Most people jumped on the digicam craze because of the convenience and accessiblity of photos but the image quality was hot garbage at least until the late 2000s. What was really the silver bullet was the IPhone. instant photos on your phone that you could share to the internet at any moment definitely killed Polaroid and the rest of the film industry.
I shoot with both film and digital, and I develop and scan my own film with my digital camera. It's very cool how film and digital feed into each other! I'll be shooting birds with my camera + tripod and then when I get home I use the same camera and tripod to scan film I shot the other week.
Excellent video. An important difference between old film cameras and new digital ones is the manual. A film camera is a fairly simple concept, which needs only a few pages to explain how to operate it. Thus, in former times a significant part of the manual would be about how to take pictures. Now, with modern digital cameras, you get a manual the size of a novel explaining all the menu options and little else, and by page 19 you will have lost any interest in taking pictures if you try to read the thing.
In 2001, I was working at a job that didn't allow me to pursue Photography after hours. I didn't take a look at the digital vs. analog battlefield until 2006, when digital "point and shoot" cameras had (sorta) reached the level of film cameras. My first digital camera was a 4.1MP Fujifilm FinePix E500, which freed me from film expiration dates. Eventually, I began to miss having 35mm SLR flexibility, so I began looking around for an affordable digital SLR. That turned out to be a Radio Shack closeout Nikon D40 outfit with 18-55mm f/3.5-4.5 DX lens. The great Megapixel numbers race began, and I found a Nikon D7000 on eBay, on which I later put an 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5 DX lens,
I am old. I was developing 620 film (Brownie Hawkeye) in the family bathroom in the 1950's. Today I have Nikon and Canon high end digital cameras and glass. (I also have the Brownie Hawkeye) But, I am also shooting Mamiya 120 and Graflex 4X5. That wet chemistry is still with us is great and seeing a bit of a resurgence. The issues of the cost of chemicals unless purchased in train tank car amounts will continue to make film more expensive (sigh)
I love your retrospect on this. 2001 seems like yesterday to me. Film was everywhere, digital was a new medium that had not quite caught until about 4 years later. It seems by 2006 film was being cleared out in many stores where I live. While I would love to get back to using film in professional work, it’s just not the medium anymore. I would say 99% of commercial work is digital and that’s the reality, the cost and speed can’t be beat. I still shoot film cameras as a hobby; but that is what they have been relegated to.
@@AzrielKnight But they still do. It is clear that film is never going to be a mass market product, but when talking about visual arts, being cheap, easy and fast is not the only argument. The line between art, commercial, professional and hobby is not always very clear. Yes, I do admit that shooting weddings is digital, if you want to make your living from it. Calling artists "just hobbyists" is not always appropriate. Even if they paint on canvas with oil colors.
Great video. In fairness, McNamara was hardly the first smart expert to get something very wrong. I was very late to the digital party: I realized I had to switch from film when I discovered that film was almost impossible to find outside of cities. That was in 2013. I got a Nikon D5300 crop sensor DSLR through a points program and was immediately hooked. It was so liberating to not have to worry about running out of film. My old Canon EF remains around for sentimental reasons, but I've upgraded my digital gear since then and not looked back.
@@AzrielKnight Well, my Canon used the old FD lens mount system, and I only had two lenses for it, so there was no sunk-cost motivation to stay with the Canon brand (or leave it for that matter). In the decades since I got the EF, I had been getting my education, raising a family, and building a career, and lost track of developments in photography technology. I was basically re-starting from scratch. I soon moved on to a D7500 enthusiast-level DSLR, and plan to move to full-frame mirrorless next year. But my adult daughter, who has a fine arts degree and works as a professional photographer, has quite a collection of film SLRs that she uses for her personal work. Go figure!
we forgot that in 2001, film photography was almost dead, because the market could not grow much, pixel race and phone cameras opened photography to a bigger level
I have film negatives from 1990. All of my digital pictures from before approx 2016 have all been lost corrupted by broken and obsolete tech. My file of negs will not suffer the same date.
Yep same here about 1/3 of them are all lost due to damaged digital files. I turned on the 640x640 digital camera that I had back then, it didn’t even power on.
It was the same problem with common people throwing out their negatives, and keeping just their prints. This is a problem especially with color prints made before about 1975. Kodak announced EP-2 papers in about the same time, and they are better in retaining colors. All the systems used before had the problem with cyan dyes fading quickly. C-22 film had the same problem, but these negatives are often still usable, although they will need very heavy color correction, no matter if it is digital or analog darkroom printing. 30 years old C-41 negatives should be fine in most cases.
