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So i guess what your saying, is that digital has made it to a level to replace film. Without the need to print all those throw away pics that come in every roll we take. Wouldn't a well taken disposable film camera pic compare well to high priced film SLR?

# posted by Anonymous 6:06 PM

What were you reading, Todd? That's not what I said at all. In fact, it was just the obverse.

As for single use v. SLRs, among similar genre the telling factor (aside from the nut behind the shutter button) is the quality of the lens.

# posted by Bill 6:46 PM

But at the rate I shoot pictures with my digital I'd go broke with the single use ones. A normal picture outing is about 200-300 picts. :)

Of course with digital you tend to shoot any damn thing since it doesn't cost you squat.

I'd really like to know how to compare my camera's resolution vs a 35mm file camera. How good a rez do I need to get to to be in the ballpark?

# posted by CujoQuarrel 10:06 PM

To answer your question 35mm film at 100ASA has about an effective resolution of 2400-3600DPI. As the speed of the film goes up higher ASA number the Silver grains in the film have to be made larger to be sentive enough to register the light. So by the time you get to 800ASA your resolution is down to about 600DPI. Most 4-6mp cameras have about the same resolution as most 35mm film. the throw away cameras have usally 200 or 400 speed film in them. Now on to Bills point.
The amount of light and the quality of the image depend on the lens. the litle throw aways and the little chepo digitals produce the same results becuse they use the same crapy optics. Put better lens largers shuters and an iris in the digital camers and they will take the same quality pictures as a SLR.

# posted by Anonymous 10:25 PM

Bill,

One of my favourite photoblogs 'Chromasia' has some excellent, excellent snaps taken on a digital camera.

Have a look. David's RSS feed is worth subscribing to.

abhijit.

# posted by abhijit 10:29 PM

I couldn't disagree more! With a digital camera like the Canon Rebel I have full control over depth of field -something that cannot be said for a disposable! And the lenses I use are infinitely better than anything you'll find in a "throw away" package. I guess if you have no talent as a photographer then spending as little money as possible makes sense...

My gallery: http://www.pbase.com/dalantech/root

Sorry -none of those shots were taken with a disposable camera... ;)

# posted by Anonymous 1:51 AM

Ah, Todd, thanks to you we've all reached two very insightful conclusions.

1. If you want effects then you need a camera that can do effects and OF COURSE you'd have to move up the scale from a throw-away.

2. Casting aspersions is a most pathetic attempt to win an argument.

# posted by Bill 2:08 AM

I've often had problems with throw-away cameras and their picture quality. I once had two rolls of film taken on a ski trip turn out with a yellow tint which was very obvious and offputting in a photo that is meant to be white. Also, the picture quality from the most recent throw away camera's that I've used has been very grainy, I would contribute this to their use of APS film, which is quite a bit smaller than the standard 35mm film, hence has a lower 'resolution'.

Surely though the comparison must be between throw away cameras and cheaper digital cameras (as the most expensive digital cameras match up to manual SLR). Then you have to take price into account. If you dont take many pictures, then throw away cameras are cheaper. But if you take a lot of pictures (or think that you might want to take a lot of pictures) then you may be wise laying out a little investment in a digital camera, which will save you money on buying a throw away camera each time, and processing.
So, comparing a throw away camera to a cheap (~£100) digital camera may yield higher quality to the throw away, but then at that level you are probably saving money with the digital camera.

-Perros-

# posted by Perros 2:44 AM

If you are comparing a cheap single-use film camera with a cheap digital, taking the "same pictures", then don't forget you get more attempts with the digital - you can see your mistakes immediately and correct them (delete them). And you eventually get back the money spent on the digital because you aren't paying for developing lots of film.

If we are comparing a single-use film camera with a higher-end digital compact (or SLR) then the contest doesn't make much sense - the more expensive camera should have a much better lens, and more importantly, can take pictures simply not possible with the single-use camera - so comparing them taking the same pictures misses the point of having a more versatile camera.

