Photographers used to never have to worry about megapixels or memory cards.
As film-processing laboratories close and traditional film camera manufacturers focus on different products, the debate between digital camera fans and film lovers rages on. Despite a Digital America 2011 report by the Consumer Electronics Association showing that 84 percent of U.S. consumers own at least one digital camera, many amateur and professional photographers still swear by their film cameras.
Picture Quality
If you want to shoot photos for Web pages or printing on regular-sized paper, digital cameras perform just as well as, and sometimes better than, traditional film cameras. According to professional photographer Ken Rockwell, digital cameras can take photos that reproduce colors more accurately than their film counterparts and appear less grainy.
With digital and film cameras, price also influences picture quality. While professional-grade digital cameras can shoot pictures containing more than 20 megapixels, models aimed at the average consumer have much lower resolutions, and disposable cameras may prove sufficient for candid shots at a party, but won't win any awards. For both types, additional features such as the quality of the sensor or the optical zoom also affect photo quality, as does the paper on which you print the pictures.
Film cameras still have the upper hand when it comes to taking photos you intend to enlarge, however. For example, if you want a poster-size picture, you must capture it at a high resolution to avoid a blurry mess. (Resolution of a picture is the number of pixels, or color points, it contains. The more pixels, the sharper and more detailed the picture will remain when enlarged.) For this reason, magazines such as Arizona Highways enforce a strict no-digital rule when it comes to shooting full-page landscapes.
Error Correction
Even professional photographers make mistakes, but handle those errors depends on the type of camera you have. Exposure errors occur when too much or not enough light reaches your camera's lens or sensor, leading to overexposed pictures whose background is saturated with light or underexposed photos that appear too dark. The Twin Lens Life website conducted tests on two high-end cameras to determine whether digital or film could best handle exposure mistakes. Perhaps surprisingly, film cameras managed over- or underexposed photos better than their digital counterparts.
In photography, composition refers to how the visual elements are arranged in a photo, while framing aligns your subject with the edge of the picture. Common composition and framing errors include cropped elements, the presence of unwanted subjects or a picture that doesn't sufficiently focus on its main element. Dealing with such errors with a film camera requires printing, scanning and importing the photo onto your computer before editing, but a digital camera significantly shortens that process. Some high-end models even integrate applications that correct such errors within the camera itself.
Cost
A cost analysis performed by Steve Russell, a professional photographer who writes for the Beyond Megapixels website, explains the fundamental cost difference between film and digital cameras. Based on his calculations, each picture shot with a standard film camera costs roughly 30 cents in film and processing. Whether you shoot 1,000 photos per month or 10 pictures per year, the associated costs remain the same.
With a digital camera, once you have purchased the accessories needed -- such as a memory card, printer, ink, paper and photo-editing software -- you can publish your pictures on the Web or save them to your hard drive at no additional cost. Even factoring in digital-processing costs, taking pictures with a film camera still costs more, due to the unavoidable expense of film and processing at a photo lab or on your own with pricy chemicals.
Convenience
Overall, digital cameras tend to be more convenient than their film counterparts, as you don't have to buy film or wait for a photo lab to process your pictures. Digital cameras also integrate a screen that displays the photo you just took, allowing you to immediately re-shoot if you're not satisfied. Transferring your photos digitally also proves far easier than scanning and importing images taken with a standard film camera.
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