Why do people complain...

[Tuolumne]

about having to change a digital camera's battery every 300 shots or so but don't complain about having to change a roll of film every 36 shots, usually at the most inopportune times? Just curious about your thoughts on this anomaly of the digital vs. film zeitgeist.

/T

[gb hill]

Because it takes longer for a film photographer to go through 36 frames than a person machinegunning (don't they call it chimping)? through 300 frames. At least it is for me. On a 24 or 36 roll of film I try to make every shot a great one. Though I usually fail miserably, thats for another thread.

[Tuolumne]

With any digital camera I have owned in the past 3 years, I can do a day of travel shooting on one battery charge. I only rarely need a second battery, although I always carry one. Is the ratio of digital snaps to film snaps really something like 10x1 for most people? (Not to mention the fact that I was being conservative on the digital side. Many digital cameras will take well over 300 shots before needing a fresh battery.)

/T

[sojournerphoto]

I can shoot a whole holiday using 1 battery and possibly only one big card on the 1Ds3. Even the 5D probably only requires a couple of charges. There again, I don't machine gun and until I saw a newspaper photographer at work today (5 frames where I'd have taken one) I've never really come across this. What I do do though is shoot a few 'digi polaroids' to check exposure.

[gb hill]

I don't machine gun digital photo's. I don't even own a digital camera. I was refuring to how people with digital camera's tend to shoot, shoot, & shoot. Yes I know some are quite disiplined and I like alot of work done on both film & dagital & don't disrespect digital. Go to flickr & you will find thousands of meaningless photos all shot on digital. My flickr photos may be meaningless to you also but I haven't uploaded 1000's either which reinforces my point.

[ruby.monkey]

300 shots per set of batteries? Really?

Someone needs to start buying batteries made after about 1980.

[mh2000]

when your battery dies on most digitals you are dead, if you run out of film you can often stop at the next drug store and pick up some (at least where I live).

I don't complain, as long as I get more than a 100 shots I'm good... and that is for a whole vacation!

[Keith]

It is odd ... I noticed people mentioning the fiddlyness of changing memory cards and batteries in the M8 a while ago ... the fact that you have to actually remove the base plate ... how hard is that after all. I remember one night at a gallery opening I was photographing I shot 350 exposures over a one and a half hour period ... the light was very difficult and I was having to do a lot of bracketing and a fair bit of chimping to make sure I got the shots that mattered ... especially with the M8's sensitivity to incorrect exposure at high ISO's. It involved one battery change and one memory card change which was quite good as it gave me a chance to sit down for a minute and get my breath back.

I tried to visualise doing the same thing with a film camera and around ten film changes and while I know it could still have been done adequately with a good metered M body ... it would have added a fair bit more difficulty to the evening.

I might add that the battery change was for insurance ... I probably could have gone through the shoot without it but it was better to be safe than sorry.

[bmattock]

I do tend to shoot more when I shoot digital - a lot more. And yes, I get into modes where I just hammer away. Mostly events, where the action is moving and flowing and things are changing quickly. I get around 600 shots to a set of CR-V3 rechargeable batteries, by the way, not 300.

I have shot as much as 1200 shots - sometimes even more - in the course of a day. Of course I could not afford to do that with film.

That does not mean that I have to shoot that way. Sometimes when I am shooting digital, I don't hammer away sequentially, I take my time and use the skills I have learned over the years to make the best photo I am able to make.

I find advantages to both methods, at times.

Sometimes, by hammering away, I take risks that I would otherwise not take on an off-the-cuff shot that I might otherwise have held fire on - and find out later that it is amazingly good. Sometimes by taking four or five shots of person passing by, I find that most of them are not acceptable for whatever reason, like eyes closed, head turned, awkward position, etc, and maybe one of them is a keeper - if shooting film, maybe I'd have gotten the one winner - and maybe not.

Over all, and over time, I have come to the conclusion that for me, I get about 1 in 15 or so shots I like and consider worthy of a second glance - that doesn't make them all masterpieces, but they have, in my humble opinion, some degree of merit.

That is 1 in 15 whether I shoot film or digital. Whether I go slow or go fast.

