[JohnR]

It used to be that you would take a roll of film, drop it at the one-hour place, go back and get it an hour later, and have nice prints and an envelope with negatives in it. For a few extra bucks, you could get them all done as 5x7's. Beaut

Now, with digital, it seems more like the following. To start with, you take way too many photos. A short walk last weekend with a friend, son, and new dog, yielded 200 shots. I mean, there's nothing to slow you down...

So that means the burden of sorting through them to get the ones worth printing. At least where I live, 200 shots costs between $60-100 to print... no thanks. Three hours of sorting and cropping later, you load up the USB drive and off you go...

And then, it always seems to take at least an hour to get digital photos printed, sometimes two -- hardly an advance over the old one-hour photo!

And finally (the killer), you have now to manage and archive all those digital files! Can't just fill up a box with envelopes of negatives any more. Cripes, I need a new disk drive already and I only bought the blinking DSLR last Christmas 

And so on. Jeez I sound like a cranky old bum don't I? I don't really mean to complain as I have got some great shots with this camera, but, I really do wonder whether convenience has advanced along with the technology. So what's your experience? How do you manage your digital photos??

[spudco]

I'm pretty negative about digital photography as well. 

I end up having to manipulate every picture I keep to insure proper color, cropping, etc.  Even though we own a fairly good digital camera, it still has a crap lens.  Our camera also has a slight delay when taking a picture and this often means that the moment is lost. 

As for using the pictures...


I hate cherry picking through the thumbnails to choose the ones to upload to the computer.

I can't remember when I had a picture that didn't require some manupilution to look good.

I like being able to send pictures to friends via email, but we always use low res files for this.

I hate trying to get pictures printed and my "photo" printer sucks (expensive to print, not great resolution, slow).

Once I move pictures to folders, I rarely look at them.  I just don't like showing folks picutres on a computer screen.

I miss building nice albums that include other types of media.

I really doubt anyone will find my hard drive or memory stick or a DVD in my attic 20 years from now and get excited because they found pictures of me...  Hell, I doubt any of our current digital crap will even be usable in 10 years.  On the other hand, I just sent a 1936 8 X 14 picture of my mother with her violin, her sister at the piano and my grandparents in chairs in their parlor to be framed...

[Thebiker]

Or you can buy a good digital camera, with good lenses and get good pictures with good resolution and proper color balance.  From the standpoint of cameras one thing hasn't changed.....you get what you pay for, just like audio .

You put a gig of memory into the camera before you start and you don't miss that spectacular shot because you just shot your last frame 2 minutes ago.  If you take a shot that didn't work the way you wanted it to....delete on the spot and move on.  Once you get home, dump it all to your hard drive and edit the shots that you want to keep, and delete the others.....cost $0, just a little of your time. Copy it from your HD to a CD or DVD, label it by trip or place and date, clear it off your hard drive and work from the CD whenever.

Get a good color printer, preferably one that uses 5 inks, not 3, it will give you better colors.  Good printers that will handle 11 x 14 prints can be had for under $300 and will pay for itself in a short amount of time if you do a lot of photography.  And don't skimp on the paper either, just like audio, the final product is a sum total of its parts.

I travel extensively on 2 wheels, primarily 2 lane blacktop and take a lot of pictures.  As digital cameras got better, I upgraded accordingly (hmmm, sounds just like audio  ) and at this point my cameras are a minimum of 6 meg, one with Leica lenses, the other is Nikon.

The only way I would shoot film at this point is if I was shooting large format for poster size prints.

[JohnR]

Um, the question was is digital really more convenient (than film was, not is now).

[mcgsxr]

NOT being a guy into photography, I find digital far more convenient.

I never owned a decent camera, I never took many photos.  In spite of that, I always found the process for taking pics, getting developed, storage etc a pain, even for my limited exposure (ooh, that was cheap!).

Digital.  I still don't own a decent camera (1st was a Nikon Coolpix 2100, now I have a Canon SD430).  I find it easy to point and shoot, has a great (read fast and multi-shot capable) kids setting so I don't miss the moment anymore, and I find that downloading to PC is simple, and I can immediately delete the stuff I don't like, and archive on 2 HD (one external backup) the pics.

For me, it is less about perfect shots, and more about simple timeline documentation for my kids.  It is underwhelming, the number of pics I have of my family from my youth.  It will not be the same for my kids.  Sure, 98% of those shots will likely only ever be reviewed by the fawning parents down the road, looking back at these times with rose coloured glasses, but I am sure a few of those shots will be valued in time, by my daughters.  Hopefully anyway.

