The Digital Debate?

Film or digital cameras. With the advances in technology, what should we choose?

Well I'm old school, and therefore a film user. I'm not a professional, don't have the need of instant images. I don't sell to the press or anyone else. I don't have the time to sit at a computer every night and correct my work before I send the images to the lab or burn to CD/DVD.

Professionals need the power of digital cameras now. They need that instan gratification. The man on the street with his mobile phone as a recording device really does need a real camera.

I've sold cameras for just under thirty years. I see where we're going. I'll carry on selling them old or new because photography I love is still photography, even if in todays world a little more fragile.

Film has had it's advantages I get 36 images good or bad, hey it's a nice surprise to see what has worked and what hasn't.

Digital is too new to have all the bugs and errors ironed out. Horror stories still frighten me. CD's not opening. Computers crashing. Cards failing. How often do you have to archive your archive, or do you just resign youself that 5 years is as far back you can go to get digital files. I have negatives from 1979. Cd's will be pretty soon on their way out, as will DVD's. We'll be on Blue-ray soon!

Fire flood and act of God. Are the only things I fear for my images. In twenty five years I think I've lost only five or six films over the years I've been taking photographs, through stupidity, or too much to drink.

Ok so advances in technology will get better, storage will become more stable and longer lasting. Film is still there 100 years plus. Prints the same.

I also like the fact that with film you handle images. Prints are what photography is about, "my sister hasn't seen pictures of her Grand children for a while, except for the images seen on the back of peoples cameras."

If film cameras ever ceased to be. I'd give up photography. One of my friends is a Kodakchrome 25 user. Which was discontinued by Kodak a few years ago now, but he still has a good few rolls stored in his freezer.

I'd probably do the same. Stock up my fridge/ freezer with all I could get my hands on.

Who's to blame for this revolution? The media, the camera and film manufacturers, the public.

Having just read an article on the "net" I thought I'd let people know what I use.

Nikon F5 and F100 are my two bodies I rely on during the Festival.
Lenses Nikon 80-200 f2.8 AFS, Nikon 85 f1.4, Nikon 500 f8 reflex and a Sigma 24-70 f3.5.
For the best part of twenty five years of taking photos I've almost always owned a reflex lens. The Nikon 500mm f8 is a fantastic piece of kit. Small and unobtrusive, giving you the edge on it's ability to work at not recommended shutter speeds; I've shot hand held at 1/60th of a second.
With the 80-200 mounted on one camera and using the 500mm on the other people have no idea of quite what your shooting or how close cropped the shot will be. The circular out of focus highlights are something I love playing with in the background of pictures, and purposely pursue images where I know I can have them as part of my final result.
People say it's a very limited lens to use, but it's only limited if you don't see the world in 500mm reflex terms. I've shot portraits with it. I've done landscapes with it and of course extreme close-ups. It's only slight disadvantage is it's extremely short focus area. But with practice and paticence it's as good any lens on the market.

Revolution. Some have been good, some have been bad. This I think is one that I'm glad I'm not caught up in, I'll just continue on the side lines and laugh at everyone who is .

Remember if you have a child and you take photos at it's first birthday party. And you think you would like to embarasse it when it's 21, then you probably wont be able to do that with digital.
At 6 years old your child wouldn't care or be bothered what it was doing when it was 1.

But if you do use digital, maybe you don't care enough about photography to be bothered about past pictures. I was supprised to hear this from a photographer I met during the Festival he said if he'd printed something from a couple of years back and it wasn't there again it wouldn't bother him. It would have had it's run. Time to find new images