THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FILM AND DIGITAL

The idea of cameras can be tracked back to the middles ages when Alhazen (Ibn Al-Haytham), a great authority on optics at the time, invented the pin-hole camera to demonstrate the way an image becomes inverted when light passes through a small aperture. It should be noted that a camera is merely a device for focussing light (and therefore an image) into a plane. Photography as we know it (preservation of images on a suitable media) really started in 1827, when Joseph Nicéphore exposed a chemically treated plate for eight hours and a temporary image was produced. It wasn’t until twelve years later that Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre produced a lasting image after an exposure time of 30 minutes. Daguerre (often referred to as the father of photography) went on to produce the now famous Daguerreotype camera which gained popularity quickly and by 1850, there were over seventy Daguerreotype studios in New York City alone.


Since the Daguerreotype days, there have been many advances both in film production and processing and in the design of cameras. Film has decreased in size from the original 12 inch square plates, through medium format roll film, 35mm cassette, instamatic ‘drop-in’ format and the latter day APS. Cameras have also developed from the old hooded boxes to modern, electronically controlled professional Single Lens Reflex (SLR) models. The one thing that hasn't changed is the fact that all the cameras produced their images by a chemically driven process following exposure of the film to light. This means that once the image is exposed on the film, it is fixed there until the film is developed. Only after the film is developed can darkroom techniques be used to adjust the image to produce the resultant photograph.


In the early 1950s, following the expansion of television, the first video tape recordings were made by converting the analogue picture into a digital format that could be recorded onto magnetic tape. Since then, the transfer of data from a light source into digital a format has led to the explosion in digital photography. In August 1981, Sony released the Sony Mavica electronic still camera, the first commercial electronic camera. Images were recorded onto a mini disc and then put into a video reader that was connected to a television monitor or colour printer. However, the early Mavica cannot be considered a true digital camera even though it started the digital camera revolution. It was a video camera that took video freeze-frames. It wasn’t until the 1990s that true digital cameras came of age and the first recognised professional digital camera was introduced in 1991. This was a standard Nikon F-3 that had a Kodak 1.3 mega pixel CCD sensor fitted across the film plane.


So why has digital replaced film now as the most popular photographic medium? With the ability to look at what you have just shot in the cameras LCD screen (deleting as necessary) and the fact that pictures can be processed on a computer ready for printing, it’s not hard to see. The big benefit of digital over film is running costs. Once the financial outlay has been made, the fact that film does not have to be purchased significantly cuts down on spending. Pictures can now be printed at home using relatively cheap inkjet printers or can be produced commercially on photographic paper from the digital file. The processes are so good now that recently, 93% of a panel of experts could not tell the difference between pictures taken on a 35mm film camera and the equivalent digital model.