They even get to monkey around with the retired Nikon, and take great delight in snapping off pics - OK, at their age (both are under 4) it is more about making the flash go off, but hey, it is cheap and fun!

So, for me, it is way more convenient, since I am able to see the pics immediately after shooting, and HD space is cheap.

[Thebiker]

Perhaps that was too much rambling....

Yes, I find it far more convenient for many of the points from my first response.  No running out of film.  No worries about airport screenings damaging my films.  Instantly knowing if a shot was good, nuking it if is not and being able to reshoot and not worry about wasting a frame of film.

I find being able to crop a picture to exactly what I want to be superior than trying to get someone else to crop it to suit me.

Being able to share a photo with a friend by e-mail is a nice & fun option.

A lot of my response was directed to the negatives from the previous posts and how to get around the cited complaints about the digital format from previous posts.

[JohnR]

Instantly knowing if a shot was good, nuking it if is not and being able to reshoot and not worry about wasting a frame of film.

I find being able to crop a picture to exactly what I want to be superior than trying to get someone else to crop it to suit me.

Point taken... both points!

[shep]

Admitedly there's something slightly magical about opening a photo album, but there's no way I would go back. There are fewer and fewer stores (at least in France where I live) that even do developing. Everything is shipped to a central plant. They throw everything in the same vat and couldn't care less how it turns out! (to say nothing of the expense) Unless you have your own darkroom, in a few years film on a roll will be a thing of the past. It's true that printing dig. pics is a fiddle,; at least you're doing it. I have photo albums from the 40's to the 70's and all the photos are either disappearing or have totally lost colour etc. This is the fault of the famous acid paper story. The only ones still nice were made in the 20's and 30's. I don't even mention the proplem of sorting and protecting negatives! There are cd's made for photo archiving that will last 50+ years supposedly. Dig. cameras are so good now that the issue of photo quality is a thing of the past. I guess i've made my point!

[IronLion]

Digital photography is, without doubt, more convenient.  You take a photo and instantly you receive feedback on how you framed it, how you exposed it, and what you could do better.  As both a tool for capturing moments and improving technique, digital photography cannot be beaten.  With popular websites such as Mpix being able to develop better-than-average photos simply by uploading them, color photo printers which are so-so in quality and a pain in the ass with regards to maintenance with all their inks, etc are best left alone.  The way I see it, the photo-taking process and the printing process are both much more streamlined than they are with film, which means, more convenient.  I am a professional videographer who makes my living with a camera, and the very first thing that got me into my job (I've been out of college for a year) was the convenience of digital: I bought my first digital camera in 2002 because I wanted to see what I took as soon as I took it, so that I could improve my technique as quickly as possible.  I improved it enough that I can now make a living with a camera, which is quite enjoyable. 

While I admittedly have no experience in a darkroom developing film, I do have experience bringing rolls of film to a photo lab in a strip mall, waiting in line, dropping it off, and then returning later to wait in line and pick up the developed photos.  With the instant feedback of digital photography and the ease of developing with online websites that will print and ship your photos to you, digital photography seems to me to be clearly more convenient than film.   

[Thebiker]

At one point I was running my own color dark room, my use only.  I found it to be a very satisfying process, creative as well as almost magical.  I run a large medical laboratory, so lab techniques come very easily to me.  However, getting the color balance perfect on a new lot of paper or chemicals could drive one to distraction, even using a good grey scale.

I'll take my $300 Epson color inkjet over my old Besler enlarger every time.  It's not as much of a challenge, but it makes printing real easy.

[TONEPUB]

Hey John you do sound a little cranky, but it's understandable.  Most people don't like to change the way
they do things.

I have to say though as someone who has earned a living with a camera most of their life, I can't imagine
ever having to go back and shoot film again. (haven't shot a piece of film for about 6 years now)

As the hardware keeps getting a lot better and easier to use, what we call "out of the box" color
is way better than it ever was, so blasting out a few good prints in a hurry is pretty easy
now.

As for archiving pictures, it's no worse than slides or negs and much less likely to be damaged by
heat, moisture, etc if you have properly backed them up.  I've had too much film destroyed over
the years to feel like that's a failsafe method either.

