Are 35mm camera's becoming a thing of the past

[My Dream]

Due to the increased quality of digital camera's ismy Nikon, 35mm camera going to be of no value soon? At what megapixel would you say that the quality between digital and 35mm are equal. I know that you don't really notice the difference untill you start to enlarge the picture size.

I believe that the price of digital and 35mm are about the same now to develop, but with 35mm you have to purchase the film. Although I guess with digital you have to purchase the card, which can be used over and over again.

 

[Texas Proud]

They are becoming a thing of the past.... but I think they will have the '35' digitals.. ie the same body but not with film.... then you can use all of the lenses you have accumulated..

I have a nice 35, but it is bulky. I have not taken it on my last few vacations, but have taken a small digital.... the first one was a 3 meg, now a 6 meg... can't do as much, but it gets most of what you want... wish I could use a polorizer though..

As for 'equal', I have read it is 12 meg before they are the same.... but in truth it is even higher than that... film does not have 'dots' and looks better than the digitals... but you can manipulate the pixels easier... so I will say 12 meg...

 

[bssc]

I had heard that 5 megapixel was the cross overpoint but it depends to who you are talking to. I gave up my film camera in 2000 since I liked that the color mix was more consistent, that I didn't have to depend on whether there was new developer being used or not. My wife gave up on film last year.

Also, I can pick and choose what to print. For a roll of 24 shots, for film, you have to pay for film plus developing and printing which would come out to 8 to 10 dollars (IIRC). For digital, I pick the ones I like, upload them to Walgreens and have them print it out for 19 cents a shot. And I can pick the shots I like so I only print 10 out of the 24 for a total of $1.90.

 

[Texas Proud]

As always, it is who you read etc....

Here is a link with some good info...

http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedetail/film.vs.digital.summary1.html

You will see that 6 megs does not quite make it on 'most' films... and on some films require 18 meg ish...

Now, if you do NOT blow it up and only have 4 x 6 then you will probably not see the differences... the film picture will be a little less fuzzy, but not enough to notice unless you had one right next to your digital pic....

 

[JohnEyles]

As for 'equal', I have read it is 12 meg before they are the same.... but in truth it is even higher than that... film does not have 'dots' and looks better than the digitals... but you can manipulate the pixels easier... so I will say 12 meg...

It is untrue that film does not have 'dots'. It does - they are the film grain particles,
and are clearly visible with big enlargements or a state-of-the-art film scanner.
However, their locations are somewhat random (they are not in a regular grid like
the pixels of a digital image) and thus, for various arcane signal processing reasons,
tend to produce more pleasing images.

Do not be misled by the computation, frequently trotted out by film-purists, that if
you scan a 35mm frame at 4000dpi (typical of a good film scanner today) you end up
with about 24 million pixels and thus you'd need a 24 megapixel camera to do as
well. The digital camera is sampling "reality", whereas the film scanner is sampling
the aforementioned film grain. Thus, the pixels from the film scanner are of lower
"quality" than those from the digital camera, at least by a two-fold factor.

All this being said, I'd agree that the crossover point is somewhere in the
5-12 megapixel range - I'd tend to say towards the higher end. I intend to
get a Canon Digital Rebel XTi (10 megapixels) soon and I expect to happily
retire my 35mm film camera at this point, and to be rid of hassles buying,
processing, and scanning film. My 6x9cm medium-format Fuji will stick
around awhile though ...

 

[JonnyM]

It has been interesting to this former Camera Salesmen (approx 1978-82) see the relatively rapid rise of the digital vs film revolution take place. I've even grabbed up a couple Nikon bodies from "my era" for little or nothing at Antique shows to pad out my collection of Lens from a time when I took many, many photos using many varieties of film. I'm also happy to see that some high quality film cameras like my Leica have held their value well with the collector crowd, although that one I think I'll always keep. I'd probably let the Nikon set go, but only to someone who'd appreciate the glass. I'm also in the practical boat today, in that when I travel now I want and carry something that will fit in a pocket, and therefore never get left behind for lack of carry space, a thin, flat, collapsing lens 6megpix with a 2Gb SD Card. The battery will die long before I run out of "film" 8)

 

[bssc]

When I started thinking about retirement 15 years ago, I knew that I wanted a darkroom in my dream house since I used to do that all the time as a kid. This revolution has given me 100 sq ft of space to use for something else.

