Urnst Loc: Brownsville, Texas

My first camera, a Nikkormat FTN with a 50mm F2 lens, cost $250 at Porter's Camera store in Cedar Falls, Iowa. In today's money, that's at least $600 in today's money. Every time the shutter clicked money was spent to have the film developed and prints made. The alternative was to buy darkroom equipment and chemicals and find a place to set it up.

Now a decent digital camera and lens can be had for less than $500 used and anyone with a computer can enjoy the images it makes. No darkroom is necessary. We are living in good times.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Your first 10,000 images are your worst. Thank goodness they're now all digital.

Dik

Now that it's digital, you need some more zeros in there.

"Do nothing in Moderation"

Urnst Loc: Brownsville, Texas

The road of excess leads to the kingdom of wisdom, or so say some.

BebuLamar

Why you compare the cost of a brand new camera with the cost of a used camera?

Urnst Loc: Brownsville, Texas

For the sake of illustration. Used cameras are widely available nowadays. In the past, not so much.

starlifter Loc: Towson, MD

Tell my wife photography is cheap.

fourlocks Loc: Londonderry, NH

Which is why film photography made us better DSLR photographers (IMHO). I had the same camera in the early '70's. I literally went without eating so I could afford it and purchasing and developing a couple rolls of film put a serious bite into my budget. For that reason, I learned the mechanics of my camera very well and how to get a shot right the first time since I didn't have the luxury of taking multiple shots. Yes, now I'm happy to experiment with several shots of the same subject but maybe my film days makes it easier for me to hit the "delete" button, keeping what I consider to be only the best shot(s)...something my wife apparently has trouble doing as I scroll past a dozen shots she's keeping of the same flower.

Urnst Loc: Brownsville, Texas

I agree that years of film photography make us better digital shooters. Old habits die hard. I still can't get myself to use continuance shutter mode to take multiple shots of the same subject. One reason is that I hate editing many almost alike images.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Yes, photography is cheap, but the gear isn't. I love being able to shoot and shoot and shoot without worrying about using up film. I don't have to pay to send it away and then wait for the pictures to come back. Digital proved to be bad for Kodak but good for Nikon and Canon.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

I argue the opposite, not to be disagreeable with you, but to state the following observations:

1) Digital photography is not a sport. And yet, we encounter 'old film shooters' who think they should play photography like golf trying for some sort of lowest score when shooting with their digital camera. The only score that counts is the final result, where in digital photography you should take as many frames as needed to assure you have the one (or more) 'best in show'.

2) Exposure technique is different in digital photography. You expose for the highlights and never seek to underexpose in any digital situation.

3) You process your results and give up on the notion of Straight out of Camera (SOOC) perfection. You can get good enough results SOOC, but all digital images improve with even a modest amount of computer processing.

The three distinguishing items above are learned, developed and perfected via digital photography, not film-based photography.

Nickaroo

I think that the Digital Era brought a new dawn to people and especially today for photographers, people, to an inflection point of waking up one sunny morning and realizing that they could go out for an adventure and come home with a basket of files, not even remotely thinking that storage or enough shots were taken without the need for getting another roll of film. How many times have I heard a popular voice in the photo world claim that "Storage is Cheap"? Well, that is true if you consider how many shots can be crammed onto a SD card (XQD) and the storage that I now have on my iMac and even MacBook Pro. But, I choose not to be a spray and pray kind of shooter. I'm not going to sit there and Bracket the heck out of a shoot and just hope that for every 30 shots 9-10 deserve a slot in my Horse Show. I still do Film along with my Digital only because of reminiscing years gone by, ie: Led Zeppelin- Ten Years Gone. I choose to get "The Shot" every time I depress the shutter. I do not look at a camera and think gee I wonder how many clicks this shutter will do. People have become lazy and do not want to even take the time to learn how to make a photograph instead of a snapshot. Hopefully arrive in Chi. Town Sat. night Paul, and I hope that the weather is half-way decent to loiter up and down the walkway with my little friend glued to my hands. See ya and have a great weekend.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

People who shoot a 1000 digital frames and keep 1000 digital frames are stupid (for lack of a better term) and one I think is more accurate than lazy. My statistics from last Saturday morning were just over 1100 images from the card offloaded and 70 exactly as keepers. I might have shot more than normal because every frame had to be done via hand-held and the camera's LiveView due to fogging / freezing the view finder in 6F temps when I held the camera to my eye. Holding the camera at awkward angles where I couldn't even see the LiveView captured images I'd never even try with film. My film work is much more conservative and rarely more than one frame per shot idea. In digital, I futz with the exposure, I try different apertures, I reposition the AF point. I may like everything but see my horizon is crooked or something else that will need cropping later so I do it again now that all the other parameters seem correct. And when I get on the computer, I find the one that really was the best to even bother with that sequence and 'hard' delete the rest.

There are never 9 keepers from 30. Maybe 1, many times 0.

BebuLamar

I think for my entire life I shot only junk. I don't think I had 10,000 shots yet in over 40 years.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

My two current DSLRs each reporting 120,000+ the last time I checked their shutter reports.