I used to really enjoy working in the darkroom, but these days I never have the luxury.  I keep
saying I'm going to go back and shoot some film to get that "analog" feel, but I never get around
to it.  I still think it's cool, especially in black and white, but too cumbersome.

Here's a hint though, with managing all those photos. 

Pick up a copy of Adobe's lightroom, or Appples Aperture if you are on a Mac.
This will allow you to sort through a lot of thumbnails in a hurry.

As for me, being an old school analog photographer, I still shoot like I'm shooting
film.  I go on an assignment or even shoot pics for fun and I shoot as if I had
three or four rolls of film in my pocket, just like the old days!  I don't come back
with 400 pics all the time!

You're right, all that sorting will drive you crazy!

Good luck!

[boead]

WOW, so many different ways of looking at things.

The number one thing that I LOVE about digital photography is the fact that I’m not limited in my photo taking. The odds of getting that great shot are many times greater. Why anguish over the trigger – it’s a horrible feeling.  I bought a 4GB mem card for my Canon. At 7MP, maximum quality JPEG I can shoot nearly 1300 photos.

Secondly, I don’t print anything. I hate paper photos. HiRes images on my 19” display is leaps and bounds better then a 5x7! And the pain of sifting through them is only hard on my fingertip and the space bar on my keyboard.

I recently found an old box of photos from the 70’s. Many are cracked and faded. The negatives curled and dry. I also found a large box of photos from the 40’s and they are mostly shot. With some scanning and many hours of retouching I can likely save some of them but most are horrible. Film emulation doesn’t last forever and its susceptible to all kinds of damage.

I buy special archival CDR’s. They are triple protected and use an emulation that is actually guaranteed by the manufacturer to last 100 years. It’s been said that its likely the discs will last a couple to several hundred years. I understand the warranty is silly and many of the newly marketed disc have dropped the 100 year claim but the point is clear. They will outlast many generations and that data can easily be transferred to other media as time passes.

Lastly, I can walk into a local drug store like a CVS and regardless of how many images I shot (I don’t have to wait will the roll is full) stick the card into a Kiosk like machine. Choose the photos I want (no more paying for bad photos), crop them if I want, remove red eye and choose from a variety of sizes on a per picture basis. Click ok and even pay for it right then a there with my credit or debit card and pick them up in about an hour.

I can also do the same thing from my computer with Kodak.com and have them delivered to any local affiliate including ones hundreds of miles away.

There is absolutely NOTHING about film that is better then digital for people like you and me.

[nathanm]

Some good advice I read recently was to trash all but your best images.  Don't worry about archiving thousands of crap\mediocre images and only keep the absolute best ones.  Not the easiest thing to do I suppose, but it's very sensible.

[TheChairGuy]

As a complete amateur photog with no aspirations to climb higher - I love digital photography.

What I don't like about it is my long held share of EK/Eastman Kodak dropped from $60 just 4 to 5 years ago and is having a time getting it's head above $25 these days.

So, tho I love digital photography....it's not worth the $5K or so it's cost me in share depreciation 

[jqp]

Instead of spending money on cameras(s), lenses, film and developing, and trusting the processors to do good processing,

or

Instead of spending money on cameras(s), lenses, film and a significant amount of money and time on setting up a dedicated space as a dark room, and doing the processing work, with more artisitic decisions available to be made

Time sorting, carefully storing negatives and prints



I traded for:

Spending money on camera(s), lenses, memory cards, extra hard drives (video requires MUCH more space than pictures) and some software.

Time sorting, carefully storing images, making many fewer prints

Much more editing of images, using a PC, which I already have and maintain.


I prefer digital because:
I can take as many images as I want. It means there will be more decisions, yes, but I get to make them, not my camera or some kid in a photo shop.

I can do a lot more editing a lot faster. I can get creative with images, and do layering/collages, etc., very easily

I can email/CD every family member a copy of the images so they have them and also serve as a backup/archive.

The cost per image, even of choice images, goes down, down, down

I can be ready for snapshot mode, or I can do more creative photography, without a lot of planning.

Unfortunately a good prosumer digital camera with high quality lense is still large object to carry around. I plan to get the amazing Nikon Nikon 18-200mm VR lens and a Nikon D200 or similar body sometime this year.

But a small mid-level digital camera, that can do some excellent hi-res shots, gets smaller and smaller!