 

[haha]

All this being said, I'd agree that the crossover point is somewhere in the
5-12 megapixel range - I'd tend to say towards the higher end. I intend to
get a Canon Digital Rebel XTi (10 megapixels) soon ...

I bought my son one of these for his college graduation present this Jan. Even with the cheap18-55 lens that came bundled with it he gets very sharp pictures. I have heard that with this Sigma 30mm/f1.4 fixed lens it is fabulous.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0007U0GZM/pgreenspun-20

ha

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Whats a 35mm camera?

 

[JohnEyles]

I bought my son one of these [Canon Digital Rebel] for his college graduation present this Jan. Even with the cheap18-55 lens that came bundled with it he gets very sharp pictures. I have heard that with this Sigma 30mm/f1.4 fixed lens it is fabulous.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0007U0GZM/pgreenspun-20

ha

Yes, some writers say to not even bother with the "kit lens" (the cheap zoom
lens) and just buy the body and a "prime" (fixed focal length) lens. The Canon
f/2 35 lens is supposedly very good, and light and cheap (but not fast).

In case some don't realize, because the sensor on most digital SLRs is smaller
than a frame of 35mm film (24x36mm), a 30'ish mm lens gives a field-of-view
considered "standard" (similar to 55mm or so) on the Canon.

It's also a mistake to consider all X megapixel cameras to be created equal -
again because of sensor size - the point-and-shoot 8MP will have a much smaller
sensor than the Canon and yield not nearly as good photos.

It's also worth mentioning that the older 8MP Canon Digital Rebel (the XT, as
opposed to the 10MP XTi) is almost $200 cheaper (at bhphoto.com) and supposedly
not much of a step down in image quality.

 

[bssc]

Whats a 35mm camera?

You can see them at the Smithsonian next to the vinyl record and typewriter.

 

[whitestick]

As it happens I was talking to a camera store professional, and his story is - Kodak will stop making film IIRC in 2008 and Fuji a couple of years after that. Apparently the chemicals for developing, as well as manufacturing are not enivronmentally friendly, and users often dump them anyway.
As to megapixel, IIRC the 35mm high speed color film is around 7000x7000 dpi which would work out I think to around 49 Megapixels. There is probably some reduction in that number due to smaller chip size as already mentioned, so for studio quality professional grade it's probably around 25-30 Mp. For home use, unless you are printing all 8x10 pictures, you will probably be happy with 8-10 Mp. 'Course when you apply some compression technology like JPG to reduce the size of the file, you lose a lot of what you are paying for anyway. Then the typical printer having no more then 1.2-2.4k dpi will further reduce the image quality - making a case for sending your file to the local photo store.
Bottom line, is take a shoebox, put a pinhole in one end, put an unexposed 4x5 film inside in the other end. Point and pull the pin click to take a picture for real LBYM in cameras and film.

 

[Texas Proud]

Yes... from what I have read going to JPG is one of the killers... you lose a lot of data... people with the higher end camera us RAW...

Now, I don't know enough about either format... but if I am going to drop $800 plus on a 35 digital body... I want the best of everything.... but that costs a few grand right now... so I keep my cheap digital for awhile..

 

[boots]

A good place for information about digital camera's

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/login.asp

 

[TromboneAl]

Yes, film photography is as dead as paper-based books will be.

I was at a garage sale that had several top-of-the line enlargers for sale for $1 each. When I was a kid I had a dark room, and paid $35 for a cheapo-enlarger with plastic lenses.

 

[haha]

Yes, film photography is as dead as paper-based books will be.

That is a joke, right Al?

Ha

 

[donheff]

When I started thinking about retirement 15 years ago, I knew that I wanted a darkroom in my dream house since I used to do that all the time as a kid. This revolution has given me 100 sq ft of space to use for something else.

