Is Digital Easier For Regular People Than Film Was?

Remember Kodak Instamatics and similar film cameras? The entry level model was the 1000

They just had one button to press, dead simple and a popular choice for casual photographers at one time.

Plus an easyload film cartridge to make them easier to handle!

Yes except that the quality was absolute crap compared to any camera today

Don't believe me ?

Fish ou those photos and take a really good look at them (minus rose tinted glasses...)

davids8560 said:

Is Digital Easier For Regular People Than Film Was?

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There wasn't much easier than dropping a film cartridge into a camera and going out and taking pictures, where all you had to do was advance the film and push a shutter button, and then dropping that cartridge off at the local drug store, then picking up a package of prints a while later.

Even the simplest of smart phones is more complicated than that.

brownie314 said:

PenPix said:

Film is easier.

Push button. Hand camera to guy behind counter to extract the used roll and put in a new one (it happened often). Guy behind the printer fixes the flaws in photo... although the machines today are pretty good at it. Pick up photos.

I do more explaining about digital photography than I ever did with film. More options = more difficulty.

Inversely, for the guy behind the counter, digital is easier because pushing a button and waiting for the pictures to come out is a lot less hassle than having to deal with chemicals. Unless is a custom order, I don't fix exposure or colour problems... garbage in, garbage out.

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You must be joking. Lets see, buy film camera. Then, every 36 exposures, go buy another roll of film, and at the same time drop off last roll of film for processing. Wait a week or two to take another 36 images then repeat all over again. And at the same time, get back images you dropped off last time. Was exposure OK, was composition OK? Who the H knows how to fix that - I don't even remember what I was doing at the time. Oh, and "sharing" them with people- yeah didn't happen back in the day.

Digital. Buy digital SLR. Buy 64GB memory card. Go take 2000 images. Put them on your computer. Select the ones you like and send them to the people you care about. Oh, and BTW - every setting of the camera can be seen from the computer. Oh, and BTW - you can see every image - RIGHT AFTER YOU TAKE IT. If this doesn't encourage experimentation I don't know what would.

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You are presuming a lot of technical knowledge to make digital easier.

Here's film at its most basic level (this from a guy who worked in a one hour lab, and dealt with both first hand):

Buy a single use camera, take twenty seven pictures by the very simple method of turning a thumbwheel until it stopped, looking through a peephole viewfinder and pressing a button. Drop camera off at the local developing kiosk, go have a coffee and come back in an hour.

The film SLR was slightly more complex, but the guy at the film counter was generally willing to load and unload it for you if you were that simple.

Anyone who has worked in the picture processing industry both before and after the digital transition will tell you that film was easier from a consumer POV.

The OP is about ease of use, not about any of the deflections you are introducing to make a (wrong and off topic) point

Digital is easier for enthusiasts because it's vastly easier to correct digital images than it was to correct images in the darkroom. But the average person doesn't really spend time post processing.

The best part of digital is seeing your results right away so you can see if the shot is horribly botched. If you mistakenly moved a dial on a film camera you could waste a whole role of film and not know it for weeks. In digital you tend to find out right away. Additionally, the family snapshooter will take dozens of photos where only 1 or 2 might have been taken with film.

And, it's easier to get prints or images if all you're doing is sharing on social media. I recall growing up having film be in the camera for 6 months - an undeveloped roll of film being on my dad's dresser for months as well. Because of the instant availability of images and prints, the family snapshooter takes more photos.

It's good only if the images are kept. Let's face it, the value of a photo is often not truly felt for years or decades. So, for those that only have photos on an electronic device - how well are they keeping them after they exchange such devices every year or two?

davids8560 said:

Is Digital Easier For Regular People Than Film Was?

Do you think it is easier for regular people with digital cameras who actually know very little about photography to take reasonably good photos, than it was for them in the days of film?

Did film require more skill and knowledge?

Many people share old photos on social media these days, all due the most part scanned from slides and prints. And to me many of them are very poorly exposed. So I started wondering if today's lens stabilized, algorithm-loaded cameras and phone cameras are eliminating the need for for many people to possess any sort of in depth understanding or skill at all!

If so, is it a good thing?

Just for discussion. Thanks.

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technically better? for sure. Conceptually and composition wise... better? Nope.

