Digital Photography Is Not Free

by
Jeff Colburn

(This article appeared in Photography Monthly magazine in 2011)

It's almost a mantra with many digital photographers; "Digital is free because you don't use film." Well, guess what? Digital is not free. In fact, it costs more per year than film. Every time you press the shutter on a digital camera, you shorten the camera’s life. And the cost of digital I'm talking about is dollars and cents, and doesn't even include the extra time you spend manipulating images.

Before I go any further, let me make something perfectly clear. This is not an article about whether film or digital is better. It's a nuts and bolts discussion about the cost of digital photography versus film photography.

So why does digital cost more than film per year? It's all of the "things" you need for digital, such as a computer, software, frequent upgrades and the high number of images that many digital photographers take.

A film camera's expense is the film and processing. When I was shooting film I simply gave the slides to my clients, or made the occasional duplicate to mail to a publication. I didn't use a computer, make prints or Polaroid® proofs or anything else. It was pretty simple. Record keeping was done on 3 x 5 cards, and slides were stored in slide pages that were in 3-ring binders. I was basically done with everything when I picked up the film. What I saw on the slides is what I had. It was so easy.

Many of today's digital photographers think nothing of taking thousands of photographs in a day, and bracketing each exposure up and down five stops. While this ensures lots of canon fodder for Photoshop®, it increases the wear and tear on a camera. Even now that I shoot digital, I seldom take more than 300 images in a full day of shooting.

I selected the body and lens for the comparison based on price, trying to keep that part of the comparison the same. The digital body I selected was the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, which has a shutter life of 150,000 images. The film body was a Canon EOS ELAN 7/7E, which was about the same price as the digital body, and has a shutter life of 100,000 images.

I gave each camera the same lens, and then chose the typical hardware and software needed to support the digital camera. I did not include printing costs because many digital photographers don't make prints. And when I shot film, I almost never made them either.

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 several interviews I read about digital photographers. These people say they shoot one to two days a week, and will shoot about 3,000 to 10,000 images a day. I went with the 3,000 number. That comes out to 375 shots per hour in an eight-hour day. That seems like a lot to me, as it's75 images an hour if they bracket 2 exposures up and down for each shot, but it's what they say. I then set the number of shoot-days to fifty-two per year.

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 four 36-exposure rolls of film per shoot-day, or 18 per hour.

Photography has always allowed for a wide range of customization in equipment. But I feel my above selection does the best apples to apples comparison.

You may believe that there's no reason to consider film as relevant to photography, but you couldn't be further from the truth. Many Fine Art photographers still use film. I know of several in my area. And while I was at the gallery that carries my work in Jerome, Arizona, a gentleman from Australia struck up a conversation. He told me that professional photographers in Australia were dumping their digital cameras in droves, and going back to film. Many publications still accept film too, including Arizona Highways and Outdoor Photographer.

Photography has always allowed for a wide range of customization in equipment selection, but I focused on the one-person photography business. I feel my above selections offer an apples to apples comparison.
When all the dust settles over film versus digital remember, a camera is just a tool; it's the skill of the photographer that decides the caliber of images that it produces.

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	0.96	$2,500.00	$2,600.00
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	5.00	$1,200.00	$240.00
Photoshop upgrade - every other year	2.00	$187.00	$93.50
Lightroom	5.00	$240.00	$48.00
Lightroom upgrade - every other year	2.00	$175.00	$87.50
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	$4,240.20
		Images Shot Per Year	156,000
		Cost Per Shot	$0.03
Equipment - Film
Canon EOS ELAN 7/7E	13.35	$2,600.00	$194.69
Lens - EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS	10.00	$700.00	$70.00
Film - 208 rolls 36 exp Ektachrome	1.00	$1,248.00	$1,248.00
Processing - 208 rolls Ektachrome	1.00	$1,664.00	$1,664.00
		Total	$3,176.69
		Images Shot Per Year	7,488
		Cost Per Shot	$0.42

Have Fun,
Jeff

 

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