Does anyone else have the problem of "thinking digital"?

[HamstersFromHell]

A reply to a post from WannaJumpMyScooter about the cost of film cameras got me to thinking.

I take far fewer photos than I should...and I guess that comes from back when I was actively traveling to places and taking quite a number of photos, or at least a lot of photos for someone who wasn't a pro (and getting paid to do it).

I used to do the old routine: buy film, take photos, have it processed and prints made. ($, more $, and then even more $$) Of course, generic lab prints often covered or attempted to fix mistakes I made, and even still, far less than 100% are going to be "keepers".

That pushed me, in the interest of saving money, to spend even more on buying my own darkroom equipment. I'd still buy film, shoot it, send it to the corner 1 hr. lab and have them develop the negatives and cut to strips and sleeve them. Bring it home and make test prints, then pick what was worth printing for 5x7 or 8x10. The negative developing wasn't cost effective to do yourself unless you shot a ton of film. However, doing the color printing saved a lot of money for me.

Later on I bought an HP film and slide scanner to eliminate the darkroom. I could print for free at work on the wide format inkjets and RIP them to any size.

Nonetheless, even with on one occasion traveling 600 miles and getting one shot I'd dreamed of taking (finally, I was there and the conditions were *right*) only to find out all 5 shots I took at that one spot were a bit "off" (depth of field wrong, focus a touch off, etc.). If only I'd shot more, but oh, the expense!

Now I have both film and digital, and enough SD cards to take over 1000 images in RAW mode before dumping them off, I still don't press the shutter release as often as I should. After all, it's costing me literally nothing to shoot 20 shots where I would have shot maybe 3-5 with film, yet I still have this mental block. Is "expense" living in my mind somewhere when it's really not a factor anymore?

My g/f's 19 yr old son, who never owned a camera, was given my old N6006 last year for graduation. He shot quite a few rolls with it, then this spring purchased a new D40. I've had my D50 for two years now, and he's shot at least 4 times more in the 2 months he's owned his than I have in 2 years. He snaps everything, experiments a lot, and just tosses everything he doesn't like. I've got to learn to be able to do that!

Any other old film photographers have a hangup about not being able to "just shoot it"(lots!)?

[Ms. Toad]

1. The transition was very easy for me

I actually have the opposite problem, now.

When I traveled, I used to take a modest number of shots then buy postcards or photo books of anything I would be really unhappy if I didn't capture in a reasonable fashion. First time I traveled with a digital camera (within a month of purchasing it), I filled all the cards I had purchased with the expectation of lasting the entire trip in half the trip and had to find a place to download them. I came back with between 1000 and 1500 photos. That was the last trip I purchased any postcards on (didn't quite trust it still until I got back home and printed the photos I'd taken).

I shoot my daughter's high school productions (three to four nights of dress rehearsal). I started out giving each of the kids in the play a CD with all of the photos that weren't just blurs, plus the 100 or so I selected to edit. Now, I take so many (and the quality of those from my newer camera is so much better), that I have to omit lots of photos that are decent photos just to fit them all on a CD.

That easy transition may have been due in part to my then adolescent daughter's tendency to just point and click the film camera she was using at anything - and the associated developing and printing costs. I immediately realized I cold let her point and click cost free with a digital camera. (My only mistake there was buying her a cheap one, thinking it would be years before she wanted to start messing with macro, shutter speed, ISO, etc. She immediately started stealing mine - so I had to buy her a second, more expensive one, within months.)

The only problem I have with taking enough photos is I don't always have my camera with me when I want to use it.

[priller]

2. No. I found the switch very liberating.

To be honest, it had been many years since I used a film camera regularly. But cost was the main reason why I had stopped doing it.

When I first got a good digital camera (Nikon D70s) I snapped away like there was no tomorrow. I love that fact that taking a digital photo is basically free. Now I'm not quite so snap-happy, mainly because I try to think about what I'm doing a little more (and the 12 MP files are so big I tend to run out of disk space). But there are many times when the ability to fire off a bunch of free photos comes in handy. When I took photos of the granddaughter the other day, I took about 60 photos just to get the one I really liked:




I would never have done that with film.

The day when digital sensors give me the dynamic range of old b&w film, then I'll be ecstatic!

[NashVegas]

3. I'm Still Pretty Conservative

Part of this is because I mostly use manual settings, so it still takes a few seconds to get everything the way I want it (ISO, shutter, ap).

On top of that, it takes at least 5-6 seconds for my camera to save a RAW file; I don't want to miss a great shot while my camera is saving a mediocre one.

[ManiacJoe]

4. Quality vs Quantity

If one takes a large number of shots purely on the hope that a few are good, pure luck is all that will help them. However, once you understand how to take a good photo, all you need are short bursts of frames to help with the timing of moving subjects. Other than some exposure bracketing or compositional changes, just a few shots of the subject ought to be enough.

Shooting volumes of individual frames is not necessarily a bad thing as long as you honestly analyze the shots to see how to improve. Digital is free in this regard. Since I am the one doing the processing on the computer (instead of the lab during the printing of the film), I do not want to be wading through lots of junk snapshots just to find that one keeper. However, since I have been shooting SLRs since the 80's, I have become pretty good at getting the exposure and composition down so that I don't need a large number of shots to get a quantity of keepers.