How about a computer lab

 

[bssc]

How about a computer lab

My wife said that she is going to set up a wireless network. Maybe a server room.

 

[Nords]

My wife said that she is going to set up a wireless network. Maybe a server room.

Is she going to take care of the configuration, maintenance, & backups?

Because speaking as a married veteran, I have a very bad feeling about this...

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Ugh...dont even get me started. The wife was nervous that all of our baby photos were only on two laptops and two external backup units, and it was a pain to plug the printers into the laptops to print.

So I now have a mirrored raid server attached to a color and b&w laser, wirelessly connected at 108Mb/s to our two laptops, with the documents auto backed up to an external drive and automatically replicated to both laptops in the background.

Feels like i'm back at work...

 

[donheff]

Ugh...dont even get me started. The wife was nervous that all of our baby photos were only on two laptops and two external backup units, and it was a pain to plug the printers into the laptops to print.

So I now have a mirrored raid server attached to a color and b&w laser, wirelessly connected at 108Mb/s to our two laptops, with the documents auto backed up to an external drive and automatically replicated to both laptops in the background.

Feels like i'm back at work...

Argh. I have a couple of Linux servers in the basement tied to the Windows PC and laptop with Samba. I had everything mirrored down there but when I started keeping a lot of high resolution photos I got low on disk space (these are just old PCs) so I blew away the back up. I better get something set up soon - I'm going bare for now

 

[TromboneAl]

Yes, film photography is as dead as paper-based books will be.

That is a joke, right Al?

That's what a camera store guy said in 1998 when I told him that film's days were numbered. "Digital cameras will never match the quality of film."

I predict that commercial novels will no longer be printed after 2018.

Seriously, the only thing that's holding electronic books back are those pesky intellectual property rights issues. People think "I can never give up the feel of a real book," but once they can have as much reading material in a reader as they have music in an iPod, things will change. At CFB's posting rate, he probably reads a novel's worth of text on his computer every week (you do read the other posts, right, CFB ?).

The reader devices may need improvement, but if everyone wants one, the quality will go up, and the prices down, until they are easier to read than a paper book.

However, I don't think the copyright issues are easily handled. I can drive 30 miles to the public library, and take out a book, and remember to drive 30 miles to take it back, but I can't download the same book to a reader.

Think about how silly physical books are. John Grisham writes a book, and we take tons of tree pulp, mash it into thin sheets with huge machines, cut them up, and send them to the publisher. The novel, in digital form, is sent to a machine that spits more tons of a black liquid onto the paper, and a machine cuts this paper and glues it to other stuff, and the millions of these physical things are boxed up and shipped around the country to thousands of locations.

And we use this archaic process just so that John Grisham gets paid. I agree that he should be paid, but what is this, 1440 AD?

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

I'm sorry Al, did you say something?

The scary part is that this is about 10% of what I read...I've got ten tabs open right now and i'm only on the second one...and i've only got an hour before the dang baby wakes up!

Hey Don...check out the dell outlet site for a nice refurbed core 2 duo machine with one of the newer intel chipsets with the hardware sata-ii raid built right in. You should be able to snag one with a 250-320GB drive in it for under $400 and then toss in a second 320GB drive for $30-50 on sale. Its sweet...the storage manager just kicks in and says "would you like me to mirror this other drive you have?...okay...you may continue on with your business". Very fast for a mirrored pair, I dont see much degradation at all. Broke the pair and rebuilt it a couple of times just to see how it worked...no problems.

Pretty nice iron for any video format conversions too.

(I'm quite sure you can find at least good 3 rationalizations for buying a new machine in the paragraphs above)

 

[UncleHoney]

Are you guys going to be around in 97 years so your great great grand kids can see the pictures?

I think I'll stick to film for a while longer.

If I lose this one it's because I can't remember which drawer it's in.

The old Chigger Scratchers Gang, 1915. My grand dad in the white pants sitting on the hood.

 

[sgeeeee]

That is a joke, right Al?

Ha

I'm trying to figure out what the joke is. Is this a comment that implies that both paper based books and film are still alive and well, or that both paper based books and film are dead, or . . .