The Selling of Photographic Media:

A variety of considerations on the costs of digital photography

Digital camera producers, eager to make all the sales they can before introducing the next generation of equipment (which, of course, they will insist you will also have to purchase), would like you to think that buying a digital camera, or replacing the one you have, somehow opens up grand new vistas. That's great for the advertising industry (agencies, writers, publishers, and places that sell ad space like magazines and television), but is it real?

As I've argued before, to take a photograph is to capture an image, hopefully one to which you have given some thought. It also means, from the word's Greek roots, to write (or record) with light. Therefore, it has always seemed to me that the choice of film or digital is more a matter of the recording medium than any basic difference in what one is doing.

The real difference, it seems to me, is that digital cameras make some tasks easier — and that they also make some tasks more difficult. But using either film (so long as it's around) or digital does not substantively change what you're doing. Thinking ahead about what you see in the finder (known to photographers as "previsualization") is still fundamental to getting a good photograph.

That aside, there are some differences to consider. Although digital is catching up rapidly, a well-exposed 35mm slide or negative can be scanned to a resolution unheard of in typical digital photography. (We should also note that the digital cameras that are catching up are fantastically expensive.) If you need big pictures, or like to crop, be especially careful of small digital cameras. In the middle, film storage requirements are a known factor; no one really knows about long-term digital storage. It's wise to spend some time keeping up with things if you want to preserve your digital shots.

One thing you'll often hear about digital is that "taking pictures is free." That's true enough, if you don't want prints, but it overlooks the cost of storing your pictures — you do want to look at them later, don't you? And while there is no constant, ongoing cost for film, you also need to have enough memory card capacity to get to a place where you can transfer the photos. You can fill a hard drive pretty quickly with digital; paying for either storage or a terabyte-class server is not "free."

Cost was one of the reasons that video swept away amateur movie film. Two hours of video would cost $4 for a tape. Two hours of movies would be 40 rolls of movie film at $15-20 each by the time you had it processed (not to mention the need to splice all that movie film together). 35mm isn't quite so bad: you can still get a roll for $2 in multiple packs, and have it developed (no prints) for another $2, scan it, and have less-expensive prints made from the scans of the pictures you want. That's 16 cents a frame shooting cost, and it's an ongoing cost that can limit experimentation. You also have to wait until it's developed to find out how you did, and you can have processing problems (of course, computers have been known to have problems too, so you need to back up your files — I make two sets, stored at two different locations). Prices of memory cards keep dropping, as does storage. While you need enough cards to get you home or someplace to transfer the pictures, you can reuse the cards. I store pictures on my hard drive, and back them up to rewritable discs, which I renew every couple of weeks. There's some cost there, but it's hard to figure out just what at this point.

Let's say you're taking a trip; you'll be taking more pictures than usual and you'll be away from your computer for a while. If you're using film, you could buy more than you need right away — it should be good for a year or so at least (it's wise to check, though, a lot of places, especially drug and grocery stores, have expired film on the shelf, and the problem is getting more pronounced as film sales drop). What about your digital camera? If the card is full, you buy a new card. Or you can lug a computer or compatible storage device around and transfer the pictures. Either option, of course, does major damage to the "free pictures" idea. However, there's an emerging business: the digital download center, which will burn a disc directly from your memory card — something you'd probably do anyway. When there are enough of these around to rely on them (which will also bring the cost down), they promise to make digital photography on the road much easier.

Part of the cost of photography is, of course, the equipment. My advice is to think carefully and get the camera that is most suited to your needs up front (this is the same advice as I gave in film days). To look back to the first paragraph here, the megapixel race is on. While there is a serious difference between 2 and 6 megapixels, the difference between 6 and 10 is not as great, and there may not be any real difference in your pictures. Some 6 megapixel cameras outperform 10's. One reason for this is that although the number of pixels (the individual sensor points) increases, the size of the sensor does not. Barring technological breakthroughs (again, stay tuned for these!), more pixels in the same space means smaller pixels which results in more noise. The recent full-frame (in reference to 35mm) DSLR's offer greater resolution — sometimes close to what a medium or large formal film camera offers — but your bank account won't thank you!

That's it for now. Suggestions for additions are welcome!

Revised: 27 March 2010; first posted: 16 February 2007