Farewell to Film: Part Two

Embracing Digital Photography

When Linds and I began to plan for our forthcoming year long round the world trip starting 6/2010, the topic of photography was a somewhat touchy subject. Lindsey knew how much I adored film photography and the opportunity to travel to super-stimulating places and shoot them in gritty 35mm intensely excited me. So we had to choose, film or digital?

After only some minutes of consideration I was able to understand how impractical film photography would be on a round the world trip. Even on short trips like our Spring Break 09 Costa Rica journey and my summer in Spain a couple months ago were burdened to a certain extent by the many drawbacks of film. When we weighed these many cons against the single pro (because I like the look), it was clear- we are going digital.

Why go digital?

First and foremost, we want to be able to share our experience with others. While developing film in much of the developed world is available and abundant I know it would present some challenges in the developing. With a digital of course, sharing photos is easy and we’ll be able to store the information securely on our backpackerdaily.com servers.

Then there’s the issue of equipment. In short, an SLR camera (single lense reflex) is big and heavy. There’s the body multiple fiilters, and my three fragile lenses; all of that in the camera bag comes out to a lot of gear. Not to mention all this stuff has moving parts that would present further difficulty should they need repair.

Also, when shooting with a total manual camera, you can’t exactly hand it off to people to take your picture.  Even if you set it up perfectly, if they nudge the focus or take a few steps forward or back it could screw up the exposure.  Furthermore, what if you blinked or it didn’t turn out right for whatever reason?  You’d never know until you got it developed.  Digital photography’s greatest benefit, in my opinion, if the preview ability.  When you’re able to view what you just shot, you can learn the principles of photography by trial and error and ensure that you get good shots.  This is an indispensable feature for travel photography that is so dependent on shooting in the moment.

Then there’s the ever-nagging questions: What if the film gets stolen/damaged?; then, How much will all this cost to develop when we get back?  I would truly like to hear from people that are long term travelers that shoot in film.

What do we need in a digital camera?

Digital was clearly the only option.  Now the big question was, what camera to choose?  In my selection process we considered the obvious, size, durability and quality.  I knew I wanted a point and shoot camera (for its size) with a lot of options.  Another thing that was really important to me was to have a wide angle lens.  This was a bit of a challenge because most point and shoot cameras focus on having more zoom than less zoom.  I think its just more sexy when a camera has like a 41x optical zoom.  Most people probably don’t understand that these cameras, when zoomed in even half that length, are almost impossible to hand shoot and not get blur and also, when zoomed in so much, the max aperture goes way down on most cameras in my price range ($500-$1000); This means it’s almost impossible to shoot in any light conditions other than bright sunlight.  In short, long zooms are only needed for specific applications (like sports and wildlife photography) .  Wide angle (less zoom) can be used on most travel photos and in my opinion, gives your work a neat look.

So I settled on a point and shoot camera “for enthusiasts”, the Canon G10.  The G10 is $500 and has 14.2 megapixels, loads of options, x5 zoom and a very wide lense for its type of camera (28mm, I think).  I bought it right after my birthday and I’ve been really happy with it.  The photos are clear and the features are great.

I do miss film, but I do not miss the price of developing and taking care of all that vintage/fragile equipment.  I like digital a lot for travel applications for the following reason: it’s disposable!   When you can shoot hundreds of pics of a market or whimsically snap a crowded street with auto focus on, you’re bound to get some neat shots.  That’s what travel photography is all about- getting the natural look.    I read a good tip on uncorneredmarket.com the other day that said, I’ll paraphrase, “Always think of the first shot as a test shot [when shooting people]“.  This is a simple tip but so true.  With digital photography, one can take the first portrait as an ice breaker, then actually show their subject the result.  This interaction between photographer and subject can lead to some really playful and candid pictures.  They had some good ones on that site.

I’m excited to travel to exotic and stunning places and shoot them in brilliant digital but there’ll always be a place in my heart for my dad’s old OM-1 that once traversed the lands of South America.

Tags: decisions, technology, travel planning, trip planning

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 at 6:00 am and is filed under Blakesjourney. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.