I agree with the figures posted on the effective resolution of (colour) film; my very best slides taken with Kodachrome 64 and scanned only seem to contain about 8MP worth of detail. Most pictures show little change when reduced to 6MP.

# posted by Anonymous 3:13 AM

It's interesting that Bill should make this comment - until the past year, I worked the same way and would have agreed with him. I have a decent 35mm SLR (Canon AE-1P) and a variety of lenses that I use for taking "good" pictures. For snapshot events like weekends at the beach and ski or bike trips, I would pack a bunch of 35mm disposable cameras. As one previous poster pointed out, I have found that the APS disposable cameras suck, so I avoid them.

As Bill implies (and other posters point out explicitly), images scanned in from 35mm negatives shot by cheap disposables, and the current raft of 4MP digital cameras have about the same image quality.

On the typical long weekend, I will take 100 to 150 pictures, of which only about 15% will be actually "used" (given away as souvenirs, put in albums or photo collages, etc). With disposable film cameras, I pay on average $10 per 24 exposures for the camera, and anouther $10 to develop and scan. That's about 83 cents per digital picture downloaded to my computer. I have no zoom, no flash control (I either have flash or I don't), and get 24 to 36 exposures per camera. They're bulky enough that I don't tend to carry more than one camera at a time, and 4 to 6 disposable cameras takes up more space in my duffel than another pair of jeans.

I would up going with the cheapest digital camera that offered 3x optical zoom and 3MP or better resolution. After playing with the Canon A-310 (no zoom), I wound up with the Olympus D-540 (workable, but battery-hungry). The camera, plus a memory card large enough to hold 130 pictures at full resolution, and two pair of rechargable batteries costs about $240 at Amazon. Once purchased the additional cost per digital picture downloaded to my computer is negligable (just the cost of the electricity to charge the batteries).

The digital camera pays for itself in less than 300 pictures - in other words, two or three of my average weekend trips. On top of that, it's smaller than a 35mm disposable camera, and all 130 exposures fit in my pocket. Even though the camera is battery-hungry, a pair lasts at least 65 exposures - 65 pictures between battery swaps is a lot better than 24 between camera swaps. In addition, I get zoom, macro close-up, and flash control to play with. Even with the charger and extra batteries, the whole rig packs smaller than 4 or 6 disposables, and I don't have to worry about the film getting fogged if I put it in checked luggage. I can also delete obviously bad shots, and get a few exposures into the weekend.

I can download the pictures into my computer as soon as I get back, rather than having to make two trips to get film developed. All in all a distinct improvement for vacation and adventure snapshots. I actually carry the little Olympus with me practically everywhere, and as a result take a lot more pictures than I used to. A lot depends on how you intend to use the camera - this rig is for snapshots - it's a "beater" camera that goes with me everywhere. I still use the big AE-1 for taking "good" pictures, although I expect that I'll replace it with a 6MP or better digital SLR in the next year (possibly the Canon Digital Rebel or something like it).

# posted by D.J.Wildstar 6:43 AM

Excellent, D.J.! You've just explained why digital cameras are becoming more and more popular and it didn't have anything to do with superior picture quality: Reasonable picture quality, ease of use, plus a low total cost of ownership compared to film alternatives.

Now, if we can get the magazines to stop being hypercritical about picture quality, which pushes people toward higher and higher end cameras (and prices), and start focusing on the other two factors, the world would be a better place indeed.

# posted by Bill 8:10 AM

I read this before my morning coffee, so it took me a few seconds to figure out how you knew "Todd's" name from an anonymous post. Thanks Bill, I'm awake now.

# posted by Anonymous 8:36 AM

I read this before my morning coffee, so it took me a few seconds to figure out how you knew "Todd's" name from an anonymous post. Thanks Bill, I'm awake now.

