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Apple Archive

Switch to a Digital Camera, Stick with Film, or Use Both?

- 2004.08.06

If you take a look around you at the next theme park, parade, or children's play you go to, you'll notice that the majority of people seem to be using digital cameras. The concept of taking a photo digitally and then transferring it to your computer, manipulating it with something like iPhoto, and then printing it for a fraction of the cost of processing regular film, has taken off.

Everyone's got a digital camera, and every few months they seem to shrink in size. When Leica starts making them, you know that they've become more than just toys.

It wasn't that long ago that you'd see people carrying 30+ year old cameras over their shoulder with names like Argus, Yashica, Kowa, and Konica. In the digital camera rush, people have set aside their old 35mm cameras in favor of digital versions. As a result, these older cameras frequently show up in thrift shops, garage sales, and even in the trash, as was the case of a friend of mine who found a nice Minolta in a dumpster.

Given that I'm a person who tends to like the quality, durability, and aesthetics that old technology has to offer, while I do have a digital camera, I prefer not to use it unless I need to just take a picture of something or someone specifically for uploading to the Internet. An eBay auction is a perfect example of where I'd use my digital camera.

I've got a number of older 35mm film cameras, although my favorite for convenience and size, is my Olympus Trip 35, which has a cult following of its own. I seem to recall reading somewhere that it was so popular that Olympus made the same model, essentially unchanged, from 1966 until 1988. I bought mine used a number of years ago and found that the pictures it takes are absolutely fantastic.

It's an automatic exposure camera, meaning that you don't need a separate light meter, and it automatically sets the shutter speed for you. The only thing you've got to do is focus it. With 200 speed film, it takes great pictures outdoors, and you can get some good ones indoors with an electronic flash.

Of course, the advantage of a digital camera is being able to simply plug in the camera to your Mac and pretty much transfer and print the photos instantly. Having film processed still takes about one hour and still costs about $6, give or take a couple bucks depending on where you go to have it processed.

Taking pictures digitally is free, right?

Well, not exactly, as photo paper and ink run into quite a bit of money. The color ink for my printer runs around $35, and photo paper ranges from a few cents a sheet to a dollar or more a sheet depending on the quality, brand, and where you buy it.

While still a bit cheaper - since you probably won't print out all the photos you took - digital photography is not exactly free after you buy the camera. I think that it's practical to have one of each, a digital 'point and shoot' camera and a 35mm rangefinder type camera, something like my 1963 Konica Auto S, which was, at least according to Konica, the first auto-exposure 35mm camera.

What if you want pictures taken with your 35mm camera on your computer? You've got a couple different options that I'll discuss next week.

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