I stuck to film mainly because a new digital camera was expensive and my free Yashica point and shoot worked fine. Film and processing was so cheap that I would need to take thousand of photos to break even with a digital camera. I had the opportunity to receive a hand-me-down nikon coolpix (one of the weird split hinged ones) but I passed it on to my sister because it it only held 20 photos! It wasn't until a family member bought a new 60D and gave me their old Digital Rebel (with a whopping 4gb CF card!) that I ditched film. So for me it was all about price, if someone had given me a fancy dslr in 2003 I would have said goodbye to film when everyone else did.
I totally agree in terms of being locked into the sensor of a camera. The constant cycle of replacement gets so old, and I think severely limits the concept of cost savings with digital. I know we can always just keep using the same camera, but just like taping over the back screen and using a small memory card to only get 36 shots ... we can, but do we? It is amusing to see how many of the Digital Cons have completely evaporated, however. It's interesting how far we've gotten to the "artists and enthusiasts use film" thing ... I think people were a little too eager dumping film, but I'm glad that we might be in an important stage of navigating and creating the future mixture of digital and analog technologies we should have.
With digital gear, it seems to be like with computers, cellphones and most consumer electronics. The manufacturers want people to upgrade their gear every two years, even if they won't actually get any better results with their new gear. I am also concerned if there will be any means of recovering digital pictures after 30 years from then obsolete digital formats. Just printed a week ago from color negatives some 35 years old. No compatibility issues.
I agree. I think the same went for vinyl. Now LPs are at a....record high. I love buying records old and new when I want to support the artist and add to my collection.
Although I agree with almost everything you say there's a large element of 'lets laugh at the past' here. Yes, he was invested in film for his career but I'm also sure he probably took full advantage of the digital revolution as it gathered speed. You can see the same with imagers today dismissing the AI revolution, although they know that in most cases it will be cheaper and easier in five years time to create an image on the desktop (or on your 10th generation smartphone) then it will be to trail through stock sites to find an approximation of what you need. Cheap and easy always wins in the mass market, but nostalgia will also always have its draw.
Great video. As Don Norman once said, it's easy to predict the future. The hard part is getting it right. That said, I suspect there's a bit of willful ignorance in that article.
I remember early digital cameras. As most early technology it was all a bit harsh, and limited. But it got you pictures, without waiting, and you had a horrible tiny screen in the back. Not to mention sensor/film size. Anything within reach for most was so small and rough. Film though, well 35mm was 35mm. Right? So yes, Film WAS better. WAS.
The rapid advancement in technology is astounding even if I grew up in the thick of it. Wish I took advantage of all the film back then but also I was shit and my disposable camera photos prove it lmao. Why is there always a finger in the way.
The dream would be to keep my wonderful 5D body and sensor and be able to swap out/upgrade the autofocus unit. As far as I'm concerned Canon created magic with that sensor, so I want to keep that at all costs but a few modern perks here and there would be lovely.
And then came the smartphone...and now generative AI... So be it. *** We all fall in love with the turf we want to defend. In the end it's not about the tech, anyway.
@@AzrielKnight People should just pursue their passions, not evangelize them as if they are The Holy Grail. If you love film, do it; if you love digital, do that.
like your video, but I don't think that much of boomers are out of touch with the advancing times, I say this because I my am a boomer. Still great video and I understand film & digital
I agree, boomers are way more tech savvy now...and I also remember in the late 90s my friend's mother worried her computer's screen would explode if she pressed the wrong button ;)
Digital cameras have become that good in that photography has become boring, even the snaps have become good with all auto features to help. Film on the other hand, you as the photographer with a fully manual camera has to calculate all the variables with the film you have loaded to create that perfect image but don't know until you have developed it and printed it out. With digital you become a chimp looking at the screen to see if you got the shot. Digital is great if you have deadlines as a professionals on assignments but as a hobbyist photographer, film is more enjoyable and rewarding when every thing goes to plan.
Not sure i agree here. All this explanation tells me is that mediocre photos are more justifed on film because it was shot manually. Look at any film photography group and the overwhelming majority of photos are boring everyday subject matter. Gas stations. Pretty girlfriends. People's cats. I'm guilty of it too. Digital allows up to take more risks without having to spend the money or painfully write down all the settings.
What you are realy talking about is subject matter and you are correct but that cannot be blamed on the film format as digital image makers are guilty of that trap as well. We all get sick of the facebook photo of what somebody is having at the restaurant as if we care.@@AzrielKnight
I think both formats have there place and know of professional photographers having to go back to film at clients request. Another thing I think is funny is people shooting digital and then trying to get the film look in post processing. Why?@@AzrielKnight
I find your comments that a film image is a digital image when scanned to be absolute non-sense. The distribution method does not change the original medium it was captured on.