WRM (I'm not Todd)

# posted by Anonymous 8:36 AM

You can get just as full on peanut butter & jelly sandwiches as you can on fine food too. For the average joe in the street I suppose a disposable camera will do just fine. Of course I save a ton of money on photography now that I've gone digital, have greater control than I'd have with a disposable and have no need to waste gas driving to the drug store to have film developed.
I do agree about optics being more important than megapixels though. 4 or 5 MP should be more than enough for most of us but CCDs are cheaper to develop than lenses it would appear. Take a close look at the Panasonic FZ series....they seem to on the right track these days (now that Sony dropped the ball).

# posted by Anonymous 10:06 AM

LOL! Actually my name is John -I don't know why Bill came up with "Todd".

After re-reading my post I realized that my comment was pretty harsh -sorry :( But for Alice to compare a point and shoot to a digital camera and claim there is no difference is an apples and oranges comparison coming from someone who obviously is not a photographer -and therefore not qualified to make the comparison...

# posted by Anonymous 11:17 AM

John Todd, check this:

http://www.aliceandbill.com/2004/11/alice-in-africa.html#comments

Then again, Alice didn't make the comment, I did, and I spent 6 years making a living as a (hardly professional) photographer (and a portrait painter, when I could get people to sit still). If you really read what I originally wrote --every word, not just the ones you think are there-- and then re-read the reply I left for you, you'll find that you haven't countered my original post. Instead, you've added a layer to it that Perros and D.J. then amplified.

Rest easy. That makes you a vital and contributing member of the a&b community and not subject to scorn or ridicule --except maybe for not reading the "posted by Bill at 4:50 PM" at the bottom... ;-)

# posted by Bill 11:54 AM

One difference no one has mentioned between the film and inexpensive digicams is sensor noise. Competitive digicams -- the 2-4mpel point-and-shoot variety -- tend to have small and very noisy sensors. Thus image quality can be pretty poor relative to film cousins irrespective of optics and resolution.

But it's really worth remembering that 1) Electronics will continue to get cheaper for awhile yet; and 2) Electronics are reusable. These two things mean that economically speaking digicams will beat film cameras in the long term.

I kind of expect cell phone cameras to essentially kill disposable film cameras in the near term, and in the long term there will be cameras in all kinds of stuff (like watches and sunglasses).

A number of people have commented that the optics are the limiting factor of image clarity on a lot of digicams already. If you shoot with a current-generation digital SLR and you'll find that image quality is about equal to 35mm at ISO 100, and superior if shot at higher ISOs. You will, however, pay through the nose for that quality. In two to four years, however, digital SLRs will fall to levels comparable to today's film SLRs.

Today, if you're comparing film to digital irrespective of entry cost, the primary differentiator
is lattitude. Digital sensors have about the same lattitude as slide film -- which is to say little to none. It's very easy to over or underexpose them, although technologies like Fuji's SR sensor show that even this limitation may be short lived.

jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com

# posted by Jim Frost 11:57 AM

And, Jim, although it's gotten better, there's still that darn delay when you press the shutter button.

# posted by Bill 12:18 PM

I will put my 14 year old Nikon N5005 up against a digital camera any day. Digital cameras (and printers) have a long way to go before they catch up with film. Try printing a digital picture in 11 x 14. Try and find a printer that can match even a 8 x 10 35mm print for colors and sharpness. A good 35mm camera will beat digital any day.

# posted by Anonymous 12:29 PM

Heck, I might even put up my 30-something year old pair of Topcons if some SOB hadn't stolen them out of the back seat of my '62 New Yorker.

# posted by Bill 12:32 PM

I suppose that when digital imaging technology is 100 years old as film is now, it will be of comparable quality.

Of course the question is: how do you use your images. I rarely print an image anymore. They are all online and I can access them from anywhere in the world. I can take a shot while I'm walking the dog in the morning and e-mail it to my sister or post it on one of the photo forums IO frequent before I go to work. It isn't ALL about image quality...it is also about lifestyle and instant gratification. There's no doubt that film can produce a better image than digital but digital is so much more fun.

