film?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the first<\/a> and second<\/a> posts on my series of Digital Photography Myths<\/a>, I discussed two of the greatest myths <\/strong>I regularly see with digital photography<\/em>: Myth #1 – Digital Photography is Cheaper Than Film<\/a> and Myth #2 – Digital Photography is Easier Than Film<\/a>.\u00a0 The fact is, I disagree with both statements and belive they are both myths.\u00a0 If you’d like to know why, I suggest you take a look back of the previous articles.\u00a0 In this article I’m address the myth that digital photography is faster than film.<\/p>\n

Of course, “faster than” is a relative thing.\u00a0 There’s no arguing that plugging a digital camera directly into a printer (e.g. PictBridge) is extremely fast.\u00a0 But, I’m not addressing the consumer aspects of at-home printing.\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0 The output from an inkjet printer is not a “photograph”, it’s a high resolution printed picture.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Once they’re both given to the lab, the time until the final print is in your hands is practically the same.\u00a0 If you go to a 1-hour photo place, you’ll get your prints in an hour; film or digital.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Similar processes give you similar results.\u00a0 Clearly, the difference is in the process of taking that actual photo and getting it ready to give to a lab.<\/p>\n

In the film world, the process was quite straight forward.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 However, now you have a computer to deal with.\u00a0 As I mentioned in my post regarding the myth that digital is easier than film<\/a>, it is up to the photographer to white balance, color balance, crop and sharpen each photo.\u00a0 If you are shooting in a RAW format, the above steps are mandatory.\u00a0 Even if you are shooting your images in JPEG format, you still need to crop and sharpen each photo for optimal results.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 All of these take time.\u00a0 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”.\u00a0 Sure, you may have more “tossers” with film at that point, but pulling out photos once they’re printed is a quick process.<\/p>\n

The point of all of this is that digital really isn’t any faster than film.\u00a0 I’m putting far more time into post production<\/span> than I did with film. People expect instant results, but there are so many new steps the photographer<\/span> must go through that don’t directly correlate to film, film really has digital beat.\u00a0\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Even with all that, I’m a control freak with the photos I take.\u00a0 I want the absolute best for my clients!\u00a0 Digital allows me the creative freedom to create exactly the type of heirloom they deserve.\u00a0 But, let’s face it, the process is slower than it ever was with film.<\/p>\n

What are your thoughts?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 The fact is, I disagree with both statements and belive […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[36,42,1088,52,1086,43],"sp_smart_badges":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-392","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-discussion","7":"tag-digital","8":"tag-dlsr","9":"tag-how-to","10":"tag-myth","11":"tag-photography","12":"tag-point-and-shoot","13":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Paul Manoian","author_link":"https:\/\/www.paulmanoian.com\/photography\/author\/manoian\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paulmanoian.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paulmanoian.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paulmanoian.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paulmanoian.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paulmanoian.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.paulmanoian.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paulmanoian.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paulmanoian.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paulmanoian.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392"},{"taxonomy":"sp_smart_badges","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paulmanoian.com\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sp_smart_badges?post=392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}