Well if whether you use digital or film is a personal choice and both can be valid. You make some good points, but there are some that I believe need to be discussed a bit more or the reason you went digital.
I'd like to take them one by one if I could.
The first point is that you are not a trained technician. Well few were trained in Photoshop either. In fact Photoshop is a much deeper program than most including myself have any idea of its full abilities. You learn by doing whether it be Photoshop or the wet darkroom. Personally I have no desire to work in a color darkroom (though I have done it) , but love black and white.
If the darkroom is very smelly, it is likely poorly ventilated and that might mean health risks. My sense of smell isn't a fair judge. I grew up as the son of an exterminator.
Cost is often though an issue more of perception and few run the numbers. For people that take a lot of photos, it can make sense. But some have a unique sense of a lot. I have seen people tell me they take a lot of photos and when I ask how many its 100 almost every Sunday afternoon. For really high volume guys it makes perfect sense to spend $10,000 on a body if you would have spent $50,000 in they year on film and processing. At a lower level its $1500 to $3000 for a body, but you also need lower volumes to make it make sense. Even so you have to generate those numbers in a time frame of about a year and a half or so. By then its upgrade time and the clock starts over. This isn't factoring in the cost of all the computers and computer upgrades. For some it is cheaper. If you can afford it and want it anyway, don't bother to justify the cost. Just go get what you want.
Now ink jet prints have come a long way, both in quality and stability. They also usually cost more than wet prints and that does not consider the high costs of printers and their shelf life when compared to the life expectancy of wet darkroom equipment. Now the ink jet print lets you easily print your digitally altered content, but many things most do in photoshop you can do in the wet darkroom. They may not be nearly as easy, but they can be done. Another option few know about or forget about is creating your digital file just as you want it, then having that file made into a negative or a chome with a film recorder. Then you can wet print.
Now as far as time, the ink jet wins in that there is no trips to the lab and it is more immediate. In my case that time and expense saved as well as the ability to deliver prints to a client in a more timely manner is worth the difference in cost. But it isn't actually cheaper but for me its ok. Better is something I can not give to any method of creating a print. For me what the content of the image is far more important than what was used to create it. Even if you use the same image to compare the two methods of printing I still wouldn't use the term better given reasonable equipment. I would use the term different. Given two black and white images, one being done on digital and one in the wet darkroom. I haven't (and it just may be something I haven't learned yet with digital creating the issue) been able to get the real blacks out of the ink of an inkjet printer than the deep blacks of a silver print. Both are good images, but they are
clearly different. I couldn't say one is better than the other though, only what I prefer and it would be perfectly reasonable and understandable why others would prefer the other.
One thing about digital is that little screen. It can be both a lifesaver and a curse. It can catch a gross error, but the screens are small enough for me the fine mistakes are going to be much harder to catch. When it does that its a lifesaver. It also can be a HUGE curse. If you have to go to that display before the next photo, it can cause you to miss more great photos than it helps you take.
I can fault no one on their choice of equipment and could care less what people think of my choices. Yet I do think its a good idea from time to time to reevaluate those choices.
--- On Sat, 8/9/08, Howard <howard.leigh111@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> From: Howard <howard.leigh111@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: [SPAM] RE: funeral
> To: "List for Photo/Imaging Educators - Professionals - Students" <photoforum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Saturday, August 9, 2008, 1:27 AM
> Oh no not this old argument again! My memory suggests that
> all these
> points have been argued over and over before.
>
> I went digital because:
> I'm not a trained darkroom technician.
> I don't want to spend zillions of hours in a messy
> smelly darkroom.
> I can produce much better prints - and more and cheaper-
> with digital
> than I ever could with film AND with far less effort.
> I can afford to be generous with the actual taking of
> pictures at
> virtually no cost to myself.
>
> And I do like being able to check I've got what I want
> rather than wait
> until I've got the negatives / slides / prints
> available.
>
> But if someone wants to use film then that's fine by
> me. It doesn't matter.
> I've still got my film gear. I plan on using it
> (especially B&W) more
> when I've retired, whenever that will be.
>
> Either way I doubt if anyone will keep more than a fraction
> of my photos
> when I've kicked the bucket!
>
> Howard
>
>
> Chris Telesca - TelephotoNC wrote:
> >
> >
> > David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
> >> Chris Telesca - TelephotoNC wrote:
> >>> I think this is a big issue.
> >>>
> >>> I haven't bought into digital because
> it's not cost-effective for me
> >>> to spend 8 grand on a camera body that can
> shoot the same resolution
> >>> imagery that I can shoot with a 20 year old
> Nikon. And to have two
> >>> of them (one for backup) makes even less sense
> when they will be
> >>> obsolete in 3 years.
