Interesting article with opinions and examples on why film isn't dead (yet). Good news for dinosaurs like me.

One of the author's points on shutter lag time was proven to me while shooting side by side with digital shooters at Bike Week. I had dozens of good candids shot with split second timing with my Leica, while I learned many new curse words as the fleeting subjects disappeared before my friend's digital camera was ready to fire. All of the rhetoric in favor of digital about checking the results in the field and deleting the mistakes is valid. My friend spent quite a bit of time deleting blurs of intruders invading the frame and obstructing his candid subject. My "out of date" Leica with pre-set wide angle lens had about a 90% success rate... many of the shot fire from the hip. The small rangefinder is still the king of street shooting in close proximity of the subject.

http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/essays/vanRiper/index.htm

-- Al Smith (smith58@msn.com), March 18, 2001

Answers

Heck, the Leica (in almost any form) has some advantages over auto- focus, let alone digital. I was just thinking that myself today while composing some very wide, off-center shots with minimal DOF. I was thinking what a pain in the butt this would be fighting auto-focus at the same time. The technologies have a long way to go, and will never be everything to everyone.

-- Ken Shipman (kennyshipman@aol.com), March 18, 2001.

And after all, results talk by themself, the posibilities this little but solid machine, surpases what digital tecnologie yet has to offer in termns of simplicity of use and what so ever involbes tecnology with selfexpresion.Hope my still poor english let me expres what I have in mind.

-- R. Watson (al1231234@hotmail.com), March 18, 2001.

Mr. Watson - your English is a heck of a lot better than our Spanish. You keep right on reading and posting - it's getting better each time.

-- Ken Shipman (kennyshipman@aol.com), March 18, 2001.

Well, for the moment it's true that emulsion is more convenient than digital, but how long will that last? I for one look forward to all these problems being resolved, maybe in the form of manual focussing digital rangefinders (hmmm... very likely!) so that I can buy the equipment and never have to cart around hundreds of rolls of film, lose shots while changing rolls, mount and caption hundreds of slides, etc etc. Both sides have their pros and cons and digital is certainly behind at the moment, but it must be evident that it'll catch up. Just look at what we used to be programming and using for PC's twenty years ago, compared to the laptop I'm writing this on now. Give digital another ten fifteen years and there won't be any reason not to use it.

And as I said above, I welcome it.

-- rob appleby (rob@robertappleby.com), March 19, 2001.

Or you could look at it this way Rob. Twenty years ago everyone was saying video was going to kill motion picture film (what was the last movie you saw in a theatre shot on?), or that the synthesizer would make 'real' musical insturments obselete. Sometimes the 'old' technology has a look or feel that people like more than the super clean feel that digital tends to give. To each his own. Digital has many advantages for certain applications, but film will be around for awhile yet.

-- Bob Todrick (bobtodrick@yahoo.com), March 19, 2001.

Rob

so that I can buy the equipment and never have to cart around hundreds of rolls of film,

---no just lots of memory cards, laptops, cables, ac adaptors

lose shots while changing rolls, mount and caption hundreds of slides, etc etc.

---only when your memory card chip/zip device etc. etc. is full.

Don't believe all the hype - next you will be telling me that "digital film" is free!

-- Robin Smith (smith_robin@hotmail.com), March 19, 2001.

Maybe I never spent enough time in "anytown USA" photographing the founder's day parade. I chose the Leica M and Nikon FM2 because of the extreme environments I lived and worked in. It would be interesting to see a digital shoot-off against film in mechanical cameras in the Artic realm or in the humid Tropics... not for a couple of rolls, but for a couple of months. Or try to recharge your batteries on one of those 5 countries in 4 days trips, where every outlet and power source is different.

In-theory versus the real world is what the advertisers do best... emphasizing the first part, while down playing the second. Digital will be fine for many folks, but it will be some time before we see several back to back issues of "NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC" shot 100% on battery powered micro chips.

I can see it now... a news photographer hands a couple of 12 Dollar disposable cameras to the paper's photo lab, cameras he bought out of his own pocket to complete the job when his "Super auto flex mega pixel with built in DVD drive and surround sound" quits in mid stroke. "How could this happen?", he asks... "the photo / computer magazines all say this is the best model out this week."

