The Case for Digital Photography – Film Photography Holdouts Take Heed!

May 2008 By Joseph Bachana (DPCI) And Mark Lawrence (Digital Transitions)

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Ivan Mironchuk, David Avino, and Karen Hauptman contributed to this article.

No matter what business process you try to enhance, the importance of certain concepts and characteristics is universal. Among those universally important criteria, speed, efficiency, cost, quality, and risk mitigation consistently top the list. All decision makers have witnessed how advances in technology can allow organizations to rethink and truly revolutionize their major business processes. The paradox, of course, is that these major shifts – guaranteed to save time, money and other important resources – are often met with resistance.

Such is the case with the shift from traditional film-based photography to digital photography. The latter significantly shortens a project’s time to production, eliminating many time-consuming steps completely. By shortening process time, the total cost of photography drops. Furthermore, professional medium-format digital capture systems can easily generate image files that are of equal or superior quality when compared to film capture. Just as important, but often overlooked, is the fact that many of the risks associated with film-based photography completely vanish. Yet some organizations continue to embrace film-based photography, despite the vast evidence that film is indeed an antiquated technology.

Considering the improvements that digital capture offers over film (analog) capture, why are people compelled to stay with film?

Those who cling to film often make the claim that it has served them well for years and is an integral part of their well-established processes – so there’s no real reason to switch to digital. While this argument may seem to make sense on the surface, it doesn’t hold up under even the slightest scrutiny.

The history of the industrial world is filled with examples of products and processes that were improved upon and eventually replaced by newer technology. Digital methodologies have improved many aspects of our business and creative endeavors. Word processing and computer spreadsheets have replaced the typewritten page.

Using the print and publishing industry as an example, the shift to digital technologies has demonstrated over and over again that efficiency is improved. Modern printing plants have switched from exposing plates using film to imaging plates using direct-to-plate systems. They have done so because they have recognized that the process is faster, produces less waste, and improves quality. The same lessons can be applied earlier in the process, when images are captured.

As surely as the internal combustion engine has replaced the steam engine, digital photography is replacing film-based photography.