Community poll forum: Number one reason you switched to a digital camera?

Photographers won't switch, they have added digital.
It's not an either/or situation. The public will switch to digital because they can save money on film & processing and those terrible shots found in each roll of film can just be erased.

Professionals see digital as just one more tool in the camera bag.

Digital is great, but it lacks in a few areas. One big one for me is that I have not been able to find a camera that takes a picture when I want it to take the picture. Sure I know all the tricks about presetting the camera prior to really taking the shot, but when I push the button I want the photo then, not a second later.

If someone has a camera that will take a photo as fast as my Minolta Film SLR without spending a grand let me know.

I enjoy the ability to see the photos immediately. That way if the picture was a bit off, you can take another one.

The sucker fits in my shirt pocket & goes wherever I go (3x optical, 3 meg, mini movies, records sound, flash, etc.)

With the Nicons it was always a case full of lenses & an expedition, or at least a seperate lump & strap.

Plus one can take lots of "bracketing" shots & delete them easily at no cost, and manipulating them for printout is a snap (compared to "hard copy" enlargements, etc.

Enjoy!

Where is the option for all of the above? I'm sure I'm not the only one in which each factor can play a deciding role as to whether I buy it or not. It is the group of choice as a whole that sets my deciding choice.

I've been shooting photos since the Kodak Brownie days and, in spite of my Luddite tendencies brought about by advanced age, I DO appreciate the one big advantage digital has over film... instant gratification - don't like it, shoot again. Great!

(But I'll argue to the grave that shooting on film forces you to pay much more attention to what you're doing. If you're holding a single-shot rifle (film camera), you MAKE SURE of your target and aim. Using a "machine gun" (digital camera) doesn't require anywhere near the same skill or accuracy or precision. Go ahead... shoot a hundred shots... ONE of them has to be good!)

However, for me, there are TWO major disadvantages to any digital camera I've used... the first is the DELAY after pressing the shutter... drives me nuts, and the second is that, to my eyes, the subtleties apparent in, say, an available light portrait blown up to 16x20, even from 35mm, are simply NOT THERE in any digital image I've seen to date.

My advice? If you're more interested in FAST snapshots than in QUALITY and SUBTLETY, use digital. Otherwise, shoot on film, take to 1-hour photo, get 4x6 "proofs" and pay the $1.50 for a CD if you must have the "digital" version. That's the best of both worlds! Now when you do find you have that "terrific" shot, you can at least get a decent blow up of it!

I know virtualy nothing about photography. As I learn and make lots of mistakes, I'm not wasting hundreds of dollars on film and processing costs. I can see the results quicker and just delete the junk.

Clearly there are a number of advantages and some disadvantages to digital. What attracted me in the first place was the chance to immediately see the image I shot, and then be able to reshoot again if it was not right. I do large amounts of nature photography in variable light conditions. Too many times I would come home and have a roll of slides with only a few acceptable quality, even with bracketing. With digital I can shoot a hundred shots of a single still life, and choose to save the one that works best. I can shoot images of a subtle difference in the green tone within a patch of ferns. If it works fine, if not I can simply delete the images and shot again. You can easily take a series of photos that tell a story, rather than relying on a few images. The ability to shoot as many photos of a single subject as you feel is necessary changes your approach to how you shoot pictures. I still take time to properly compose each image, and adjust the exposure. If it doesn't work oput I can shoot again. If a deer is walking throught the woods I can shoot and shoot and shoot again until it goes out of site. Digital photography changes your mindset of what you can do with your camera. You still need to be a good phtotgrapher to take consistently good images, but it frees you to experiment with your art form.

Ed Frank

The picture quality I am getting is much better than prints plus scanning. Now I can crop and adjust high quality images where as predigital the quality was severely limited by the scanner. I'm surprised quality and scanning was not an option.

I also use film I have a Nikon F70 and don't like any thing else. The most important to consider is does digital photos come as clear as the conventional film do. How is the resolution of the photos with a digital camera of the highest megapixels compares say with an ISO 100 or 60 film photos?

If they are equal I would swithch to digital camera.

I bought an inexpensive compact Minolta G-400 camera so that I could keep the thing handy to take spur of the moment photos. It's good for that but unless you are willing to go for the bulk and expense of a semi-pro digicam like the Nikon D70 (or even a more expensive one) the quality of the photos are disappointing compared to the results you can get with a moderately expensive 35mm film SLR. When I need first class photos, I resort to my SLR with interchangeable lenses to get the results that I need. The "unlimited" storage of digital photos is somewhat misleading, as they will rapidly fill up a hard disk drive; you have to look at the expense of a very large HDD to keep from running out of space.