# posted by Anonymous 12:38 PM

I didn't have too much problem finding a camera that outperforms my 20 year old 35mm in almost every way, it just cost $750. The only way I convinced myself it was worth it is the sheer volume of pictures I used to take. Of course, now I take 10x the pictures, but I'm sure that's just a phase ....

# posted by Anonymous 1:35 PM

And the nice thing about on-screen imaging is that 72dpi works just fine.

# posted by Bill 5:40 PM

Bill, I couldn't agree more with this comment. Ease of use, lower cost of ownership, and reasonable quality - the combination is what's selling them; exactly what sold Kodak Brownies long ago.

# posted by Tim 7:36 PM

OK, I signed up for a Blogger account so you'd stop calling me "Todd" :)

Dalantech is a nickname that I've used for many years, and I'm "known" all over the web by that nick -Google it and count the hits (I just did and got 138,000)...

If you want to compare a scanned image taken from a disposable camera to a digital image captured by a digital camera, count the pixels, and then compare the two and claim there's no difference then that's fine Bill. But as a photographer you should know that there is much more to taking a photo than counting the number of pixels or the granularity of a negative. Framing, depth of field, changing the perspective of the image by changing the focal length of the lens that you use to take the shot, etc. are all infinitely more important than pixel count. I can't imagine trying to take "serious" photos with a point and shoot camera -a disposable would be even worse. Sorry Bill, IMHO you're making an apples and oranges comparison. It's like claiming that both a volswagon beetle and a Ferari are cars, and since both will get you from point A to point B there is no difference between them...

Sincerely,
Dalantech (not "Todd"...).

# posted by Dalantech 12:07 AM

"And, Jim, although it's gotten better, there's still that darn delay when you press the shutter button."

That is the focusing system. It is not a problem inherent with digital but rather in the cheap mechanics found in most of the cameras. You can prove this to yourself by trying out any of a number of current generation DSLRs with a quality lens, or by using manual focus mode, or even by comparing film and digital SLRs with the same lenses (they behave very similarly).

You don't see this on really inexpensive film cameras because they use fixed-focus construction, avoiding the focus step entirely. Similarly designed digicams also have quick shutter release, but they tend to have very long recycle times on account of using very inexpensive electronics.

jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com

# posted by Jim Frost 12:25 AM

Well, Dalantech not Todd, you're taking a form over function view in the VW v. Ferrari comparo and I'd have to ask if that really matters unless Schumacher is driving?

# posted by Bill 1:04 AM

"Try printing a digital picture in 11 x 14. Try and find a printer that can match even a 8 x 10 35mm print for colors and sharpness. A good 35mm camera will beat digital any day."

I would echo your sentiment: Do try it. Current generation *inexpensive* DSLRs produce images very closely matching 35mm in sharpness at typical ISOs (100-200), given comparable lenses, printing processes and lossless image formats.

There are a couple of reasons you might not have seen that in practice.

Primary among them is that most digital cameras produce JPEG images by default, and many digital shooters prefer them for faster shooting and more frames on a chip. Unfortunately JPEG necessarily causes loss of detail that is easily visible in a 5x7 print of a 6mpel image. All quality digital cameras offer lossless image modes: Use them.

Even shooting lossless you still have to worry about the optics, and the optics on most digital cameras suck relative to run-of-the-mill 35mm lenses. DSLRs tend to use the same lenses as their 35mm counterparts, eliminating this difference.

One advantage that digital cameras have over film in terms of sharpness is that they do not lose sharpness with increasing ISO values: They get noisy instead of grainy. Which brings me to the next topic....

Your color remark hits closer to home for a lot of reasons.