The final product is digital. An Instagram post and an RC print from my darkroom hung on the wall...these two are not the same. Also nonsense doesn't require a hyphen.
@@AzrielKnight Just take your digital camera put a very small memory card in it that restricts the number of photos you can take. Then shoot completely in manual using only the light meter. It's not the film or digital it's the practice and time and effort put into it.
Digital is miles ahead of film when it comes to learning and improving your photography. You can preview your image and confirm focus and exposure on a screen, see how your settings will affect the photo in real-time, and most importantly take as many photos as you like, make mistakes, experiment and learn without burning a hole in your bank account or have to wait to see the results.
digital bring a hole scene of lazy idiots , guys to shoot 5000 frames per day to find 1 good ( or maybe not) , is prety rare to find somebody ok , good is nearly of impossible ... film requires a samurai disclipine to reach results ... thats it folks ...
@@AzrielKnight we make tools and they turn right around and make us. There’s is nothing “just” about tools. They are one of the most powerful and strange phenomena’s in the universe. Though like all such, seemingly mundane. What’s more, tools are also almost always media and media are tools. And what is it about media..? They are the real message!
Most people jumped on the digicam craze because of the convenience and accessiblity of photos but the image quality was hot garbage at least until the late 2000s. What was really the silver bullet was the IPhone. instant photos on your phone that you could share to the internet at any moment definitely killed Polaroid and the rest of the film industry.
I remember getting my photo taken on a digital camera in 1998 and the final shot was smaller than today's YT thumbnails.
I shoot with both film and digital, and I develop and scan my own film with my digital camera. It's very cool how film and digital feed into each other!
I'll be shooting birds with my camera + tripod and then when I get home I use the same camera and tripod to scan film I shot the other week.
Excellent video. An important difference between old film cameras and new digital ones is the manual. A film camera is a fairly simple concept, which needs only a few pages to explain how to operate it. Thus, in former times a significant part of the manual would be about how to take pictures. Now, with modern digital cameras, you get a manual the size of a novel explaining all the menu options and little else, and by page 19 you will have lost any interest in taking pictures if you try to read the thing.
In 2001, I was working at a job that didn't allow me to pursue Photography after hours. I didn't take a look at the digital vs. analog battlefield until 2006, when digital "point and shoot" cameras had (sorta) reached the level of film cameras. My first digital camera was a 4.1MP Fujifilm FinePix E500, which freed me from film expiration dates. Eventually, I began to miss having 35mm SLR flexibility, so I began looking around for an affordable digital SLR. That turned out to be a Radio Shack closeout Nikon D40 outfit with 18-55mm f/3.5-4.5 DX lens. The great Megapixel numbers race began, and I found a Nikon D7000 on eBay, on which I later put an 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5 DX lens,
For me the first digital camera was the Fuji Finepix S3100
OMG I think the picture of the castle on the island is Bannerman Castle in the Hudson along the MTA Hudson line
Ahhhh…finally the year I first lived happy it finally happened love the content Azriel keep up the great analysis of yesteryear
Thanks :)
Where can I get some old copies of Knightimes?
I am old. I was developing 620 film (Brownie Hawkeye) in the family bathroom in the 1950's. Today I have Nikon and Canon high end digital cameras and glass. (I also have the Brownie Hawkeye) But, I am also shooting Mamiya 120 and Graflex 4X5. That wet chemistry is still with us is great and seeing a bit of a resurgence. The issues of the cost of chemicals unless purchased in train tank car amounts will continue to make film more expensive (sigh)
Thanks for sharing!
every day is a good day when we get a new azriel upload
Thank you :)
I always dreamt of owning a Hasselblad camera in my teens around the mid 1960's. 60 years on I finally got a 500C.
I love your retrospect on this. 2001 seems like yesterday to me. Film was everywhere, digital was a new medium that had not quite caught until about 4 years later. It seems by 2006 film was being cleared out in many stores where I live. While I would love to get back to using film in professional work, it’s just not the medium anymore. I would say 99% of commercial work is digital and that’s the reality, the cost and speed can’t be beat. I still shoot film cameras as a hobby; but that is what they have been relegated to.
I think this is the reality now in the same way people rarely hire someone to paint their portrait anymore.
@@AzrielKnight But they still do. It is clear that film is never going to be a mass market product, but when talking about visual arts, being cheap, easy and fast is not the only argument. The line between art, commercial, professional and hobby is not always very clear. Yes, I do admit that shooting weddings is digital, if you want to make your living from it. Calling artists "just hobbyists" is not always appropriate. Even if they paint on canvas with oil colors.