> >>
> >> Measuring resolution is an interesting process. I
> can make bigger
> >> prints from 6MP DSLR raw files than I ever managed
> chemically from
> >> 35mm film (I mean that look satisfactory to me, of
> course). But I
> >> can also make bigger prints from scanned film than
> I ever could in
> >> the darkroom, too. For me, grain always limited
> enlargement, and
> >> that's no longer the problem for landscape and
> scenic pictures
> >> (sometimes noise does play the same limiting role
> in available light
> >> photos).
> >>
> >> And I have never spent much over 1/4 of $8000 on a
> digital camera
> >> body. If you're going for the *top* end --
> then shouldn't you be
> >> talking about more like $50,000?
> >
> > No - 35MM equivalent - Canon 1DsMkIII - $8,000 - 21
> megapixels.
> > And why are you making such big prints from 6MP DSLR
> raw files? What
> > are they being used for, and what is the proper
> viewing distance for
> > those prints? Do you have a mural size printer for
> your digital
> > imagery? I have printed up to 20x24 in a darkroom -
> are you printing
> > bigger than that on your own?
> >
> > Why would grain limit enlargement size but not the
> resolution of your
> > sensor? If you are doing something in Photoshop to
> minimize the grain
> > in your digital imagery, then obviously you are doing
> something that
> > you can't do with film.
> > No - when I graduated from RIT in 1984, I had
> different film format
> > cameras (Nikon 35MM, Hasselblad 6x6, and Sinar 4x5)
> and I added some
> > Speedotron lighting gear. I think by 1986 I had about
> 10 to 12 grand
> > in gear that has worked well for me over the years.
> >> "Obsolete" is an interesting concept.
> Seems to me that if they're
> >> good now, they're good in three years.
> Possibly something *better*
> >> will be available, and some people will deride
> your gear as obsolete
> >> -- but if the way the new gear is better
> doesn't matter to you, you
> >> should just ignore them! And remember that my
> $2300 Fuji S2 (late
> >> 2002) came with a "lifetime supply" of
> free film and processing. I
> >> think the money I saved on film and lab fees alone
> paid for that
> >> camera before I sold it off. And I've made
> and exhibited a lot more
> >> prints since going digital than I did when I had a
> darkroom.
> >>
> > No - obsolete in that editors and stock houses want
> files of a certain
> > resolution, which increases over the years. If a
> stock house kept the
> > same requirements they had year ago when the first
> Nikon D1 came out,
> > they would get bombarded bombarded with tons of
> submissions from guys
> > with point and shoot digital cameras that have higher
> resolution than
> > the D1 had when it came out.
> >>> I have every negative I have ever shot going
> back to when I was 14
> >>> years old. Granted some of that stuff
> isn't worth printing, but I
> >>> also have negatives that are over 60 years old
> that I can do
> >>> everything from print to scan. Try doing that
> with digital imagery
> >>> that is stored on a medium that might not work
> in a year or more, or
> >>> when it craps out you have nothing to fall
> back on.
> >>
> >> I have slides that I shot myself that have faded
> significantly,
> >> though using digital technology I can recover much
> of the color. I
> >> have color prints other people gave the family
> long ago that are
> >> faded past the point that I can restore the colors
> (I can still get a
> >> poor B&W image from them). It would last much
> better, of course, if
> >> I stored it in controlled-humidity cold storage.
> But I'll bet you're
> >> not storing yours that way either.
> >
> > Actually - close to it. At or below 70 degrees with
> controlled
> > humidity, dark storage, archival pages. And of course
> you can use
> > digital technology to improve
> >> (The oldest of my own negatives I'm sure I can
> still lay hands on
> >> date to 1962; I have access to considerably older
> photos in my
> >> mother's collection.)
> >>
> >> You're certainly right that a digital archive
> must be intelligently
> >> and diligently managed to stay safe. If left
> untended for a long
> >> time, it's likely to disappear, through media
> degradation or format
> >> changes (the format changes don't really make
> it quite disappear,
> >> they just increase the cost of getting it back
> into modern formats).
> >> However, if diligently tended, a digital archive
> can be *eternal*;
> >> something there was never any hope of for film
> images (other than by
> >> scanning to digital form).
> >
> > That's just it - how often do you have to tend it
> and spend money
> > updating your digital archive? With film, it's
> just there.
> >> I think my digital photos are much safer, during
> my lifetime, than my
> >> film photos are. I can manage an archive of this
> size myself, and
> >> the timespan isn't that big a challenge to the
> media.
> >
> > I disagree.
> >> And if my house burns down, or is flooded, or
> carried off to Oz by a
> >> tornado, or whatever, I won't lose my digital
> photos. I'll lose all
> >> my film photos except the ones I have scans of.
> (I really do have
> >> off-site backups of my digital photos; up through
> about a month ago
> >> currently, but I'm likely to get that updated
> this weekend).