Sorry, just venting. I know that I am living in denial of the future... sigh.

-- Al Smith (smith58@msn.com), March 19, 2001.

I think there will always be a certain portion of photographers who will choose conventional film for reasons of artistic preference, just as there are musicians who choose acoustic instruments, painters and sculptors who work with classical materials, and actors who prefer live theater. It is the symbiosis between artist and medium that fosters creative output and that's a very personal and often variable thing.

-- Jay (infinitydt@aol.com), March 19, 2001.

well, I was giving it ten fifteen years!

I think it's pretty inevitable because everything is now going that way. When everything exists to be digitised in one way or another, why not eliminate the analog step from the chain? I'm not saying your naysayers or anything like that, I just fel its the way things are going.

Storage capacity is certainly a problem. However, just look at the MP3 market where the latest thing is 20 Gb hard drives you can put in your pocket and play music of while you're jogging. The Digital Wallet is already out there, with 6 Gb capacity. An agency will be wanting a 20 Mb file off you on average, since that's equivalent to a 10x8 print for reproducton purposes, so even the Digital Wallet will hold three hundred full size images, which is 8 rolls of film. Two wallets in your bag and your off for a day's shooting. Download and edit in the evening off your laptop and transmit from the bureau dsl line. Or soon enough, by sat phone to your website. This is all possible now, in fifteen years it will all look incredibly primitive.

I love my Leicas and slide film is beautiful stuff, but why should photography be the odd man out? The difference between this and the video/film issue is that nowadays _everything_ is going digital, whereas back then video tape was just an option rather a generalised technological (and cultural) trend.

Anyway, that's how I see it. None of you would have seen my snaps without digital imaging, and I'm happy to have that opportunity. Soon it'll just be even more pervasive.

Rob.

-- rob appleby (rob@robertappleby.com), March 19, 2001.

I'll be open to going completely digital when:

1) the ccd chip is capable of recording films equivalent 12,000 dpi to an area equal to that of 35mm film {approx 216 megapixels};

2) and when the digital camera/memory card system can record and store this image in 1/1000th of a second or less;

3) and when two 76-size batteries, {or for that matter, even four AA batteries!} will power this digital camera system for say 1800 images {or about 50 rolls of 35mm}.

Then there is the issue of output -- when color-lazer printers no longer suffer from significant cosine error on large print output, and really have a true "blue" channel; when inkjet inks really are permanent when a print is openly displayed for 10+ years, etc..

All of this in the next 15 years? Maybe, but I doubt it. Don't get me wrong, digital is okay, and I use it for snap-shots and eBay listings, but I'll stick with silver until digital can match it.

Regards,

-- Jack Flesher (jbflesher@msn.com), March 19, 2001.

Actually I find the archiving issue the biggest question for those of us who are keen photographers and want to keep looking at our shots in 40 years time. The digital world will be completely different, so any archiving today will be useless for then (yes, I know let us keep rearchiving every three years- what fun!). For this reason I will be keeping film as my main image source for as long as the market will let me. I have less of a beef about digital output - that is already pretty good - but nothing can yet match a fine art black and white print done the conventional way. Of course, maybe there will soon be a digital camera that you use to make digital files which you then output later to film for archival purposes. This might well happen which I find a somewhat ironic thought.

-- Robin Smith (smith_robin@hotmail.com), March 19, 2001.

Every 6 months or so (coinciding when the "newest" crop of cameras appear)I get interested in digital. Then I go here: http://www.dpreview.com/ and read 30 page reviews of cameras with so many different menus and complicated functions you'd have to bring the manual with you in the field. I'm not dumb or technologically challenged (I really can program my VCR), but I have yet to see any digital cameras that are as straighforward to use as a Leica M or even my Nikon N90S. There really is something to simplicity that helps me in my quest to capture images. The high end digital cameras are the worst. The latest Canon camera has a 145 page instuction manual for those who really want to get the most out of every pixel. I don't think they are going to become much simpler either, as the technology requires a complex set of controls. I guess you can just point and shoot on default mode, and have a feeling many people do. My "gone digital" friends also spend an enormous amount of time transferring and organizing images from their cameras to their PC's, and very few ever seem to get around to printing anything. The prints I've seen of people never seem to look that great either-- something funny with the skin tones often looks un-natural. I have a hard time getting images to print in calibration with what I see on my moniter, and have put my digital darkroom on hold for the time being as well. Maybe in a few more years....

