Howard:
There is some movement back to film for really high end wedding
photogs but almost all are completely digital.
Yes, there are risks with losing a chip and losing all the images but
there are work-arounds for that.
Both Canon and Nikon make WiFi cards for their cameras so that a copy
is sent directly to a local computer ( the laptop your assistant is
manning ) immediately after the exposure. This provides two types of
insurance:
1) You've got a copy separate from the camera and potentially also
uploaded to still another computer elsewhere, and
2) You get instant notification if the camera fails.
With film, unless you are processing the film yourself, you run the
same risk of total loss in the mail or other carrier.
And you get no notification of a serious malfunction in the camera
that keeps on clicking but not making exposures
so that all could be lost and not be known until a week or so later
when the lab calls and wants to know where the real film is since you
sent in unexposed rolls.
In the literature that I read, most mid to high-end wedding photogs
are now taking between 1500 and 2500 images at a wedding but only
printing proofs for about 200 or so.
Assuming that't right, then that's 45 to 75 rolls of film at $5 per
roll plus another $7 - $8 for processing.
That makes ( for 60 rolls ) $720 cash out of pocket before getting
paid for the pictures.
The digital photog has spent maybe $200 for the chips ( amortized
over 20 weddings say ) for an out of pocket cost of $10 + 200 proofs
for $.20 each or a total of $50.
The revenue for each is the same, the difference per wedding is $670
and 10 weddings later, the digital photog just paid for his latest
$5,000 Nikon or Canon and a swell additional lens.
That's why the wedding business is almost completely digital, the
sports business is completely digital, and most other revenue
producing photographic activity is or will be digital.
For the large format landscape folks, take 12 exposures of a scene in
sets of 4 overlapping and with one stop under, one right on, and one
stop over and splice them together to make a 16bit dynamic range 50
megapixel image that will be better than anything you can get
directly from 4x5 and will challenge seriously up to 8x10.
Quality, film prices, and processing costs will eventually drive the
large format folks to digital as well.
This all has everything to do with economics and little, if anything,
to do with esthetics of film v digital. That discussion is, IMHO, a
religious discussion between the fundamentalists and the
born-agains. You get to pick for yourself which is which since on
any particular day film advocates and digital advocates will switch
between these two views ( a little humor there ).
BTW I'm in a Documentary Photography class at my local university and
there are zero film photographers in class. The last one switched
mid-semester last fall.
Cheers,
James
At 05:09 PM 1/17/2008 +0000, you wrote:
Hello everybody!
How many photographers are still using film on the basis that it
gives better results than digital?
One of my students, having worked in photographer's shop says that
she was told all "professional" photographers still prefer film
apart from photojournalists and sports photographers. (I'm excluding
large format work here.)
That "fine art", Wedding, Social photographers all still use film
because it's:
better quality and colours
and if a card is damaged you can lose 100s of photos whereas with a
film you only lose, say 36 exposures (not much of a consolation for
the distressed bride!)
I'd welcome comments fromn anyone who works in or is familiar with
relevant fields
Thanks
Howard
James Schenken