[TheChairGuy]

fyi folks, one of the coming hot products coming in consumer electronics arena is 'digital photo scrapbooks'.

As companies ramp up and millions are produced, price is likely to fall quite a bit from where they are today. Up to 200 images can be loaded (doesn't specify file sizes of photo's that I can see)...so maybe some manner of convenience is found with this.  It is smaller than mounting 1000 or see pics in paper scrap books.

An example, by Sandisk: http://www.instawares.com/digital-photo-album.sdv2aa30.0.7.htm

[PhilNYC]

It used to be that you would take a roll of film, drop it at the one-hour place, go back and get it an hour later, and have nice prints and an envelope with negatives in it. For a few extra bucks, you could get them all done as 5x7's. Beaut

Now, with digital, it seems more like the following. To start with, you take way too many photos. A short walk last weekend with a friend, son, and new dog, yielded 200 shots. I mean, there's nothing to slow you down...

So that means the burden of sorting through them to get the ones worth printing. At least where I live, 200 shots costs between $60-100 to print... no thanks. Three hours of sorting and cropping later, you load up the USB drive and off you go...

And then, it always seems to take at least an hour to get digital photos printed, sometimes two -- hardly an advance over the old one-hour photo!

And finally (the killer), you have now to manage and archive all those digital files! Can't just fill up a box with envelopes of negatives any more. Cripes, I need a new disk drive already and I only bought the blinking DSLR last Christmas 

And so on. Jeez I sound like a cranky old bum don't I? I don't really mean to complain as I have got some great shots with this camera, but, I really do wonder whether convenience has advanced along with the technology. So what's your experience? How do you manage your digital photos??

This actually reminds me of a time 14 years ago when I was an intern at Apple Computer.  They used a program called "Meeting Maker" which allowed you to set up meetings with other people (long before MS Outlook), integrating with peoples' desktop calendars etc.  I thought it was so cool...until my boss said "ever since we got this thing, we've been setting up a lot more unnecessary meetings..."

Theoretically, technology improvements are supposed to offer more convenience and time savings.  How you use those conveniences and extra time is up to you....

[konut]

Assuredly both formats have their pros and cons. Just depends on which features
you value more. Film photography is dying quickly. Kodak, Fuji, and the rest
are selling less and less film, so its likely to get more expensive and the
variety will dwindle. But like vinyl, there will likely be a niche market that 
keep the format alive. Even pro photographers are buying digital backs for
their trusty Hasselblads and Rolleis. However, when they are done photoshopping
an image they commit to having it made to a transparency, not trusting the bits,
for archival purposes.

[brj]

In general, I have to agree with the prevailing sentiment - the ability to get instant feedback on my shots is invaluable.  Even if it wasn't more convenient, I'd go the digital route simply because it makes be a better photographer.  (Better... not great!)

Unfortunately a good prosumer digital camera with high quality lense is still large object to carry around. I plan to get the amazing Nikon Nikon 18-200mm VR lens and a Nikon D200 or similar body sometime this year.

Excellent choice!  I have that lens with the D80 - and I wish I sometimes wish that I had grabbed the D200 solely for the better metering firmware.  I do find myself playing with the D80's exposure compensation quite a bit, and supposedly the D200 avoids most of this.  In all other ways, I love the D80 and that amazing VR lens!  (I'm hoping that Nikon eventually updates the firmware to match the D200 in ability.)

I would definitely take that lens and a cheaper camera body over a more expensive body and a cheaper lens.  Besides, lens don't get outdated as quickly as digital camera bodies.

By the way, it looks like the new Fuji S5 Pro is really a D200 with a Fuji sensor.  Might be worth checking out.

[Christof]

I shoot on plastic and memory.  My glass is common to both of my bodies (Nikon) but I rarely pick up my film camera.  I really prefer shooting digital for many reasons.  Once you get the hang of downloading and Photoshop there really is no turning back, IMO. 

Funny thing, I help run a nonprofit art organization, locally, which os located in an old converted office building.  A couple of the 120+ members asked if I would remodel one of the many office/studios into a darkroom, they said they wanted to teach classes and with so many photographers in the association it would be an asset.  I built it and to this day not a single person has used the damn thing    So even amoung artists, who are usually the ones to celebrate and keep old technology alive, it appears that shooting plastic is not the thing to do these days.

As mentioned in a previous post, you get what you pay for, don't let inflated manufacturer specs fool you into a purchase you will regret later.

-c.