So shooting lots does not increase my 'hit rate', but having more shots increases the number of photos I consider acceptable.

I try to use the appropriate method for any given photographic situation. I may be wrong, but this works for me.

And yes, I have many thousands of photos in Flickr. I have my reasons for that.

[bmattock]

Originally Posted by mh2000

when your battery dies on most digitals you are dead, if you run out of film you can often stop at the next drug store and pick up some (at least where I live).

Yeah, if the battery dies on my laptop, I'm stuck. So I guess paper is better.

Technology sucks, doesn't it? Everything about it is terrible. Maybe you'd better log off and write us a letter instead.

[Steve Bellayr]

Because with digital the camera dies and you need to replace the battery. With the digital camera that I had the spare battery was very heavy. The camera was heavy. I was able to shoot only 125 frames on the camera if the battery was fully charged. (I also needed to carrry a charger wherever I went.) Four rolls of 36 exposures weighted less that a spare battery. Of course, things have changed since I have switched over. The worst part was grabbing the digital after a few days or a week and found that both batteries were discharged. With a film camera the battery went dead every 5 years.

That has been my experience back about 3 years ago. I know things have changed. It is ca comfort factor. I am more comfortable changing film because with film I am forced (or trained) to think before every shot. With digital I did not have to think. It is different not better or worse.

[yanidel]

50% of times I go out, I need to change the battery once.
There are way bigger issues in my life, like my cellphone needing to reboot every two days for no reason

[Keith]

Im no digital fan boy but I'm with bmattock ... digital camera battery hysteria is just that!

[sojournerphoto]

I spent 7 months in southern and east Africa carrying 30 rolls of Kodachrome 64 in my rucsac alongside my AE-1 and a few lenses. That's about 1,000 frames - or a 5D with 1 16Gb card and a means to charge the battery. Having said that - if I went today for the same (non-photographic) reasons I'd take a new G1 or even a GX100 and a couple of big SD cards.

Mike

[Al Kaplan]

I've always carying a camera, somtimes slung over my shoulder, sometimes in my hand or dangling from my wrist. Sometimes I don't go "click" for days. Today I shot a few frames of the interplay of my shadow on the pavement with the shadow of a barricade, not my usual style for sure, but the forced perspective of the 21mm lens intrigued me. It was a cloudless day with very clear air so the shadows were nice and contrasty.

I doubt that I'd shoot more if I had digital. I had some ideas for using the shots on my blog and the text I'll write is as important as the pictures, but the photos don't have to be great art, only fun to look at. Or I might process the prints by flicking drops of Dektol on the paper, letting it run this way and that across the surface. The randomness of the developed parts of the image, the grey streaks caused by bromiding of the developer sitting too long on the paper, are kind of neat. Some of the people in the art community think my prints like that ARE great art. Go figure!

[bmattock]

Sports and reportage photographers learned years ago to make maximum use of film and motor winders. I remember seeing Nikons with adapters to allow 250-shot rolls of film or whatever it was, with massive battery-packs to power the winder, and that sort of thing.

They knew then what the digital press-and-pray crowd knows now - that sometimes things move too fast for even the best eye to capture, so you get your exposure and your composition as right as you can and you hammer away until you're out of film (or battery, or memory space).

For certain uses, it is optimal. For others, perhaps less so - but so what? If someone wishes to take 300 shots of a daffodil, what of it?

The only thing that amazes me is the same thing that always amazes me - that a person who simply does not shoot that way feels that it is wrong to shoot that way.

Is there some special place in heaven where all the film users who eschewed digital cameras will be able to go and stick their tongues out at the rest of us, as we burn in the lake of digital fire?

[Tuolumne]

/|\ That was funny!

/T

[Al Kaplan]

Years ago a friend of mine had a new motor driver on his Nikon F and was shooting a pro baseball game. The motor drive was the latest in new technology at the time. It was the end of the ninth inning. One frame shows the batter sliding in towards home plate, and the baseball is still in the air, not quite to the catcher's mitt. The next frame shows his feet sliding in the dirt past home plate and the ball is visible in the mitt. The photographers who didn't use motors got the photo of the ball in the mitt just before the batter's feet touched home plate. The batter was out, but being locked into the timing sequence of the motor drive caused my friend to miss the shot. Ain't bursts great?

