Digital Photographers, Do They Make Better Images Than Film Photographers?

Longs Peak, Shadow Ridge

Do digital photographers make better images than film photographers?  No, of course not.  The quality of an image is down to the skill and talent of the photographer who made it, not the equipment they used.  Still, there is one thing, though…

Digital is a fast and limitless medium.  By fast, I mean that digital gives immediate feedback on a photograph that has been made in the form of the screen on the back of the camera.  This means not only that errors can be corrected, but even good images can be made better by fine tuning things such as exposure, composition, and the like.  By limitless, I mean that digital is essentially unlimited in the number of images that can be made (as compared to film, where the number of images is limited to the amount of film stock on hand).  Having an unlimited number of images available allows for the freedom to experiment with things such as composition, lens choice, camera settings, and so forth, without worrying about working down a stock of images available that can be made. 

Stated more succinctly, digital allows one to make more images in a shorter period of time, and to learn from each one more quickly.  Isn’t this the definition of climbing the learning curve?  For every one image the film photographer makes, reviews, and learns from, the digital photographer is capable of doing dozens, or hundreds, or more.

Again, I don’t mean to suggest that digital photographers make better images than film photographers.  It’s all about the photographer, not the equipment they use.  What I do mean to suggest, however, is that the digital photographer will exploit his or her own individual potential more quickly than photographers who work with film.  In essence, because the learning curve with digital is so compressed, a photographer will achieve whatever he or she is individually capable of more quickly with digital than with film.

There is one caveat with all this, though.  The great peril of digital is laziness and lack of discipline.  The ability to make essentially limitless images should not be an excuse to fire off shot after shot until a good result is accomplished simply by volume of attempts, and getting instant feedback should not be an excuse to stop pursuing the best rendering of a scene simply because an acceptable one has been achieved.  The advantages of the digital learning curve require a thoughtful and deliberate approach to each image being worked on – an approach that film photographers practice out of necessity, and which digital photographers would be well advised to adopt as a matter of good practice.