Great video. In fairness, McNamara was hardly the first smart expert to get something very wrong.
I was very late to the digital party: I realized I had to switch from film when I discovered that film was almost impossible to find outside of cities. That was in 2013. I got a Nikon D5300 crop sensor DSLR through a points program and was immediately hooked. It was so liberating to not have to worry about running out of film. My old Canon EF remains around for sentimental reasons, but I've upgraded my digital gear since then and not looked back.
So not only did you switch from film to digital but Canon to Nikon?! Man, did the universe fold in on itself? ;)
@@AzrielKnight Well, my Canon used the old FD lens mount system, and I only had two lenses for it, so there was no sunk-cost motivation to stay with the Canon brand (or leave it for that matter). In the decades since I got the EF, I had been getting my education, raising a family, and building a career, and lost track of developments in photography technology. I was basically re-starting from scratch. I soon moved on to a D7500 enthusiast-level DSLR, and plan to move to full-frame mirrorless next year. But my adult daughter, who has a fine arts degree and works as a professional photographer, has quite a collection of film SLRs that she uses for her personal work. Go figure!
we forgot that in 2001, film photography was almost dead, because the market could not grow much, pixel race and phone cameras opened photography to a bigger level
I have film negatives from 1990. All of my digital pictures from before approx 2016 have all been lost corrupted by broken and obsolete tech. My file of negs will not suffer the same date.
I've also lost digital files over time. I now use the 3, 2, 1 rule. Three copies, in two formats and one off site.
Yep same here about 1/3 of them are all lost due to damaged digital files. I turned on the 640x640 digital camera that I had back then, it didn’t even power on.
It was the same problem with common people throwing out their negatives, and keeping just their prints. This is a problem especially with color prints made before about 1975. Kodak announced EP-2 papers in about the same time, and they are better in retaining colors. All the systems used before had the problem with cyan dyes fading quickly. C-22 film had the same problem, but these negatives are often still usable, although they will need very heavy color correction, no matter if it is digital or analog darkroom printing. 30 years old C-41 negatives should be fine in most cases.
@@AzrielKnight Damn, that is a great rule, never thought of that, have to start doing that myself!
Interesting
Thanks for the video!
Welcome :)
I stuck to film mainly because a new digital camera was expensive and my free Yashica point and shoot worked fine. Film and processing was so cheap that I would need to take thousand of photos to break even with a digital camera. I had the opportunity to receive a hand-me-down nikon coolpix (one of the weird split hinged ones) but I passed it on to my sister because it it only held 20 photos! It wasn't until a family member bought a new 60D and gave me their old Digital Rebel (with a whopping 4gb CF card!) that I ditched film. So for me it was all about price, if someone had given me a fancy dslr in 2003 I would have said goodbye to film when everyone else did.
Thanks for sharing :) My first DSLR was also a rebel but by then they were using SD cards.
I totally agree in terms of being locked into the sensor of a camera. The constant cycle of replacement gets so old, and I think severely limits the concept of cost savings with digital. I know we can always just keep using the same camera, but just like taping over the back screen and using a small memory card to only get 36 shots ... we can, but do we? It is amusing to see how many of the Digital Cons have completely evaporated, however. It's interesting how far we've gotten to the "artists and enthusiasts use film" thing ... I think people were a little too eager dumping film, but I'm glad that we might be in an important stage of navigating and creating the future mixture of digital and analog technologies we should have.
With digital gear, it seems to be like with computers, cellphones and most consumer electronics. The manufacturers want people to upgrade their gear every two years, even if they won't actually get any better results with their new gear. I am also concerned if there will be any means of recovering digital pictures after 30 years from then obsolete digital formats. Just printed a week ago from color negatives some 35 years old. No compatibility issues.
I agree. I think the same went for vinyl. Now LPs are at a....record high. I love buying records old and new when I want to support the artist and add to my collection.
Although I agree with almost everything you say there's a large element of 'lets laugh at the past' here.
Yes, he was invested in film for his career but I'm also sure he probably took full advantage of the digital revolution as it gathered speed. You can see the same with imagers today dismissing the AI revolution, although they know that in most cases it will be cheaper and easier in five years time to create an image on the desktop (or on your 10th generation smartphone) then it will be to trail through stock sites to find an approximation of what you need.
Cheap and easy always wins in the mass market, but nostalgia will also always have its draw.
Great video. As Don Norman once said, it's easy to predict the future. The hard part is getting it right. That said, I suspect there's a bit of willful ignorance in that article.