-- Andrew Schank (aschank@flash.net), March 20, 2001.

For sure when we feel that we are standing in a firm ground about digital stuff our feelings about it will be diferent, now it is more than that,a moving market, full of next day new developments, that can make any one go crazy by depending on it, and thatīs one of the reasons why 35mm film and Leicas for example, makes me fell Iīm touching ground, makes me feel fully dependable of them, something digital stuff canīt do yet.Just my own opinion.

-- R Watson (AL1231234@HOTMAIL.COM), March 20, 2001.

There is a photo in the book Requiem (about the Vietnam photogs) showing a photographer sprawled in the mud, using one Nikon F2 (buried halfway in mud) to brace another F2 that he was shooting with. Lets see you do that with your D1 and G4 Powerbook.

-- Bob Todrick (bobtodrick@yahoo.com), March 20, 2001.

It'll happen, it'll happen boys... just wait!

If they can put a man on the moon, they can make a digital camera that meets PJ requirements.

-- rob appleby (rob@robertappleby.com), March 20, 2001.

Come on Bob... everyone knows they filmed the moon landings in a secret hangar in Nevada. Hey! what's happening to my termin....

-- Al Smith (smith58@msn.com), March 20, 2001.

Do not attempt to adjust you monitor. Do not leave the room. We are in complete control............

-- Bob Todrick (bobtodrick@yahoo.com), March 20, 2001.

For those who own a Leica and a digital camera, get your Leica out and take a picture of your digital camera because it won't be with you for very long before you simply must trade it in for the next higher model!

-- Tony Rowlett (rowlett@mail.com), March 20, 2001.

As long as there are working P.J.s out there demanding digital bodies, digital will improve and become more ergonomic.

An ideal? 120 Film type resolution, high shutter speeds (i.e. high ISO equivalent chips), near zero lag time as far as possible, 20+ frames per second, huge dynamic range, high storage capacity, and super fast transfer rates (faster than rewinding a roll of film).

I'm less concerned about printers and inks. Photolabs already can, with Frontier printers, easily accept digital files and print them out on Crystal Archive with masking and color balance to die for. All we need is high speed internet lines to get the stuff over...

But the consumer stuff is going to be always over-featured and slow to operate. Look at consumer video cameras. They get smaller and smaller but are just as awkward to operate as ever, except in dumb mode.

-- Mani Sitaraman (bindumani@pacific.net.sg), March 20, 2001.

Good point Mani! And because of the "dumbing down" of photographers using "dumb" modes, perhaps the work produced by artists using silver as their medium will further be furhter delineated and gain added prominence! (Remeber, when color print film made its first debut, many art experts claimed it was "the end" for B&W photography as a serious artist's medium!)

-- Jack Flesher (jbflesher@msn.com), March 20, 2001.

It may be digital now, but I read somewhere that physicists are now working on the new quantum computer which will basically add another dimension to digital's 1's and 0's. The project is so significant that it has been compared to the "Manhattan Project". So, how long until we'll have digital? I guess we'd better appreciate whatever it is that we have now.

-- Ron Gregorio (rongregorio@hotmail.com), March 23, 2001.

I'm sure you'll all love this. But just to tell a story that goes against the grain. I have recently traded my M6 and Voigt lenses for a Sony laptop to use as a storage unit for my digital SLR. Don't worry, I still have my IIIf, QL-17, Xpan, etc. So I'm not out of the rangefinder world by a long shot. But I am using my Fuji S1 more than I ever though I would. In my working job as a photographer for BMx magazines. It has become a very useful tool. The res is high enough for full page shots, all of my current editors are happy to get Cd- rom's with images on them. And I can easily e-mail out low res submissions on spec without worrying about where my slides are.

No digital isn't the be-all of photography. Nor do I expect that it will ever be. But still, people who want to ignore it for whatever reason are the true fools. Yeah, people still ride horses all the time. But you wouldn't want to take through downtown L.A. I will likely always use film, just as I listen to the radio and use a fountain pen. But that doesn't mean that I won't embrace new technology also.

-- Josh Root (rootj@att.net), March 23, 2001.