My May column produced far more feedback than anything else I’ve ever written about digital photography. Some of it obliquely referred to me as a digital idiot, but much of it brought up insightful questions that indicated a need for greater exploration and explanation.

These two photos of masks by Karen Reed of Earthstar Glass help illustrate some of the differences between 35mm and digital photos. The top photo was taken with a 35mm camera. Compare it to the bottom print, taken with a digital camera. This print is too soft, a bit out of focus, and has some unwanted color casts. photos by Steve Meltzer

Most artists seem to have a limited budget for photography. It is an expenditure that has to produce the biggest bang for the buck. Most craftspeople need the images for high-quality jury slides for submission to fairs, shows and exhibitions. The only real choice for these purposes is film photography.

Without talking about file size or savings on processing, let’s start with a simple notion. Today, the very best high-end digital cameras are capable of near photographic-quality prints. However, when these files are used to produce film-scan slides, the results are just not up to snuff.

For decent digital imagery and the flexibility of interchangeable lenses and big image files, consider professional digital cameras like the Nikon D-1X or Fujifilm FinePix S1 Pro. They are built on the model of traditional 35mm single-lens reflex cameras with multiple exposure systems, external flash capability and interchangeable lens mounts. The lowest prices for these in the big New York camera stores are $5,350 for the Nikon and $2,800 for the Fujifilm. At these prices, I need a Gates Foundation grant to buy one!

For under $500, I can buy a 35mm high-quality single-lens reflex camera that produces superb slides and prints far beyond the quality of current state-of-the-art digital cameras … and still have money left over to buy a flatbed scanner. I am at a loss to see how digital photography will wipe out film-based photography, at least in the short term. The extra $4,850 I’d save buys a lot of equipment, film and processing. But don’t just take my word for the shortcomings of digital photography. Here’s an excerpt from a letter that appeared in a recent issue of Shutterbug magazine:

“In the year 2000 I bought two very highly rated digital cameras ... (for) ... a total of $12,000. Today they are gone. Why? Simply put: The images would not hold up to critical review. Compared to a Nikon F5 and professional lens ... the digital cameras were a sad joke, at my expense.”

The writer goes on to raise a point that I hadn’t even thought of: “Now how about cost (print) comparison? Digital is a real rip-off here. Just the paper costs to match a Noritsu minilab or Fuji Frontier printer (these are commercial color printing machines) at my local lab was a lesson in futility.”

In quality, 35mm beats digital hands down. Without rehashing the problem of making sharp, big prints, there is the whole area of color accuracy. When you take snap-shots in the camera store or party pictures of the kids, as long as skin colors look OK, these photos are seen as acceptably color-correct. But artists have a greater need for color accuracy, and digital is just as flawed and finicky in this area as film photography.

What I see isn’t what I get

Let’s look at the variables that affect color rendition and accuracy. For both digital and film cameras, variables include:

• the conditions of the lighting you are shooting under; and
• the particular lens manufacturer and the lens coatings (Canon slides are slightly different in color than Nikon, and still different than Leica, and so on).

DOES DIGITAL OFFER WHAT YOU NEED?

Most digital cameras are modeled on point-and-shoot film cameras. If your work is difficult to photograph with film cameras, it won’t be any easier to shoot digitally. In fact, it is often more difficult. For example, if you are a painter or create other two-dimensional art, cross-hatched focusing screens in a camera’s viewfinder are a necessity to take the guesswork out of squaring up the work in pictures. But there are no grid focusing screens in digitals. If you are a jeweler, and you need to be able to get very close to small work with a high-quality continuous-focusing macro lens, you will need an interchangeable lens-mount digital camera. That means paying for a camera like the $5,350 Nikon D-1X.

Add to this the variables in making a color slide:

• the color palette of the slide film;
• the color balance of the film; and
• the care taken in processing.

Or the variables of making a color print:

• the color palette of the film;
• the care taken in processing;
• the type of color-enlarging printer and its lens;
• the color acuity and experience of the person making the prints; and
• the type of color paper used.

Or the variables in digital photography:

• the type of light-sensitive cell in the camera;
• the “white balance” and other camera presets;
• the file format in which the image is stored;
• the photo program in your computer;
• the type of color monitor (my monitor colors never match the print);
• the color acuity and experience of the person making the prints;
• the photo printer used; and
• the color print paper used.

It’s a wonder photographers ever get close to accurate colors. At each step, color shifts take place. This holds true for both digital and film photography. Go to your local computer store and pull up the same image on a couple of adjacent computer models — you’ll see color differences between the monitors.

All this is leading to the idea that digital photography does not do away with the problem of getting color-accurate photos or other photographic problems like lighting, composition and impact — the stuff I spend lots of column inches explaining.

A digital camera is simply not a passport out of learning how to take pictures. The advantage to digital photography lies in its speed — the feedback of immediately seeing and using the images you take — and its Internet friendliness.

Is speed more important than quality?

THE "BUY AND DUMP"

About eight years ago, I purchased a used Nikon FM-2n camera for $400. I checked eBay recently and found that three similar cameras had sold for between $325 and $350 in the last few weeks. In eight years, the camera had lost only a fraction of its value. This is one of the reasons I urge artists to be cautious about jumping into digital photography. This is a rapidly changing, unstable technology where equipment holds little of its value after you walk out of the store. Almost every day there’s an announcement of a better, faster, more pixel-loaded camera. Even as I write this, Sony has just introduced a new 5-megapixel camera for only $1,000. This is great on one level — better cameras mean better pictures — but it’s really bad news for some consumers. It means that a lot of people will discover that the digital camera they bought yesterday has little value today and will have less tomorrow. My camera salespeople call a digital camera purchase a “buy and dump.” They mean that consumers are often surprised that the wonderful, feature-loaded digital camera they bought just a few weeks or months ago is worthless compared to what’s out there now. Check out eBay; it’s the digital camera graveyard. Thousands of digital cameras are at auction, and few, if any, are bid on, and fewer are sold. Don’t jump into digital — go cautiously. Perhaps it would at least be wise to wait for things to settle down a bit.

I agree that digital cameras are both quick and fun, capable of providing you computer-ready files or instant hard copies. But does the speed of digital photography cancel out the quality of film? Hardly. And it doesn’t mean the end of film photography either. These are really two different animals that have two different purposes. If your only need is to shoot images of your work (see sidebar) for your personal record or for a Web site, then digital may be a realistic alternative for you. For a few hundred dollars you can get a reasonably good 2- or 3-megapixel digital camera that can produce decent image files.

But if you already invested in a film system, there is no reason to sell your gear. You’ve already got a photographic tool that far exceeds the quality of a digital camera. Go digital instead with a scanner, and scan your film photos into digital files.

Finally, I’d like to quote French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of the world’s most famous photographers and the founder of Magnum Photos, who once wrote: “Photography has not changed since its origin except in its technical aspects, which for me are not a major concern.”
I agree with Cartier-Bresson — it is the mind, imagination and hard work of the photographer that matters most in the end.