[Kin Lau]

Originally Posted by Steve Bellayr

With a film camera the battery went dead every 5 years.

... and in it's dying breath took the camera with it by spilling it's corrosive guts all over the battery compartment.

[bmattock]

Originally Posted by Al Kaplan

Years ago a friend of mine had a new motor driver on his Nikon F and was shooting a pro baseball game. The motor drive was the latest in new technology at the time. It was the end of the ninth inning. One frame shows the batter sliding in towards home plate, and the baseball is still in the air, not quite to the catcher's mitt. The next frame shows his feet sliding in the dirt past home plate and the ball is visible in the mitt. The photographers who didn't use motors got the photo of the ball in the mitt just before the batter's feet touched home plate. The batter was out, but being locked into the timing sequence of the motor drive caused my friend to miss the shot. Ain't bursts great?

It happens sometimes, but did you fail to note that most sports and reportage photographers eventually switched to the motor drives, because their odds of getting the shot were higher?

Likewise, the upcoming RED camera that may, if it lives up to the boasts, blur the line between video and still photography to the extent that sports and reportage photographers simply don't use still cameras any more.

Remembering the Ruby assassination of Oswald - one photographer got the shot, one was getting into position and did not - rued the day until he died (I read the story, he was literally a bitter and broken man over missing that shot). RED would have caught the whole thing, but of course did not exist then. A motor drive would have been most useful in that situation, but who knew?

[ruby.monkey]

Originally Posted by mh2000

when your battery dies on most digitals you are dead, if you run out of film you can often stop at the next drug store and pick up some (at least where I live).

When the world runs out of AA-size batteries, then I'll worry. Nowadays they're easier to get hold of than film.

[Kin Lau]

Originally Posted by Al Kaplan

Years ago a friend of mine had a new motor driver on his Nikon F and was shooting a pro baseball game. The motor drive was the latest in new technology at the time. It was the end of the ninth inning. One frame shows the batter sliding in towards home plate, and the baseball is still in the air, not quite to the catcher's mitt. The next frame shows his feet sliding in the dirt past home plate and the ball is visible in the mitt. The photographers who didn't use motors got the photo of the ball in the mitt just before the batter's feet touched home plate. The batter was out, but being locked into the timing sequence of the motor drive caused my friend to miss the shot. Ain't bursts great?

The stupid mistake was to use an untested/unfamiliar piece of equipment for a money job.

Timing the motor sequence is just like learning the shutter delay and travel required to get it right.

Change the travel on the shutter button (like adding a soft release) on any of the other cameras, and they would have missed the shot too.

It was a stupid photographer mistake.. your friend should have known better.

[digitalintrigue]

Neat story. I recently shot a little league game, I was between digitals (body-less at the time) so I dug out my old Nikon F2 -- motorless of course -- I prefer to call it 'single shot mode'.

After a few shots, I was able to time the ball on the way from the pitcher and got one shot with the ball right on the bat. Of course, this wasn't major league pitching at 100mph.

You are right, 5, 6 or 8 fps sounds blazing fast, but it's not really. 8 frames in one second shot at 1/1000 means that 992/1000 of that second is not photographed.

Originally Posted by Al Kaplan

Years ago a friend of mine had a new motor driver on his Nikon F and was shooting a pro baseball game. The motor drive was the latest in new technology at the time. It was the end of the ninth inning. One frame shows the batter sliding in towards home plate, and the baseball is still in the air, not quite to the catcher's mitt. The next frame shows his feet sliding in the dirt past home plate and the ball is visible in the mitt. The photographers who didn't use motors got the photo of the ball in the mitt just before the batter's feet touched home plate. The batter was out, but being locked into the timing sequence of the motor drive caused my friend to miss the shot. Ain't bursts great?

[Keith]

8 frames in one second shot at 1/1000 means that 992/1000 of that second is not photographed.

Doh! ... well just shoot it all at 1/8 ... god doesn't anyone around here have any imagination?

[digitalintrigue]

Hey, why not use a single shot at 1/1 and get everything?