Film V's Digital

The question surely to divide every photographer and camera club member at this stage. Not because of the Question itself - as there are merits to discuss, but more because people are probably sick and tired of hearing it being asked again and again and again ....


So why ask it here...?



Some time ago, reading the letters page of a photo magazine, a paper based product, the entire page was given to this topic. The penny dropped with me that every letter printed, either pro or anti film/digital, was sent to the magazine via email ! Not one letter handwritten and posted in the old-fashioned sense.

All letters in the magazine were e-mailed in.
Why not posted?

The art of writing is a superb analogy to Photography. Years ago, inks were sourced from natural ingredients. Clays, flowers, herbs, vegetables etc. were pounded into dust, mixed with oils to produce colours that were applied to papyrus, vellum and eventually parchment and paper. Scripts were drawn, expressed and eventually condensed into modern alphabets. Lettering became calligraphic - beautiful writing. Decrees, pamphlets, books and verse were made permanent. Copies were transcribed. Letters were delivered.
Calligraphers then, were thought of in the highest of esteem, quite often trusted with royal secrets as they put forward words onto paper. Artists used the inks to produce images. Portraits, landscapes, great mosaics and ceilings. The printing press was invented. Suddenly the written word could be produced en mass. Books were produced. More books produced than people could read. Education started to enable access to the populations who were schooled. Eventually the population not only started to read and write the books they were given, they started to write their own. Fiction was born. Mass fiction, mass publication. Technology produced typewriters, but people were still schooled in the art of handwriting. Technology continued its own evolution and along came the computer. Big computers at first, only the state or big corporations could afford them. But like the book, originally for the few, computers eventually became powerful enough and small enough to become personal. This evolution continues right up to today, in some schools kids are learning the letters on keyboards before they write them with pencils. The art of handwriting is starting to decrease in much the same way as the art of oral history, story telling and collective remembrance has faded. Only a few now practice the old arts, Poetry, calligraphy, storytelling. Art, the picture drawing art that is, for its own and our sake is still thriving.

And back to photography, now in it's second century of existence, is going through its own revolution. Digital.
The analogy is striking. What was once the preserve of the rich, was opened to mass public by the invention of the Kodak Brownie. The rise of 'popular photography' was here, but was it ever accepted fully by high-art establishments? To be a serious photographer, accepted as an Artist, boundaries of technical competence had to be set, while populist photography came to settle down to 35mm, artistic levels start at medium and larger formats.
Then came digital. Not serious, surely quality is poorer ! Not anymore.
Today's technology is changing so rapidly, image transfers worldwide so instant, that a child with a toy camera or phone can send a quality image to the Internet and have it published worldwide.
It's not anymore if digital or film is better - it's which fulfills a particular need.
We will still have a want and need for the artistic film based darkroom. it's holding onto the skills that becomes the challenge.
Analogue photography: Just like good handwriting - beautiful to look at - but when did you last handwrite a letter ?