Digital Media Compared to Film  

(You may want to answer the review questions while you read this).

 

The technology of photography evolved rapidly for the first 50 years, going from single use images captured on glass plates to images captured on a film negative, which could then be used to make infinite prints.  This was all based on light-sensitive chemicals in an emulsion layer on film on paper.  With the exception of Polaroid prints, things stayed pretty much the same throughout the 20th century, with incremental improvements in quality and ease-of-use, rather than any fundamental change in the base technology.

Meanwhile, digital imaging was being developed, partially because TV is a related method of capturing and displaying images, and also by interests like NASA, who needed pictures from space but couldn’t always get a roll of film back! 

Then, at the dawn of the current century, digital photography became available to mass culture – artists and consumers you and I!  As we’ll see, in some ways digital photography was just a continuation of existing photography.  But there are some major differences, and like any leap in artistic media, it allowed new means of artistic expression.

The Fundamental Difference:  Sensor versus Film

We tend to think of film cameras as big SLRs, and digitals as sleek little devices you can slip in your pocket.  But which of the cameras pictured below is digital, and which uses film?

The answer is, they’re all digital, but the black one is almost identical to an SLR that uses film, while the 2 on the left could easily be point-and-shoot film cameras.

In the end, the only big difference between a film camera and a digital camera is the medium the image is captured on, and how you can manipulate the image after it’s captured.

Any type of photography is all about capturing light and shadow.  You use your lens and aperture to focus an image at the back of the camera.  Then you open the shutter for a period of time to expose the medium to light.  That’s pretty much the same for both types of cameras.  But from the moment of capture, things change radically…

 

 

Film

Digital

 

Medium

An emulsion of light-sensitive chemicals like silver-nitrate, on a plastic film.  Colour film has separate emulsions for cyan, magenta and yellow.

An array of millions of light-sensitive pixels on a silicone chip called a sensor

How It Captures

Parts of the film struck by light are activated - an invisible chemical change in the grains of chemical in the emulsion

Pixels which are struck by light create a tiny voltage –

more light = more current

Initial Processing

The activated grains turn dark when placed in a developer solution, a chemical reaction

The amount of current (light) from each pixel is individually recorded on a memory chip.

Colour

Different layers and light-sensitive chemicals in the emulsion react differently to hues

Filters break up the light into Red Green and Blue (RGB) components.  Each pixel actually has 3 light sensors, and the amount of R, G and B is recorded separately

Making the Image Visible

The development is stopped, the film is fixed, and a negative image is permanently on the film.  Light is shone through the negative onto photo-sensitive paper, and the same development process is repeated to make an enlarged positive image on paper.

A processor (usually a computer) reads the memory chip and sends the information about the colour of each pixel to a monitor or a printer. 

Monitors have RGB pixels corresponding to the ones on a camera’s CCD.  But this time, instead of capturing the amounts of RGB light striking the pixel, the pixels emit light proportionate to the amount of light that was recorded by the camera.

Printers also create dots of colour corresponding to the amount of light recorded by each pixel, but they do it by spraying microscopic amounts of coloured ink on each dot.

 

Quality

One of the big raps against the original digital cameras was that you could never get an image that looked as good as a high quality film print.  While there are still film purists, many of the world’s best artistic photographers and photojournalists have switched to digital.  A high end digital camera can capture as much detail as the most films, and the added processing possibilities arguably make for better images.

The perceived lack of quality for digital is more about marketing than potential quality.  Most makers are aiming for the low end of the quality scale, because that’s where most of the sales are.  Millions of people are able to spend $200-$400 on a digital camera, and are quite happy with the results.  For that price, you get less quality:  smaller less accurate sensor, smaller plastic lens with few adjustments vs. larger sophisticated glass lens, etc.  Viewed on a web page or a 4 x 6 print, the images are pretty good.

It’s not until you really enlarge a picture, on a good monitor or a larger print, that you begin to see the difference between normal and high quality.  And if you need the best quality, you’re not going to get it from a low-end camera, whether it’s a point-and-shoot digital or a disposable film camera.  Sharp, pure, true images require excellent lenses, control over aperture, shutter speed and ISO, and a skilled photographer, all of which are available for film or digital. 

Cost

You can spend $50 to $20,000 on either a digital or a film camera, and usually, you get what you pay for.  For most consumers, the low end is fine, and each year in digital technology you get more for less.  For artistic expression, a higher-end camera offers more possibilities, but an artist with creative vision can still make powerful images with an ordinary digital camera.  You can buy a decent one for $200, or a great DSLR for under $600.

The huge cost advantage for digital is in processing.  Film and print processing has gotten cheaper lately, but the cost per shot is still around 50 cents for film and a 4 x 6 print.  Once you’ve got a digital camera and a computer, the shots are essentially free, if you’re satisfied with viewing them on a monitor.  Printing at home tends to be expensive for photo paper and ink, but you can get your favourite files printed commercially for the same price as from a negative, without the cost of the film.

So that’s made a difference to artists, who, like everyone else, don’t want to waste money.  The cost of film and development restricted the amount of experimentation a traditional photographer could do.  With digital media, you suddenly have ability to shoot hundreds or thousands of experimental images and process them in interesting ways, all for free. If desired, that one perfectly compose and processed image can then be printed.

Convenience

Here again, digital has a huge upper hand, which in turn affects the way artists are working. 

Results of a shoot are instantly viewable on the camera’s LCD monitor, letting the photographer get feedback and perhaps adjust the next shots right in the field.  Film photographers just had to hope they got the exposure right, or spend lots of money “bracketing” the exposure (re-taking each shot with a range of F-stops).

The time from shooting to processing and viewing is also drastically reduced by digital technology.  Downloading to a computer takes minutes with a USB connection, versus a trip to the film processor or time in the darkroom.  The results of editing in Photoshop are instantly viewable, versus the time consuming cycles of enlarging and developing.

Possibilities

Perhaps the biggest difference digital photography has allowed is in the processing of the image after it’s been captured.  A skilled artist in the darkroom can do amazing things to an image, changing tints and contrast, burning and dodging, overlaying negatives and more.  But it’s hugely time-consuming and laborious, and environmentally unfriendly to boot!

Digital photo editing is not only much quicker and easier, but also offers a multitude of brand new opportunities for artistic expression.   If you’ve played with Photoshop, you know that it’s relatively easy and fast to try all kinds of experiments.  If you don’t like the result, you can revert to the original and start again.  It doesn’t mean you can automatically create great art, but it provides easier access to the tools.

The effect of this is liberating to anyone with an artistic eye.  Not only is it possible to do more, but it’s much more probable that you will do more.  Even if you’re a dedicated hard-working artist, you can only spend so much time on a piece.  If you can explore ten times as many possibilities digitally in the same amount of time, you’re much more likely to make the bold steps that create interesting new art.