If you want to see another advantage of digital photography over film: go and see the Wildlife Photographer Of The Year exhibition and compare the quality of the underwater photos with those which were winning prizes 10 years ago. It's like day and night.
In that 'niche' I'm really not qualified to comment. But will anyway.. or at least query the suggestion and particularly the inference that that improvement is directly attributable to digital technology.
Underwater photography was not made possible by digital, it pre-exited. I wont argue that current under-water photos are probably of a far higher standard; but in that niche... how much of that improvement is directly and solely attributable to digital technology?
In the twenty years that digital cameras have been evolving to affordable high street products, so too has 'accessibility' and participation in so many 'leisure activities' people now have so much more to take photo's of. More people now, participate in all manner of leisure pursuits and more frequently than they did twenty five years ago? And take photos of it. My 'pursuit' is motorbikes. 25 years ago, I might have seen one or two others at a race meet or event taking photo;s, but not many. Now there are lots, AND more, half the rider's have 'action-cams' on their hats or handlebars! I suspect the same 'proliferation' is true in so many pursuits such as canoeing or mountain climbing or even extreme ironing!
And Scuba Diving is a relatively 'new' pursuit compared to so many. I seem to recall checking some safety statistics to compare the relative safety to motorcycling, and ISTR that the stats showed such a huge leap in accident rates in the last ten years, there was an addendum to explain that the pursuit had expanded by something like twenty times the number of people who participate, and that average hours participation, per person had also increased by more than double, so that while the actual number of 'accidents' had ramped enormously, per participant hour, it was actually 'about' the same..If that is so, then could forty times the number of under water man-hours alone not account for an awful lot more opportunities for 'better' photos, and hence the higher standard of those making exhibition?
Proliferation of water-proof enclosures on e-bay, and what seems to me to be incredibly low prices of them, compared to those offered twenty five years ago in the specialist magazines for, usually higher end film SLR's would also seem to me to be indicative not only of more people being under water for more hours and there being more opportunities for better photo's but more of those people actually having cameras to take them? And THEN, more still... 'other technology' that provides greater scope to exploit those opportunities, significantly, I'd suspect, artificial lighting?
I will confess I don't dive. I got as far as having my head shoved in a tank at Bovisand, quarter century ago, had a panic attack, and that was it! I was NOT being suited up to go in the water! But what I recall, and what I understand, is that visibility is usually pretty dire, and artificial lighting crucial to seeing anything, so I would imagine that high intensity, low consumption LED or HID lighting technology coupled with compact high capacity batteries, has probably done more to increase the opportunities to take more and better underwater photographs than any feature or function associated with Digital?
To wit, is it actually digital cameras and digital cameras alone, that has made these photo's possible or better?
How about the ability to change ISO between shots? Think back to the days of film, this is massive. How about the ability to get decent quality at ISO 100 or 25,600? Second to second, shot to shot?
Missing my point, this is something more people can do, do more easily and conveniently with digital, it's NOT something you 'couldn't do with film, Digital hasn't pushed the boundaries of what was possible into any new territory.
I don't need to think 'back' to the days of film or carrying 'boxes' of film about... I still do! Film ISN'T 'dead' quite yet!... but, in days past? Yes, I have rewound mid-roll to change film speed or type; or have swapped bodies for one loaded with a different film. Curiously DIDN'T need to do it very often! And shooting digital, I still don't! Yup, certainly easier if I want to... and having ISO 6400 available on a button certainly saves a trip to the shops, and a couple of boost settings above that, playing with my timings push-processing that film.....
But as said, it's not pushed the boundaries to do things that just could NOT be done before; it has JUST made them easier to do and for more people to do them, making cameras cheaper and easier to use and a 'consumer friendly' mass market product.
How about the ability to shoot more than xx shots without having to stop and reload and miss what happened when you were doing so?
As Stewart pointed out, there were always bulk film backs that took stock movie cans of 30m, or around 750 frames! True not many people used them, but that potential was there, it has not been made possible by Digital, just more available and more common.
Meanwhile, you still have to swap a memory card in a digital camera when it's full, or how many shots would you miss trying to clear down the duffers on the card on the preview screen?
Sure, I only get, 36 frames to a roll of 35mm.. but got pretty 'practiced' and deft at changing them; and usually had plenty of spares in the bag, and could pick up another if needed at any petrol station or convenience store... what's odds, these days, of finding one that stocks the 'right' memory card, and I never had my winder equipped film cameras ever locked up waiting a buffer over-run, making me 'miss a shot', either!
This is not something made possible by digital, nor improved in quality by digital. I can take just as many photo's on a digital camera as I can on a film camera, and how many I can fit on a memory card or roll of film makes not one jot of difference to how good they are likely to be!
