This is NOT a technical post. With that out of the way, I’ll get to the real reason I’m writing this.
Some of our customers ask us about the difference between film and digital. Mind you, this is only SOME of our customers. Most only care that the pictures look good (especially that THEY look good) and that they are getting a good value. 😉
Over the many years since the original film was developed, there have been tremendous innovations in film. Like anything else that evolves through technology, it comes to the point where it has to evolve beyond one medium and into another. I’m sure we can all cite examples of this in other areas of life and technology.
Film always did a great job of recording the images. The different films gave us the ability to record better greens, or to work better in daylight, or take advantage of higher contrast. It was then up to the printer (your local lab or drugstore) to print the film on to paper with the same concept in mind as when you took the photo. Until a few years ago, only professional labs could do that consistently. But more recently, even the Wal-Mart photo centers do an excellent job of matching what you expected with what you receive.
With digital processing, the camera merely captures the image. The effects that we used to have from the different films can now be applied AFTER the image is taken on the computer. We call it post-processing.
Now… why did OUR studio decide to switch from film to digital? Basically, the timing was right. In 2004, we upgraded many of our computer systems to be able to more easily handle images we were getting from film that was scanned at our lab. Prior to 2004, we were already using Photoshop and other digital image handling programs to make images look better.
In 2005, we upgraded most of our studio and wedding equipment to digital because everything else was already in place. Our labs were digital, so we didn’t have to switch professional processing labs. We already had a computer geek (ME!) on board to handle computer problems, and we had a great workflow in place to handle how digital images were processed versus how film was handled.
Since then, we have made continual strides to upgrade the way we work and present our images to our clients. Most weddings are now ready to be viewed online in 48 hours (it takes time to review all the images and get rid of the bad ones, make minor modifications to others and do my own version of post-processing to some). But in our all-digital portrait studio, most people can see their portrait images only a few minutes after the session has ended. This has made a huge difference in how we hold portrait sittings.
So, it was a gradual process. Two other things we had in place to make it all work well was the computer technology and a Photoshop specialist to handle those images. Now, we can take the pictures, show them to you, clean them up and send them to our lab within a couple of days. And if there is any retouching to be done, we can do it exactly to your specifications right in our studio. You get your pictures faster, and out to your family and friends faster!
So is digital better than film? Many photographers still use film. For many types of photographers, it still has tremendous advantages over digital. But for our studio, digital is the better choice. We still use film in some of our sports work, but that will be changed over to digital this year.