Good grief, yes! I spent 20 years shooting, processing and printing film and slides. Modern digital cameras with their automatic functions: auto exposure, auto focus, image stabilization and instant feedback are miracles of technology and ease of use. I work far faster and more creatively these days because I'm not fighting film limitations every step of the way.

I could go on and on about modern optics as well, but the upshot is, yes, digital is easier for regular people than film.

Moti said:

davids8560 said:

Is Digital Easier For Regular People Than Film Was?

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Depends what you mean by easier.

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And easier for what? Getting 4x6 prints may be a little harder but sharing with friends and family scattered over the country is easier. (Remember "double-prints" "triple-prints"?)

Moti said:

Easier to operate? No, most are more complicated than film cameras.

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There are digital cameras with just one button as well as film cameras. Most of the complexity is in capabilities simply not present in film cams. PhD-mode (push here dummy) is the same.

Moti said:

Moti said:

Do you think it is easier for regular people with digital cameras who actually know very little about photography to take reasonably good photos, than it was for them in the days of film?

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Yes it is.

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Compare the quality of the average smartphone snapshot to the average quality of a 90's film P&S (but don't compare to a disc camera!) The main thing lowering the average for the phonecam is that since it's so cheap per shot, people push the limits more.

Moti said:

Moti said:

Many people share old photos on social media these days, all due the most part scanned from slides and prints. And to me many of them are very poorly exposed.

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And poor sharpness (focus & motion blur.)

Moti said:

Moti said:

So I started wondering if today's lens stabilized, algorithm-loaded cameras and phone cameras are eliminating the need for for many people to possess any sort of in depth understanding or skill at all!

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In terms of simply getting a sharp, decently exposed image in common situations, yes but much of the camera technology could be applied to modern film & film cameras.

Moti said:

Moti said:

If so, is it a good thing?

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Dunno

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Again too general. Good for what or who? Most people can get better images easier (good?). This has depressed the market for pro photography (bad?)

FrancoD said:

Yes except that the quality was absolute crap compared to any camera today

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Processing of color print film was crap.

FrancoD said:

Don't believe me ?

Fish ou those photos and take a really good look at them (minus rose tinted glasses...)

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IMHO, the biggest problems were:

• shutter speeds of 1/90 or 1/40th + stiff shutter levers = motion blur (older box brownies were 1/25 of 1/30th!)
• fixed f/11 lens meant cloudy-bright or flash. Inverse-square drop off of flash meant too bright or too dark except for a limited distance range. Could not get close and inifnity was mushy.
• grainy film, poorly processed, enlarged

[No message]

For the layperson, a simple digital camera is much easier to use than a simple film camera, provided one doesn't have a phobia of computers.

If one were to compare, say, an Olympus Stylus Zoom and a modern day Canon ELPH:

With the film camera, you make sure there's a working battery in the camera, put in a roll of film, turn on the camera, point it at something using the viewfinder, and shoot.

With the digital camera, you make sure there's a working battery in the camera, put in an SD card, turn on the camera, point it at something using the LCD, and shoot.

So far, the same.

When you're done shooting with film, take it out of the camera, take it to Walgreens, fill out a form, pay $8, get 36 prints back in an hour. Or a few days.

When you're done shooting with the digital, take the SD card out of the camera, take it to Walgreens, plug the SD card into the reader, press print. $0.25 per image.

At this point, not much different. If you choose to use a digital P&S like a film P&S, your workflow hasn't really changed in 30 years. Keep everything in auto, develop at the end of your vacation. Done.

However, the results one gets back are much better and much easier for the average layperson to use, and much more difficult to screw up:

- WYSIWYG. The LCD screen shows exposure and focus the way a P&S viewfinder never could.

- DoF. Enthusiasts like shallow DoF, lay people just want the image in focus. With a 35mm film camera, you're going to have OOF areas, sometimes in the wrong place. With a digital, the combination of smaller sensor and live view minimize that problem.

- Exposure. Film P&S rarely had prime lenses faster than f/2.8, and their zooms often went as small as f/10 on the long end. Couple that with drugstore film that topped out at ISO400, you're looking at some pretty dim shots in low light. As much as we complain (and laugh at) the f/6.7 at the long end of the ELPH's zoom, it's still brighter than the long end of the Stylus' zoom from back then. And as much as we laugh at the low light capabilities of a 1/2.3" sensor, I'll bet it still does ISO400 and 800 better than most Kodak film back in the day.

