Digital Wedding Photography vs. Film Photography
Article by kaphotographs.com
A question that comes up from clients in the course of my Toronto wedding photography work is: are there any tangible differences between digital and film, and which is better?
First, I should say that I shoot digitally, but have shot film for many years. These days, the fact is that the majority of photographers at all levels of skill are shooting digitally, so I’m not alone in this respect. But the question is has anything been lost in that transition? What has been gained by the advances in technology moving photographers, both amateur and professional alike, toward digital photography?
Whether a photographer is working in the wedding, fashion, commercial, or fine art field, they are most likely shooting digitally at this point in time. There are holdouts, though. Film “purists” are either shooting on film because they’ve always done so, and they learned photography one way and are averse to changing something that works for them, for reasons of advancing technology. They are “film practitioners” mostly for highly subjective personal reasons. The reasons are usually quite hard to nail down these days. An architectural photographer, for example, might require very specific tools which they already own, such as a “large format” film camera which has very high resolution and can be utilized to correct perspective problems when photographing tall buildings (even though this can be done digitally as well), or a fine art photographer is attempting to create a look that they themselves have not figured out how to replicate digitally, such as a “polaroid transfer” effect.
I’d like to talk about why I personally chose to shoot digitally now. First, I’d like to point out that to a certain extent, a talented photographer will be able to create great images using even a $10 plastic camera, and better tools do not make a better photographer, they only clear the path of technical limitations for someone who already knows what they are doing and have a great eye for photography.
In the same way that particular film stocks are not equal, not all digital cameras are created equal. The resolution of a digital camera sensor is the most important aspect in determining the quality of an enlargement. This resolution is defined in “Megapixels”, and the higher the number the more real detail will be visible in the image. This will lead to better and bigger possible printed enlargements.
The benefits I get from shooting digitally are clear to me and other photojournalistic wedding photographers in Toronto and elsewhere. Digital photo storage media is capable of holding many more times the number of pictures than a roll of 24 or 36 exposure film. Over 150 images can be held on a good card, even when shooting at full resolution and in RAW image format (the highest quality format). More storage per card means much less time is spent changing shooting media, and missing once-in-a-lifetime moments. In addition, digital memory cards get smaller and more capacious every year, so there is always room to grow, and the extra cards are light and compact enough for large quantities to be reasonably carried around by the photographer at any one time.
Another benefit of digital photography is that your wedding photographer can make absolutely sure they’ve got that important shot because of instant review abilities. Whether shooting a large wedding group portrait with overseas relatives, or an emotion-filled, candid moment between the bride and groom, the wedding photographer needs to be sure that they got the shot and that nothing distracting is going on in the photo. Digital photography allows a photographer to see the results instantly and reduces disappointing surprises. The photographer can see if the shot was out of focus, if the flash was too bright, if someone’s eyes were closed, and if someone’s face was contorted into an unnatural expression for the split second the photo was taken. Some photographers will say they have a great sense if someone’s eyes were open or closed, but the fact is that if they are using a flash, they usually will not be able to tell just by observing the scene, if a set of eyes were open or closed.
As a digital photographer I am able to can change the white balance and the ISO sensitivity of the sensor from one moment to the next. This is a huge benefit and cannot be practically done with film. What it means is that I can tailor the camera’s settings to the level of light present at the location, and I can match the colour temperature of the image to the lighting conditions of a venue. With film cameras, a wedding photographer can almost never commit the time or expense of changing the white balance or sensitivity of the camera because with film this involves rewinding a partially shot roll of film, unloading it, and then replacing it with a different roll having the balance or sensitivity that the photographer needs. Another option for film photographers is to place filters in front of the lens to correct for the colour temperature of the scene. However, this comes at the cost of losing light available for the photo exposure itself. The photographer will be out of luck if the shots come out extremely under-exposed or if it exhibits camera blur because of the low lighting conditions. Digital cameras on the other hand, allow the photographer to change both the colour balance from indoor to outdoor or fluorescent (or any colour increment in between) and the sensitivity or speed of the sensor, usually with flick of a dial.
In the post-production or archiving stages of producing photographs, digital images have the benefit of searchability and much quicker accessibility. Information about shooting time, lens focal length, aperture setting, ISO, shutter speed, etc. are automatically captured by the camera at the time of shooting. This makes searching through an archive of thousands of images much more possible and painless. Additionally, during the photo editing stage, the photographer can fill in other descriptive details about each photograph, such as the event name, the people who are in the shot, or other content or technical data. Several software packages exist within the reach of most photographers that allow digital images to be dynamically sorted and grouped along any of these categories.
While film images will deteriorate over the years and must be stored in strict environmental conditions to slow down this inevitable deterioration, digital images can be safely archived forever. The only thing to keep in mind with archiving digital images is that every five years or so, a new digital storage format comes along that offers benefits over the previous format. The trend is that the physical footprint of the storage medium decreases over time, and its capacity to store more and more image data increases. If an image is stored digitally, it can be copied to any new format that comes along without any “generation loss” or quality loss. Digital files can be passes around from one place to another, and several master copies can exist for safety in different locations, which remain identical in quality to the original.
Then there is the environmental impact of shooting on film. A roll of film can only be used once, requires the use of polluting chemicals in its processing, necessitates other aspects of temporary packaging. Also, unless costly and time-consuming film scanning is done, shooting on film requires printing a resin-coated paper print in order to even determine if the image is actually worth printing in the first place. Good shots and mediocre shots alike will need to be printed to at least 4x6” in size in order to determine the quality of the photographic content and the impact of the moment. Conversely, digital storage cards can be used and re-used since after a shoot, the images can be copied to another drive, or in the case of a bad shot, can be quickly deleted. From the photographer’s perspective too, there are clear economic benefits to the re-usability of digital storage, even though they require a relatively high initial investment.
But perhaps the biggest reason (and the one I care about the most) for shooting digital over film, is that shooting a RAW digital image with a professional camera allows me the ability to refine a multitude of aspects of an image after I shoot it, at a computer workstation. This is where I can get even more creative and transform a great wedding shot into a work of art. I can creatively adjust the colour, the lightness or darkness of specific areas of an image, and a multitude of other aspects to shape the end result. The same degree of control is not available for film shooters, even if the film is scanned using the best scanner in the world. What this means is a heightened photographic moment that strikes you every time you relive it inside a k.a.photographs Wedding Storybook or Gallery Print.
Kaan
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