Is Digital Photography Better Than Film? An Article by Andrew Goodall

It seems almost the entire world has made the move from film to digital photography. Just like in the "good old days" of film, some people are using pocket cameras for taking snapshots, and others are buying bigger and better cameras for shooting more serious photography. Either way, digital cameras clearly dominate the modern photography world.

However, once every few days someone will come into my gallery and declare that digital photography just isn't as good as film. The quality isn't as good, the photos "lose it" when you try to enlarge them, and the advent of Photoshop means nothing is real anymore. In fact, some people believe digital photography is not photography at all, that it is just a lazy form of digital art.

Let's take a closer look at all these ideas.

First, whether you care to admit it or not, the quality of digital photography is extraordinary. the photos you shoot on a digital camera can be as sharp, as rich and as three-dimensional (well, capturing the illusion of three dimensions anyway) as anything we ever got from film.

When it comes to enlarging, digital wins again. Remember a few years ago when people claimed that digital cameras would need to reach 45 megapixels before they could match the fine grain of 100 ISO film? Later they said it would need to be 25 megapixels, then 18 and so on. The truth is, by the time we got to around 10 megapixels, the images from a good camera could be enlarged into very big high resolution prints, with better results than film.

In my gallery, I display a lot of A-2 photos, some shot on film, some on my Pentax K-20D (14.6 megapixel). The film photos, on close examination, clearly show the grain in the film emulsion; the digital photos show no sign of pixelation.

Now let's look at this issue of Photoshop.

If you shot colour slide film, and did your job well, your original image (the 35mm piece of celluloid) would contain a glorious, virtually perfect image. This was a fantastic place to start, because whenever you made a print, you knew exactly how the photo should look. If the print matched your perfect original, you could be happy with the result.

With digital, things are a little different. Unfortunately, a good digital camera, in the hands of an expert photographer, will likely produce a result that was a little less than perfect. The colours might be just a little off, the contrast might be a little flat...and almost everything seems to need a little sharpening before printing.

Is there a solution? Of course there is, and it is called software. Whichever image editing software you use, you can easily ‘tweak’ your photos, to the point where the quality is as rich and three-dimensional as a film photograph.

So, your digital photo can be every bit as perfect as your film photo...with just a little help.

The next issue is that you don't have your perfect original to hold up as the definitive version of the image. Unlike your 35mm slide, the digital image can be open to interpretation. You can show the image on 10 different screens, or run it through 10 different printers, and the result will be different each time. So as the photographer, you have to make a judgement as to how you think the photo should look.

I have to make these judgements every day. I base my judgement on nature; I want the photo that goes on the wall to be the closest representation of what I saw in the real world when I took the shot. To do this, I take my almost-perfect original, and make whatever small adjustments needed to make the image look as 'real' as possible.

So, in my field, software is not used to make artificial images, as many people these days seem to suspect. It is used to take the original image from the camera and turn it into the most natural image possible.

Beyond that, the question of how much you want your photos to be exposed to software is your own personal choice. Some people want nothing to do with it. Some people (like me) use it only as much as they need to to make up for the inherent weakness in the original digital file. Others love to play with all the magical effects that software has to offer, transforming their photos into anything they can imagine. That choice is up to you.

Photoshop and other editing programs have become a fact of life for most serious photographers, but not everyone likes to use them or even knows how to. Then there are the grumpy old purists who insist that a well-exposed photo should not require enhancement to bring it up to standard.

The bottom line is, if you are prepared to accept just a little bit of software into your life, you can expect your digital photos to be as real and as high-quality as anything produced on film. All this, with less ongoing expense, and the instant feedback that tells you if your photo has been a success or not.

So in the age of digital photography, what does film has to offer? Well, not much, except for the high cost of developing and printing (don’t forget you have to pay for each exposure, even if it is a dud). Then there is the long delay between taking the photo and seeing the result. Finally, if you want to use your photo for any practical purpose, you will probably have to scan it to turn it into a digital file anyway. These days, printing is digital, and more photography appears online than is ever printed.

Sorry to all the crusty old-timers who refuse to accept it, but we live in a digital world these days. As the world moves on we always adapt. We don't post letters, we send emails. We don't take three days to travel to the beach by horse and buggy, we take an hour in the car. When it comes to photography, it is time to admit that digital is not just as good as film. It is better.

As long as you know how to use a computer.