How about the ability to see the shot immediately after you've taken it
Lands Polaroid... been about since the mid 1940's. This is not 'new'. It is not something that digital has made possible that wasn't before!
Precisely... its 'easier', it s NOT achieving what was previously 'impossible' or even impractical! It is NOT an 'advance' it is a 'easement'.
How about the ability to take a shot and within seconds or minutes (depending on how tech savvy you are and/or where you are) send it to just about anyone just about anywhere on the planet?
So, before 'digital' came along no-one ever sent photographs by conventional mail? Pictures could't be distributed and published globally? I believe that photographs were being transmitted by telegraph routinely as early as the 1920's! Photos of world events, leading up to the second world war, were being transmitted via the telegraph network, and appearing within 24 hours in the daily papers!
Sorry, again, this is NOT something that has been made 'possible' by digital that wasn't before. It has certainly made it 'easier' and possibly faster and available to the man in the street, BUT, it's not a feature of 'the camera', but the infrastructure, and significantly mobile telephone network, and again, evidence of 'consumerism' making these things available and easier NOT making them simply 'possible' or 'better'
And THAT is the point.Film technology had over a century and a half of evolution before digital came along. In that time the 'technology' had evolved enormously, and the practice of making photographic pictures, became an accepted norm, in which the trend towards consumerism, and not particularly advancing the state of the art, but bringing it to to a wider market, had been the main 'impetus'for most of the century, from the first 'consumer' box brownie in the 1890's!
The last notable 'advance', making possible something that previously wasn't was probably color photography! But even that, which didn't really filter down to the 'enthusiast' market until the 1940's when 'subtraction' one shot emulsions pioneered for the movie industry were used in or offered for stills cameras, or the 'consumer' market in the 1970's when small format cartridge cameras offered it over the counter, BUT additive colour processes had been being used since the 1870's, in wet-plate cameras before even celluloid 'film' and commercial film manufacture and processing alleviated the actual photographer of the 'chore' of messing with chemistry!
For SURE digital has made a lot of things a heck of a lot more "convenient", and an awful lot more accessible AND cheaper. Consumer electronics has hugely increased the number of 'easements' that can be crammed into a camera at any particular cost break. AND whilst I still shoot film.. The electric picture maker has supplanted the winder equipped, auto-exposure SLR's in the gadget bag FOR that 'convenience'.. But THAT is ALL digital is significantly offering! It s NOT offering me anything to take pictures that I couldn't with conventional cameras, nor is it offering any improvement in those pictures I can take, and YET an awful lot of the 'convenience' digital is providing, is not actually from the camera or the camera technology, BUT convergence of electronic technologies, and the 'digital infrastructure' ..
Its certainly a darn site more convenient to store, and review my pictures in a digital archive on a computer, than it is trawl through binders of negatives, possibly with accompanying contact strips.. BUT even THAT isn't something that has been 'made possible' by Digital cameras! It was made possible by computers! And I have been using THAT convenience since 1996 when I bought a 100Mb 'Zip' drive that could store more than one picture per disc, digitized from film! And yeah, darn site easier to e-mail a photo to my mother than pop a print the post! But still, it's not something 'new', its something different, AND it relies not just on me having a camera to take a picture, but a computer to e-mail it, AND my mother to have one to receive it!
For the last quarter century, Digital Photography has NOT been trying to further the realms of photographic possibility, but, replicate that possibility that had for a century already been possible, and offer it in a more convenient consumer friendly 'package'. And very very little of what is even 'easier' with digital, IS actually made easier by 'the camera' but digitalization AND consumerism, and the entire 'wired world' it all plugs into and depends on.
Like I said, its a matter of discriminating between 'advances' which genuinely make something previously not, actually possible, and 'Easements' which make what is already possible, less onerous to achieve, 'Changes' which are neither advances or easements, but simply different ways of achieving the same thing, and 'gadgets' which don't actually make anything possible, or easier, or better.. but often convince people they do!
'Progress' in digital, great as they it be, has significantly not expanded the boundaries of photographic possibility or excellence... the medium has merely made the practice more convenient, more accessible and more affordable to more people. That does not mean that its all been a waste of time, and film is still better, BUT, the changes, and the easements are NOT really 'advances' to the state of the art, they ARE easements and changes! And we should be more discriminatory in recognizing this and NOT buying the consumerist line that newer must be more 'advanced' and that that inherently means 'better'!
Better photographers take better pictures, not better cameras... but even if you ignore that, more sophisticated, more technologically evolved cameras AREN'T automatically 'better' cameras! Whether they are digital or not!
