Digital Photography Costs More
Than Film Photography

by
Jeff Colburn

Yes, that's right. It's costs more to take photographs with a digital camera than with a film camera. And I'm talking about dollars and cents, not the extra time you spend Photoshopping digital images.

I constantly hear photographers saying that digital photography is free, that they could never afford to shoot film because film and processing are too expensive. They have the mistaken idea that since you're not processing film, each picture is free. But every time you press the shutter on a digital camera, you shorten the camera's life.

With a film camera, most of the expense is the film and processing. But with a digital camera, your expense is the equipment, hardware and software, which have a rather short lifespan.

Below you will see the actual cost of digital versus film. Here's how I selected the items to compare.

I went with a mid-price camera body, and used Canon, as that's who makes my camera. The digital body I selected was the EOS 5D Mark II, which has a shutter life of 150,000 images. The film body was an EOS ELAN 7/7E, which was about the same price as the digital body. If this model is like the Nikon FM film bodies I used in the past, it will last for 20 to 30 years before the shutter needs to be replaced.

I gave each camera the same lens, then chose the typical hardware and software needed to support each.

I then assigned a lifespan for everything based on research from the manufacturer, reviewers and my own personal experience.

I based the amount of images shot on interviews of people who consider themselves professional photographers. These people often say they shoot one to two days a week, and will shoot about 10,000 images a day. Out of these images they get three to 4 great photographs. Sorry, I don't consider getting three to four great images out of 10,000 images to be the sign of a professional photographer, but that's a topic for another article.

I then cut the number of shoot-days in a year from between 52 and 104 to 26, and reduced the number of images shot from 10,000 per shoot-day to 3,000.

For the film camera I determined the number of images shot based on the number of rolls of film I used to shoot, and how many rolls other professional photographers I knew shot. So for the film camera you have 26 shoot-days a year, with 5 36-exposure rolls of film per shoot-day. Even today, when I go crazy with my digital camera on a 9-hour shoot in the Grand Canyon, I only take 250-350 images.

So why is digital so expensive? Two things really, you need more "things" for digital photography, and the cameras last only a fraction of the time that a film camera lasts.

With that in mind, take a look at the following numbers, and you will see just how expensive those "free" digital images are. After looking at the numbers, do you still think digital images are free?

Equipment - Digital	Lifespan In Years	Price	Cost Per Year
Canon EOS 5D Mark II	1.92	$2,500.00	$1,300.00
Lens - EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS	10.00	$700.00	$70.00
Cards (10) - Sandisk Extreme III 8gb	5.00	$330.00	$66.00
Card Reader (2)	5.00	$30.00	$6.00
Photoshop	6.00	$1,200.00	$200.00
Photoshop upgrade - every year	1.00	$187.00	$187.00
Lightroom	6.00	$240.00	$40.00
Lightroom upgrade - every year	1.00	$175.00	$175.00
Computer	3.00	$1,200.00	$400.00
Monitor - External	3.00	$1,500.00	$500.00
Monitor Calibration - Eye One	5.00	$150.00	$30.00
External Drive, 1TB - onsite	2.00	$80.00	$40.00
External Drive, 1TB - offsite	2.00	$80.00	$40.00
Pen Tablet + 1 set of nibs per year	5.00	$96.00	$19.20
		Total	$3,073.20
Equipment - Film
Canon EOS ELAN 7/7E	20.00	$2,600.00	$130.00
Lens - EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS	10.00	$700.00	$70.00
Film - 130 rolls 36 exp Ektachrome	1.00	$1,040.00	$1,040.00
Processing - 130 rolls Ektachrome	1.00	$1,300.00	$1,300.00
		Total	$2,540.00

 

If you're interested in photography, stock images of Arizona and Fine Art Prints of Arizona, visit www.TheCreativesCorner.com