I suspect you are right :)
Can’t beat digit now days. While I love film, I started shooting in film. It still has a place in my heart. But digital is king now
Hard to argue that.
Only caveat for me is I still think darkroom prints are superior.
I remember early digital cameras. As most early technology it was all a bit harsh, and limited. But it got you pictures, without waiting, and you had a horrible tiny screen in the back. Not to mention sensor/film size. Anything within reach for most was so small and rough. Film though, well 35mm was 35mm. Right? So yes, Film WAS better. WAS.
The rapid advancement in technology is astounding even if I grew up in the thick of it. Wish I took advantage of all the film back then but also I was shit and my disposable camera photos prove it lmao. Why is there always a finger in the way.
Or the camera strap!!
The dream would be to keep my wonderful 5D body and sensor and be able to swap out/upgrade the autofocus unit. As far as I'm concerned Canon created magic with that sensor, so I want to keep that at all costs but a few modern perks here and there would be lovely.
I also had an original 5D and I know what you mean, there was something amazing about the way those images turned out.
And the year I was born
And then came the smartphone...and now generative AI... So be it. *** We all fall in love with the turf we want to defend. In the end it's not about the tech, anyway.
Good point.
@@AzrielKnight Your videos, by the way, are superb. I used to be a writer covering tech a while back, so I can sympathize with failed predictions. :)
@@AzrielKnight People should just pursue their passions, not evangelize them as if they are The Holy Grail. If you love film, do it; if you love digital, do that.
like your video, but I don't think that much of boomers are out of touch with the advancing times, I say this because I my am a boomer. Still great video and I understand film & digital
I agree, boomers are way more tech savvy now...and I also remember in the late 90s my friend's mother worried her computer's screen would explode if she pressed the wrong button ;)
Digital cameras have become that good in that photography has become boring, even the snaps have become good with all auto features to help. Film on the other hand, you as the photographer with a fully manual camera has to calculate all the variables with the film you have loaded to create that perfect image but don't know until you have developed it and printed it out. With digital you become a chimp looking at the screen to see if you got the shot. Digital is great if you have deadlines as a professionals on assignments but as a hobbyist photographer, film is more enjoyable and rewarding when every thing goes to plan.
Not sure i agree here. All this explanation tells me is that mediocre photos are more justifed on film because it was shot manually. Look at any film photography group and the overwhelming majority of photos are boring everyday subject matter. Gas stations. Pretty girlfriends. People's cats. I'm guilty of it too. Digital allows up to take more risks without having to spend the money or painfully write down all the settings.
What you are realy talking about is subject matter and you are correct but that cannot be blamed on the film format as digital image makers are guilty of that trap as well. We all get sick of the facebook photo of what somebody is having at the restaurant as if we care.@@AzrielKnight
You make a good point. Digital photographers have been just as guilty of falling back on HDR or a super sharp lens just as much.
I think both formats have there place and know of professional photographers having to go back to film at clients request. Another thing I think is funny is people shooting digital and then trying to get the film look in post processing. Why?@@AzrielKnight
@@AzrielKnightnot sure I agree with your smug statement upon what is boring. Film is subjective.
I find your comments that a film image is a digital image when scanned to be absolute non-sense. The distribution method does not change the original medium it was captured on.
The final product is digital. An Instagram post and an RC print from my darkroom hung on the wall...these two are not the same. Also nonsense doesn't require a hyphen.
Film will make you a better photographer.
Absolutely (if you can afford it)
Taking photos makes you a better photographer. Doesn't matter if you're using your phone or a film camera or a mirrorless.
@@AzrielKnight Just take your digital camera put a very small memory card in it that restricts the number of photos you can take. Then shoot completely in manual using only the light meter.
It's not the film or digital it's the practice and time and effort put into it.
Digital is miles ahead of film when it comes to learning and improving your photography. You can preview your image and confirm focus and exposure on a screen, see how your settings will affect the photo in real-time, and most importantly take as many photos as you like, make mistakes, experiment and learn without burning a hole in your bank account or have to wait to see the results.
digital bring a hole scene of lazy idiots , guys to shoot 5000 frames per day to find 1 good ( or maybe not) , is prety rare to find somebody ok , good is nearly of impossible ... film requires a samurai disclipine to reach results ... thats it folks ...
Digital is not the devil and film is far from infallible. They're. Just. Tools.
@@AzrielKnight we make tools and they turn right around and make us.
There’s is nothing “just” about tools.
They are one of the most powerful and strange phenomena’s in the universe.
Though like all such, seemingly mundane.
What’s more, tools are also almost always media and media are tools.
And what is it about media..?
They are the real message!