User ID

As I said, hard to believe you were unaware of it. And you consider the “information” that you posted to be “contributory” ?

Very useful of you, comparing a rather expensive digital SLR to 100ft cans of 35mm BW. ROTFLMFAO.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

As you can probably guess by now, the value I place on your "contributions" to any thread on this site. Abysmal comes to mind.
--Bob

GAS496 Loc: Arizona

It are comments like this as to why I have only made 242 posts, don’t comment much and have not published any images after all these years as a member of UHH. I come here every day (even though I shoot only film) to enjoy reading the contributions from many knowledgeable people and learn something about an area of photography of which I am not familiar.

Too bad some have to ruin the experience.

CusopDingle Loc: central CT

I shoot FP4+, K100, and mostly F100, all bulk from the usual NYC vendors . D76 or Microdol-X 1:1 and Kodak chem. Negatives get scanned on a refurb V600. (I’d like to spend time at the enlarger but the time cost is prohibitive for me.) I’ve come up with similar per-negative costs in the past.

For those for whom equipment costs are a key variable though, there can be no denying that digital is quite costly compared to film (even if you do quickly and offhandedly capture 100 digital images to my considered three so that we both might end up with one image we like, how many get used?

I’m no hipster, nor follower of fashion. Cut my teeth on TriX in the 60s, gave a try to digital around 2009 for awhile, and then returned to film, relegating digital for family snapshots and movies about 5 years ago. It IS better for that purpose than film in my opinion.

User ID

Given the evidence, who gives a ratzazz where YOU place “value” ? Dig deeper in your great bag of adjectives and look as ridiculous as you can.

The premise on which you opened this thread is blatantly bogus in every way. Any experienced photographer can see right through that.

hjkarten Loc: San Diego, California

I recall reading that the estimated life expectancy for the higher end cameras was about 500,000 exposures for mechanical shutters. As we shift to ever more cameras with electronic shutters, I think that there is no limit to the number of shutter exposures during the lifetime of the newer cameras. When shooting bursts of 10 frames/second of birds in flight, I use exclusively electronic shutter mode. Strategies for shooting BIrds in Flight has changed dramatically with the advent of digital vs. film. I may shoot 250-500 pictures a day, shooting about 2-4 days a week. It may (with luck) give me 5-10 keepers per day, though sometimes one or even none. (If I shot that many pictures on film in a single day, which I never did, I would have been bankrupted by the cost of film and developing/printing!) If I used mechanical shutter mode, it would be easy to shoot 50,000 pictures a year and run down my camera's life expectancy.
Electronic shutters also eliminate a noise that may scare off birds. The only time that I use mechanical shutter mode is when shooting with flash. I understand that the newest cameras may be able to use electronic shutters with flash.

User ID

You mean you went to extremes ($3000) to support the unsupportable. Rotsa ruck with calculations like that.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

The expected shutter life number has changed with MILC. The 1-series EOS DSLR models were 400,000K, and the newer 5D / 7D models were 150,000. But now, an EOS R5 also sports the 500,000 life for the mechanical shutter in this body that also can go all electronic.

Personally, I rarely pull out the camera and have less 100 images, even from just a quick shoot of a single subject such as the images to accompany a for-sale post on ebay. Photography is not a sport based on minimum shots like golf. The result, the winning goal, is all that matters, whether scored in the first minute or the final seconds of stoppage time after two periods of OT.

JD750 Loc: SoCal

Back to the original post, two thoughts come to mind. One, shooting film is not about costs or convenience it’s about the art. Second, IF you are going to compare costs, you need to include some kind of estimate for the cost of the time spent on the image after the shot.

hjkarten Loc: San Diego, California

I quite agree. If a photographer enjoys the darkroom work, then it is worth doing. As a research lab scientist, I have used a variety of cameras, film, size formats from 35 mm, 2.5x4 inch to 8x10 inch over more than 50 years of my career. During one period of less than a year I probably shot a few thousand 8x10. The darkroom work was exhausting, standing up for many hours at a time, printing and reprinting a single negative until I got a satisfactory result for publication in books. Pictures pushed the limits of high resolution macrophotography. When I had my initial products with digital, I was able to produce acceptable quality prints within a few minutes, rather than multiple wet prints over many hours. Digital photography allowed me to move from B&W to color, providing far more informative and attractive results. But for portraits, I think of the drama of a B&W portrait by Karsh, or a photo of whalers at work in the ocean by Fritz Gore, or a landscape of the Tetons by Ansel Adams.

But it all depends upon your goal and purpose. If the process of watching the magic of a print emerging after 60 seconds in a tray is appealing, then go for it! One of my sons loves to work with water color, painting local scenes that reflect his artistic skills. In my case, my goal was producing a technically notable high resolution photo. My son's goals are far more centered on setting, mood, color contrasts and composition. He takes quite acceptable photos when using my fancy cameras, but I cherish his ability to convey content and mood with the sparsest of movements of his brush. Yes, I can take 1,000 photos in the time it takes him to open his pad and lay out his paints, and each painting reflects far more forethought - but I am more likely to hang his paintings on the wall than any of the hundreds of photos I have shot in the same time. Now, in retirement, I love to visually optimize pictures of birds in flight to visually dissect wing position, spread, changes with different instants of time as they swoop down, take off, land,... Digital photography allows me to experiment with the photographic process in ways that were previously nearly impossible. But for landscapes, I loved my 4x5 cameras. So much nicer than squinting through those narrow angle viewfinders. But I never fully mastered planning a landscape looking at an upside-down image on my ground glass screen. Composition has its own set of rules and the medium is part of the esthetics.

JD750 Loc: SoCal

One more thing. You can’t use the quoted MTBF for shutter count. The MTBF is the number at which 50% of the population has failed. I.e., there is a 50% chance the shutter will fail before the MTBF. How much before? That depends on many things but the statistic that informs on this subject is called standard deviation (Std). So you need both the Std and the MTBF to be able to predict useful shutter life.

A conservative guess is most of the population will survive to 1/10 of the MTTF. But I said there are many variables.

User ID

That is very true if you’re charging a customer for your time, but if it’s your hobby or a “labor of love” maybe a slow careful time is better than a short highly efficient time ?

JD750 Loc: SoCal

Agree. Thank you for clarifying that.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

Shooting 20,000 images (over 550 rolls) per year (more than 10 rolls per week) in film was never reasonable unless someone else was paying for the film plus your time and travel expenses and someone else did the processing.

20,000 is ludicrous. It means processing nearly 400 images per week. If you can average more than a half dozen really good images per month you will be doing well. But with 20,000 your success rate is going to be abysmal and you are going to be wasting a lot of time at your computer.

If you want to make an honest comparison you need to start with a number much smaller than 20,000.

With film your success rate can be much higher. With fewer images you will have time left over to enjoy life - participating instead of just observing.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

A higher success rate with film? I used film for 45 years. My success rate is much higher with digital. (I work mostly the same way. The difference is immediate feedback’s effects on my choices, combined with image stabilization and other technical advances.

Digital has also improved the quality of all the film images I’ve digitized, due to the power of raw file processing and color management.