> > Fire proof safe.
> >>
> >> Look, if you're happier shooting film, and
> like the results better,
> >> more power to you. Keep doing it that way! But
> try to keep your
> >> claims about digital toned down to the actual
> truth. (Also your
> >> claims about film.) There's plenty of stuff
> where the exact lines
> >> are fuzzy; we can argue about those to our
> heart's content :-).
> >
> > My claims are the truth about film and digital - from
> my perspective
> > If digital works for you - more power to you. But
> when you say that I
> > need to keep my claims toned down to the actual truth,
> then admit that
> > some lines are fuzzy, you are not making a good case
> that my opinions
> > about film are less truthful than yours.
> > I know that my cost to start processing and printing
> B&W film and
> > prints was a lot less than having to do digital.
> Think about it - you
> > need a digital camera, a computer and a printer. You
> are talking
> > about thousands of dollars right there. Then you have
> your paper and
> > inks.
> >
> >>
> >> Have you shot with a DSLR yourself? Or seen work
> by good
> >> photographers using that kind of equipment? It
> rather sounds like you
> >> don't have much idea of the capabilities of
> current equipment.
> >
> > No - I do have friends who have pro DSLR equipment and
> I know how
> > their gear compares to what I shot with now. It's
> simply not worth
> > spending that kind of green for equipment that shoots
> the same
> > resolution as film when I already have film gear that
> works fine.
> >>
> >>> I have pics of my grandparents and great
> grandparents that I can
> >>> reprint if need be, or scan if I want to. If
> I had to shoot these
> >>> pics on digital, I'd have to transfer over
> from one generation of
> >>> storage to another every couple of years - and
> add to it all the new
> >>> stuff I shoot.
> >>
> >> I've been shooting a lot of digital since
> 2000. I have *not once*
> >> had to transfer over storage media during those 8
> years. I can buy
> >> brand-new drives in ordinary consumer stores to
> read all of it that's
> >> on removable media, if necessary.
> >>
> >> I started having some of my film scanned in about
> 1993, I think. I
> >> have *not once* had to transfer over storage media
> during those 15
> >> years. The original media are readable (as of a
> month ago, when I
> >> last tried), plus they're on my file server
> (mirrored), two backup
> >> disk drives, on-site optical disks, and off-site
> optical disks. The
> >> original media for these are CDs; they can be read
> in all current
> >> computers, and I can even write new CDs, it's
> by no means an obsolete
> >> medium yet.
> >>
> >> I absolutely agree that a long-term digital
> archive will need to deal
> >> with this issue; that plus the life-span of the
> media are the reason
> >> that a digital archive must be diligently managed.
> It does not do at
> >> all well on benign neglect, and that has
> consequences for historians
> >> and archivists and future archaeologists;
> definitely.
> >> But "every couple of years" is a gross
> exaggeration.
> >>>
> >>> Properly processed and stored silver-based
> imagery will last longer
> >>> than CDs and DVDs.
> >>
> >> Are you storing yours properly? Low temperature
> and controlled
> >> humidity, etc.? How much does it cost to store a
> significant
> >> collection that way? And by silver-based you mean
> B&W, right? So,
> >> short of RGB separations, no color photography in
> the collection?
> >
> > No - silver-based means color. Color negative film,
> color slide film
> > and color prints - they all use silver.
> >>
> >> Even with that -- we don't know which will
> last longer. But I think
> >> it's very likely that top-grade CD blanks
> written in a good drive
> >> will out-last chromogenic color materials stored
> at room
> >> temperature. I wouldn't be certain that they
> wouldn't out-last
> >> silver-gelatine materials, but over *that*
> timespan changes in media
> >> standards are nearly certain to be an issue as
> well. But the
> >> lifespan of one copy of the data on a CD
> doesn't matter that much; a
> >> digital archive isn't dependent for its
> integrity on one piece of media.
> >
> > Show me the tests. And then show me a computer that
> uses a floppy
> > disk that you can buy today.
> >>
> >> Of course, in 200 years, say, you may very well
> not be able to find
> >> an enlarger, or printing paper, or even a film
> scanner. Presumably
> >> somebody could build or adapt something to do that
> job for you, since
> >> of course high-resolution imaging of small areas
> will continue to be
> >> important for science and probably art as well;
> but there may well
> >> not be any off-the-shelf way to make prints from
> your B&W negatives
> >> in 200 years.
> >
> > And there may not be any way to take the digital
> imagery you have on
> > your discs and turn them into prints. You might not be
> able to find
> > cables or adapters.
> > But if they have a scanner, I would be able to load up
> my film and do
> > something with it. You might not be able to take
> digital imagery off
> > your discs and do anything with it if your discs
> can't communicate
> > with the computers of tomorrow.
> > Chris Telesca
> >
> >
