Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“Comparison is the thief of joy.” ―
Am I wrong or does it seem like photographers tend to shoot more images during a session when they’re using a digital camera than they might have previously done when shooting film for a similar kind of project?
During the film era when I was photographing aspiring models for a modeling agency, I would typically expose a maximum of two to three rolls of 35mm film during a typical test shoot. Sometimes these were even 24-exposure rolls, so a model shoot might consist of my making a total of 72 to 108 images. Later, when I was shooting these same kinds of sessions using either a DSLR or mirrorless camera, I seemed to be making many more exposures. How many more? When photographing a talented model like Erin Valakari,* I would typically make 300 or more shots of her, almost triple what I would do during a film-based session.
How Mary Made this Shot: Mary made this photographs of two zebras at the Denver Zoo using an Olympus E-500 Four-Thirds —not Micro Four-thirds—camera and 50-200mm f/2.8-3.5 ED AF Lens at 200mm with an exposure of 1/250 sec at f/4 and ISO 100. The Film Effects filter in Color EFX emulates more than 30 different types of film, including color negative and color slides films like the Kodachrome 64 effect used here
But a Question Remains
Are my photographs better today than back when I was exclusively shooting film? I am almost)convinced that not worrying about film and processing costs lets me produce more images faster.I know that with my increased interest in shooting film during the past two years. the cost of film and processing does have an impact on how much I shoot, when compared to an equivalent shoot with a digital camera.
So I asked some people if they thought that digital capture helps them produce better photographs. I started by asking a former Shutterbug editor and he said it “could be true. For model shoots I would expose three rolls of 120 film and two rolls of 35mm but with my DSLR I’ll make 600 shots! When working with digital, I tend to shoot faster and make shots I might have passed on when shooting with film.”
A wedding photographer told me, “Just thinking about film and processing costs eases my resistance to pressing the shutter.” He then said, “at a wedding I did Sunday and found myself holding back toward the end because I was out of memory cards! I went through the images, deleting a few that wouldn’t make the first edit.”
Test Shots
It’s not just on assignments where we shoot more digital frames than we would have shot with film in the past. Another part of any photo shoot is making tests to check exposure, much as we would have used Polaroid film in the past. So maybe a better question to ask might be: Does making all of these additional exposures adding premature wear and tear on our digital cameras, especially shutters, than their film counterparts might have experienced? I don’t know for sure but it almost has to. Doesn’t it?
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