Lastly, if you do cost-adjusted, a $200 Olympus Stylus Zoom from 20 years ago would be nearly $400 for something like a Canon Powershot G16, which is eminently more powerful, no bigger, and if you keep it in auto, no more difficult to use. And hey, it even comes with a viewfinder.

Just to put things in perspective...

This was taken in 1906 by a 12-13 year old boy.. (Jaques Henri Lartigue)





With one of these...

Many Film shooters would make a 36 exposure last a year, some would wait a year take it to a Lab only to discover they had not loaded Film correctly, many would open Camera before rewinding film. The most important aspect of Digital is that it encourages people to shoot more without having to worry about the cost.

Carl

The Soul Hunter said:

brownie314 said:

PenPix said:

Film is easier.

Push button. Hand camera to guy behind counter to extract the used roll and put in a new one (it happened often). Guy behind the printer fixes the flaws in photo... although the machines today are pretty good at it. Pick up photos.

I do more explaining about digital photography than I ever did with film. More options = more difficulty.

Inversely, for the guy behind the counter, digital is easier because pushing a button and waiting for the pictures to come out is a lot less hassle than having to deal with chemicals. Unless is a custom order, I don't fix exposure or colour problems... garbage in, garbage out.

Click to expand...

You must be joking. Lets see, buy film camera. Then, every 36 exposures, go buy another roll of film, and at the same time drop off last roll of film for processing. Wait a week or two to take another 36 images then repeat all over again. And at the same time, get back images you dropped off last time. Was exposure OK, was composition OK? Who the H knows how to fix that - I don't even remember what I was doing at the time. Oh, and "sharing" them with people- yeah didn't happen back in the day.

Digital. Buy digital SLR. Buy 64GB memory card. Go take 2000 images. Put them on your computer. Select the ones you like and send them to the people you care about. Oh, and BTW - every setting of the camera can be seen from the computer. Oh, and BTW - you can see every image - RIGHT AFTER YOU TAKE IT. If this doesn't encourage experimentation I don't know what would.

Click to expand...

You are presuming a lot of technical knowledge to make digital easier.

Here's film at its most basic level (this from a guy who worked in a one hour lab, and dealt with both first hand):

Buy a single use camera, take twenty seven pictures by the very simple method of turning a thumbwheel until it stopped, looking through a peephole viewfinder and pressing a button. Drop camera off at the local developing kiosk, go have a coffee and come back in an hour.

The film SLR was slightly more complex, but the guy at the film counter was generally willing to load and unload it for you if you were that simple.

Anyone who has worked in the picture processing industry both before and after the digital transition will tell you that film was easier from a consumer POV.

The OP is about ease of use, not about any of the deflections you are introducing to make a (wrong and off topic) point

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OK, then what could be easier than going down to you local walmart and buying a cheap Canon or Nikon DSLR and a memory card - and shooting to your hearts content. Very simple.

I retired from wedding work a while back. While I still do a lot of engagement session and portraiture, it is lower volume. For weddings, I loved the look of film. And it was dirt easy. I worked with a few different labs. I would shoot the wedding, have the film processed, download the scans, and pick the shots. No post was necessary as they came back to my specs as I had already told the lab what color PAC I wanted. Now I see so many photographers spending countless hours in front of the computers post processing....applying hideous filters thinking it looks like film or is retro.

A couple of F100 or F5 bodies and one is set for beautiful wedding work. Throw in a Mf film camera for some shots and the effect is beautiful and looks natural.

For the mass public simply looking at their cell phones....it doesn't matter. They'll lose all their photos to cloud issues, computer crashes or upgrades, lost disks, etc.

You can take very good photos (technically) with a digital camera even if you don't know anything about photography except how to correctly push the button.

Not so with film cameras. (The instamatics don't count, since no choices were possible). And what can you say about the ease of checking your shot, right there, and retaking it if you don't like it? Impossible with film.

Also impossible? Taking 100 shots of the same time and place using a variety of ISOs. And then seeing them all on the computer before you decide if you want to print-any- of them. Not possible with film.

And color correcting your own photos? For 99.9% of the hobbyists that was impossible (and prohibitively expensive), too.

Even putting in and out a memory card is a lot easier than loading and unwinding/removing film.

Of course digital is easier.

KCook said:

Film was more reliable (if not easier). With film you did not have to remember to keep a *&^%$# battery charged.

