Picking the Right Camera: Film or Digital?
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Althought Digigraphica puts the focus on digital photography, that doesn't mean a digital camera is always the best solution. We're realists. We understand that traditional film cameras are sometimes a better solution. It's in that light that we present our guide to picking the right camera.
We will explain some of the issues involved and then let you to go to the next article or choose from two or more alternatives. We hope this will help you understand the basics and lead you to the type of camera that best suits your needs.
Film or Digital?
We're basically looking at digicams vs. 35mm cameras, not the roll film or sheet film equipment pros often use. There are several factors that might push your decision one way or the other. (Or you could go both ways, choosing between a film camera and a digicam based on circumstances.)
- Do you need to produce slides? If so, film may be your best bet, although good slides can be produced from digital images as well (you need a lot of megapixels).
- Do you need to produce huge prints (16x20 and larger)? If so, film may be your best choice, although many of today's digicams have sufficient resolution to go that big.
- Do you need to put your images on the Internet right away? If so, go digital.
- Do you want to email pictures to friends and family? Digital has the advantage.
- Do you want the ability to change lenses? For the most flexibility, go film, where there's a huge selection of used cameras and lenses as bargain prices. That said, today's digital SLRs (which now start at under $600 with a zoom lens) are excellent alternatives.
- Do you need extreme lenses: superwide, long telephoto, 1:1 macro? If so, your best bet is probably film, although digital is catching up in this area.
- Do you need to shoot in low light conditions? If so, go for a digital SLR. You'll have access to high speed lenses, be able to turn up the ISO to 1600 or even 3200, have the option of a powerful flash when you need it, and be able to adjust color balance to compensate for different light sources.
- Do you want to be able to make your own color prints at home without the expense of building and maintaining a darkroom? If so, go digital.
Picking the Right Camera Series Index
- Film or Digital?
- Picking the Right Digital Camera
- Megapixels Come First
- Picking a Type of Digicam
- Lenses on Digital Cameras
- The Imager and Digital Zoom
- Digital Image Quality
- Finally, Picking a Digicam
- Picking the Right 35mm SLR
- Introduction to Lenses
- Picking the Right Lens(es)
- 35mm SLR Features
- Picking a Brand and Model
- Pros and Cons of Built-in Flash
- Putting Your System Together
- Picking the Right Viewfinder Camera
- Digital SLRs are affordable enough to replace 35mm SLRs, 03.11. Prices for DSLRs have dropped to record lows, and image quality generally matches or exceeds that of film.
- No more ugly dates (in your digital photos), 03.06. Tired of ugly, blocky, wrong colored dates in your digital images? This proposal could eliminate them for good, giving you control over typeface, color, and placement.
- High megapixel compact digicams may be worse than we thought, 02.21. In the rush to squeeze more megapixels into a tiny image sensor, manufacturers are sometimes making compromises that result in fuzzy, grainy, washed out images.
- More in the Digigraphica index.
- Mac Pro overclocking, Windependence with Darwine, Blu-ray for Macs, and more, Mac News Review, 07.04. Also more on running Leopard on non-Apple hardware, Ubuntu on a Mac mini, the first autofocus webcam with Zeiss optics for Macs, and more.
- Wouldn't life be great with an iSlate?, John Hatchett, Recycled Computing, 07.04. PDAs and smartphones are too small for some tasks, full-fledged Tablet PCs are overkill, and ebook readers are too limited. Apple has the tech to own this niche.
- Mac of the Day: Blue & White Power Mac G3, Jan. 1999 - The most colorful Power Mac introduced an innovative 'drawbridge' enclosure.
- List of the Day: SuperMacs is for those using Umax SuperMac clones.
- July 6 in LEM history: 00: 3 user accelerators - 01: SCSI and FireWire Disk Mode - Stick with the Mac - Computers for college - 05: Optimizing OS X performance - Return of the bumper snicker - 06: Can consumer MacBook replace 2 PowerBooks and a ThinkPad? - Vintage Macs with System 6 run circles around 3 GHz Windows PC - Run Windows apps without Windows
- The Macintosh Portable started a notebook revolution, Carl Nygren, Classic Macs in the Intel Age, 07.03. Before Apple introduced the Mac Portable, notebook computers were text-based and ran MS-DOS. Ever since, graphical interfaces have been the norm for laptops.
- More links in our archive.
Dan Knight is the author of Digigraphica and used 35mm SLRs from the early 1970s through about 2004, when he went 100% digital. He was a yearbook/school photographer from 1972 through 1980 and has worked at the Camera-Stereo Centre in St. Catharines, Ontario, and Marks Photo and Arden's Photo in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Dan Knight has been into photography since 1973, worked at several camera stores over the years, and switched from film to digital several years ago. He is the publisher of Low End Mac.
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