is the one that jumps out of the batch at you.
With film, it's a slow process. You take the shots, send out the film to be developed (and printed, if you don't use slide film), and open that envelope and eagerly look at the results. If you are very lucky, you will get one good shot per roll.
With digital, it's a heck of a lot shorter lead time. You go out, shoot, maybe chimp a bit to work on optimal compositions, then come back home, download the shots, and view them. If you are lucky, you will have one (or two) that jump the heck off the screen and grab you. The rest will be varying degrees of "yeah, I can work with that", and you shuffle them off into Photoshop to adjust them. And, some of those can come out very well. But mostly they end up still just decent, but not wow-ers.
The thing is, film, unless you did your own developing, had a long enough return curve from when you shot to when you got the images back, that it was a lot harder to learn what techniques would get you the results you wanted when you took the shot in the first place. And it was expensive.
I'd been shooting since I was a kid, probably about 10 years old (basic Kodak camera). My best friend had a darkroom, so I did get to do at least some of my own developing. But that was only black and white, and I certainly didn't have the funds to do much more experimentation with either the cameras or film at the time.
I did finally get an SLR in college, but I really didn't have the money to buy more than a couple of lenses or shoot much film, so I used it more sparingly than I would have liked.
Over the years, I played with all sorts of inexpensive cameras (instant, point and shoots, etc), and I did get an AF SLR in the late 1990s, which I was finally able to do some more photographic exploration with. But it still was expensive and not terribly convenient to have to have the film developed.
When digital first came out, I received a 2MP Toshiba point and shoot. It was as slow as molasses (push the shutter button and...wait), and it barely got 50 shots per 4 AA batteries (half that if they weren't rechargeable). But that camera was an utter revelation. FINALLY I could get instant feedback on what I was shooting; including composition, lighting, color...and I did not have to spend big bucks to do it. I learned more about what I needed to do to get the compositions I wanted from that little thing than from all the film bodies I'd had over the years, simply because I could see what I was doing right/wrong instantly, and correct it going forward.
And, of course, after that I spent years chasing the technology as it matured (but that was fun in a different way, in any case
).
So, while I think your meme is a little enthusiastic about how many good photos you would get from one roll of film, I don't think the premise is entirely incorrect, just the total number of shots is a bit skewed. I would posit that out of 12 shots on the first roll, you'd be lucky to get one great one. Similarly, out of 36 shots in the second, one, maybe two, would be a good haul. In digital? I usually find that if I'm shooting carefully, my return can be on a par with film. However, if I am experimenting, I will take a whole lot more shots, just to figure out what works the best. And yes, most of those will be not great. But they are to LEARN what works in that shooting situation, so the next time you are out shooting in that same type situation, you WON'T need to take tons of shots to get the good ones. And THAT is the advantage of working with digital, that this meme kind of misses entirely.
-J