Kelly

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I had to remember to keep a spare battery around with my EOS A2. It did not have an option to shoot w/o a battery.

Mark

davids8560 said:

Is Digital Easier For Regular People Than Film Was?

Do you think it is easier for regular people with digital cameras who actually know very little about photography to take reasonably good photos, than it was for them in the days of film?

Click to expand...

For "regular" unskilled people, film was easier...push the button 24 or 34 times, and then drop the film off at the Fotomat. Fotomat then corrected all the mistakes automatically. All the person had to do then was pick them up and pay for them. As Kodak said, "You push the button, we do the rest."

For skilled photo editors (having done my own processing in a chemical darkroom), digital is easier because there's an undo function in the photo editor...you make a mistake in the chemical darkroom it ends up in the garbage.

HOWEVER, that being said digital is better, easier, and cheaper for learning photography...when you buy a camera you've paid for every picture you will ever take; you don't think how much each shot would cost like you did with film. Also you have thousands of exposures on the media, vs. 24 or 36...you can take hundreds of experimental shots, and each shot has the shooting information recorded; in the old days you had to carry a notebook and pen to record the settings you used.

Also on the developing side it's safer to learn processing...you didn't have the chemical fumes, and while you have to make space for a computer it didn't tie up your bathroom or laundry area; and anyway most people already had a computer, or they could use a laptop that can easily be packed away at the end of the day.

V Ahrlenz said:

Many people share old photos on social media these days, all due the most part scanned from slides and prints. And to me many of them are very poorly exposed. So I started wondering if today's lens stabilized, algorithm-loaded cameras and phone cameras are eliminating the need for for many people to possess any sort of in depth understanding or skill at all!

Click to expand...

Again with film the developer corrected many of the exposure mistakes, but with digital you have to do it yourself. The average person doesn't make the effort...they just snap with their phone and send.

V Ahrlenz said:

If so, is it a good thing?

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NOTHING has changed...a lot of the same things were said when the "push the button" Brownie came out, vs. cameras that required skills and knowledge to operate.

Lisetta1 said:

You can take very good photos (technically) with a digital camera even if you don't know anything about photography except how to correctly push the button.

Not so with film cameras. (The instamatics don't count, since no choices were possible). And what can you say about the ease of checking your shot, right there, and retaking it if you don't like it? Impossible with film.

Also impossible? Taking 100 shots of the same time and place using a variety of ISOs. And then seeing them all on the computer before you decide if you want to print-any- of them. Not possible with film.

And color correcting your own photos? For 99.9% of the hobbyists that was impossible (and prohibitively expensive), too.

Even putting in and out a memory card is a lot easier than loading and unwinding/removing film.

Of course digital is easier.

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Not a 100% correct.

It was possible to shoot 1oo exposures on film and also possible to vary iso on the same roll of film, yes digital is much easier.

Digital is way easier. That's why they call it "chimping."

My deaf special needs granddaughter loves digital. She'd never have patience for film. She doesn't even take the time to sign "print this now!" she just signs "One!"

Lisetta1 said:

You can take very good photos (technically) with a digital camera even if you don't know anything about photography except how to correctly push the button.

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Same with film. Take any SLR, and you set the iso, aperture, etc, just as you would with a DSLR.

Lisetta1 said:

Not so with film cameras. (The instamatics don't count, since no choices were possible). And what can you say about the ease of checking your shot, right there, and retaking it if you don't like it? Impossible with film.

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True...although I seem to have done just fine without chimping on film or digital.

Lisetta1 said:

Also impossible? Taking 100 shots of the same time and place using a variety of ISOs. And then seeing them all on the computer before you decide if you want to print-any- of them. Not possible with film.

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I see every film shot I take on the computer and decide what to print....just like I do with digital. So no, you're wrong there as well.

Lisetta1 said:

And color correcting your own photos? For 99.9% of the hobbyists that was impossible (and prohibitively expensive), too.

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This isn't 1970. Most people nowadays get their film and scan back fully color corrected. If you want to make an adjustment, you make one just like you do with the digital file.

Lisetta1 said:

Even putting in and out a memory card is a lot easier than loading and unwinding/removing film.

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Seriously?

Lisetta1 said:

Of course digital is easier.

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So is ordering a Mcdonalds cheeseburger as opposed to something better.