Home Page Commentary 14 May 2000 (I Like SLR Film Cameras)

Comment of the Fortnight
14 May 2000

I Like SLR Film Cameras

Last night I went to a kickboxing event at the San Jose Events Center, and I took both my Olympus C-200Z digital camera and my Pentax ZX-M film camera. I hadn't used the film camera in a long time, and I had forgotten some of its advantages.

• The camera is SLR - Single Lens Reflex - which means what I see in the viewfinder is precisely what will be captured on film. Most digital cameras' viewfinders are separate from what the lens sees, and this disparity can cause problems when you zoom in. Although I can sight through the LCD on the back - which does represent the exact picture that the lens sees, I have to hold the camera away from me, and it feels unnatural.
• I can use ISO 800 film, which means I can take pictures in low light levels. This level of sensitivity usually produces grainier pictures, but a high quality film like Fuji 800 produces excellent results. While some digital cameras do let you set the sensitivity to ISO 800, they produce very “noisy” pictures.
• I can switch lenses. Instead of my normal 35-50mm lens, I used a 70-210mm lens, which gives me a six times optical zoom. The digital camera has only three times optical zoom, and the 2.5 times additional zoom is digital, which produces unappealing results. [Note: the results page has to download about 130K bytes of data. It may take a while.] There are adapters and lenses for digital cameras, but they're more expensive than those for film cameras.
• There's no delay between the time I press the shutter and the time the picture is taken. Digital cameras all have a slight to significant delay between shutter button click and actual picture capture. When you're taking action photos, this delay often means the difference between getting a shot and missing it.

Of course, there are some disadvantages:

• If I miss a shot, I can't just erase it and reuse the film.
• I have to take the film in for developing and then scan the pictures. I can have them digitized and/or put on a CD, but that's an expensive option.

Of course, the ideal would be a camera whose front contains the standard film optics and whose back contains the digital electronics. The Nikon D-1 has done exactly this, but it's expensive; on the close order of US$10,000. [Another approach would be to put the digital electronics into a package that would fit into the space occupied by your film canister; one company has had such a product in the vaporware stages for the past couple of years, so I wouldn't hold my breath in that area.]

Why hasn't anyone come out with such a package at a cheaper price? Because of what's driving the market. The vast majority of cameras is sold to the casual user. They want the convenience. That's why you see fixed-focus disposables, which are more than adequate for taking pictures of your family in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Even a fairly simple camera like the Pentax, which I should think has appeal mostly to an advanced amateur, would confuse the average picture taker. Well, if you can sell ten thousand point-and-shoot cameras for each Pentax, and you want to open up the digital market, the decision isn't very difficult, is it?

So, until the day when someone comes out with my dream camera at my dream price, I'll continue to use the digital camera for most of my work, but I'll keep the film camera for those occasions when nothing else will do.

Let me know what you think.

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