Films have nonlinear color sensitivity curves that tend to emphasize certain parts of the spectrum, whereas digital tends to be pretty flat (you could say "more accurate"). That sensitivity has often been tuned over decades, and good photographers pick films that suit their subjects, so often this is a very noticable difference. Such aesthetics are pretty easy to correct via editing of the digital image, however, allowing not only emulation of the look of various films but also modification beyond what is available with film.

Another common color issue is that most digital cameras shoot in the sRGB color space by default, and that space is pretty limited. All quality digital cameras that I know of allow you to shoot in other color spaces with wider gamuts.

If you're using a sensor utilizing a Bayer mask (nearly universal, I think only the Foveon sensor avoids this) you will of course have color inaccuracy due to interpolation which produces both a lack of sharpness and visible artifacts at high-contrast edges -- although the interpolation algorithms have gotten so good that this issue has largely been solved, and as resolution increases this becomes less and less of an issue in any case.

Lastly, I think by far the biggest reason people don't think digital cameras can produce sharp, colorful images is because most people see prints made on inexpensive inkjet printers that have never even been calibrated. If you want a high quality image you need a high quality printer: Take it down to your local pro shop for printing. You'll pay for that quality, of course. The difference between the print quality between a consumer-level inkjet and something like a Fuji Frontier is difficult to overstate.

Today the quality difference between digital and film is largely a matter of whether the shot emphasizes the particular strengths or weaknesses of either -- at least compared to 35mm film. The cost of larger sensors will likely keep digital from competing with medium and large format films in a lot of situations for the foreseeable future, although if your subject allows it the scanning backs produce stunning images.

jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com

# posted by Jim Frost 1:40 AM

"Well, Dalantech not Todd, you're taking a form over function view in the VW v. Ferrari comparo and I'd have to ask if that really matters unless Schumacher is driving?"

LOL!!! :)

Excellent point Bill!

# posted by Dalantech 2:06 AM

I generally agree with Bill.... I don't think we've arrived at the point where a low to mid-range digital camera can match the photo quality of a mid-range to high-end 35mm film camera. However, in the professional market, digital has already generally surpassed 35mm film in quality. The Canon EOS-1Ds has an 11MP resolution and top-notch electronics for the dandy street price of $6,995. Upcoming professional models from Canon and other manufacturers will now be looking at conquering medium format film. Well, Bill, you said compare their best :)

With that said, I don't think the issue of digital camera photo quality - as compared to 35mm film - is very compelling. Digital is good enough in general for 99% of us, and the other 1% are professionals who spend far more than we would on the tools of their trade.

After all, cellphone audio quality sucks arse, and when is the last time your landline conversation was dropped due to loss of network? Still, people seem to love their cellphones - despite this loss of quality :)

# posted by Sean 7:34 AM

Actually the latest Canon EOS 1 DS Mk2 has a resolution of nearly 17MP. You can also get digital backs for medium format cameras, with resolutions in excess of 22 MP, but the price is scary...

# posted by Anonymous 8:25 AM

I din't put myself through the agony of reading all the comments, but read enough to see that most people have 'figured it out'. Don't matter if it's cameras, stereo, or whatever, you'll have the 'purist', the 'let's do it good', and the 'what the heck, it looks fine' types.

I personally have been involved in electronics and cameras most of my life, and I'm an old fart, and what I've found is on stero there is not reasoning or talking to the tube-hangers, they can 'hear' the difference. The same with the film-hangers; they can 'see' the difference. Of course, most of them won't submit to a blind test to see if they really can.

I've been using a Nikon 2500 for the past 2-1/2 years, taken over 8,000 pictures with it, and see absolutely no reason to consider film again. For anything under a 8x10 picture, you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference. But, you have to consider the complete process, not just snaping the shutter. If you take a wonderful and perfect picture with any camera, be it film or digital, and have Joe Smuck print it, it's going to look like crap. If you learn how to do a good print job with your own printer, or have Mary Cares print it, it's going to look wonderful.

# posted by Anonymous 9:33 AM

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