Comments on: Has Digital Photography Changed How We Shoot?

By: Charles G. Haacker

Charles G. Haacker — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 12:45:28 +0000

I am 83. I hold an AS in Commercial Photography from 1973. I was a working pro for most of 30-odd years. I had a little butter-and-egg studio for 16 of those years, and that was where I really learned photography (nothing like full immersion when your livelihood is on the line). 100% film, color, and BW, ranging from 35mm through 8×10. When I was forced out of business in 1994, digital was only just peeking over the horizon. I met a chief news photographer in 1995 who surprised me by asking, "Have you tried digital yet?" His paper had entirely transitioned to digital a couple of years earlier (!), selling off all the film cameras and darkroom equipment! I looked up which cameras they might have been using at the time and place, and I bet on the Kodak DCS200 https://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Kodak_DCS_200 , with a minuscule M5 sensor (9.2 x 13.8 mm) and a resolution of 1524 x 1012. I think they sold for around 9K each.

Meanwhile, it took me until 2007 to finally dip my toe in with a shirt-pocket Nikon L12, with its 1/2.5-inch CCD; approximately 7.41 million total pixels. I opened the box, put in two AA batteries, fired it up, and shot whatever was in front of me. I was hooked from that first test exposure! I went mad. I have not shot a single frame of film in 19 years. I really dug into what is now a hobby. Over the years, I upgraded to Sony A6XXX bodies. I began shooting pro bono for nonprofits. Just last week, I covered a Gala for a longtime client, shooting over 800 RAW frames in 3 bodies, culled to 200 camera-ready, processed in (mostly) Lightroom Classic. I do my own processing.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/50e8e01cc3b80d627a7d7eb6783359338362e7525524d605ac64e180200b2df1.jpg Samples from the Gala shoot. ? SONY A6400; 18mm (27mm FF equiv.); f/4.5; 1/20 sec handheld, available dark (no flash); ISO 6400; SONY E 18-135mm f/ 3.5-5.6 OSS.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9aeffb9d348157efb89101427b7d90c94bc77e85317bba8979a22620b2d568c5.jpg Speechifying (many). Notice she is projected onto the screen behind her.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/56e554077aebb606a8247f22600168b7798f8ed61ee66778d2093834d3f1bb9e.jpg Entertaining (many). I thought the red and blue gels were a bit much.

I do overshoot! It's a quest for perfection that I couldn't practice in film. Every single frame cost money. If I got a blink or a bad expression, welp, so be it. Now those are culled in Aftershoot, and I still end up with 200 frames from 800. ?

By: Catherine Bowlene

Catherine Bowlene — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 06:42:56 +0000

I was never into a film photography as I was too young when it was still a popular thing (not saying it isn't now, but it's certainly less popular than it was before), and my first steps in photography were through a smartphone camera. I love the grain film effect though and I try to be mindful about my photos the way people were during the times of film, you know, in a way where you can't just photograph anything randomly and try to pick the best scenes. At the same time I'm forever thankful I can take a picture at any random moment, because sometimes those photos end up being the most besutiful and full of life. I also think we aren't afraid to make mistakes now because everything can be fixed in post, and it's a good thing. There are tons of useful articles on how to do this or that (for example, here is a great one on sharpening blurry photos, something you weren't exactly able to do at the age of film), so we get to practice, make mistakes and do better.

By: gtvone

gtvone — Sat, 18 Oct 2025 06:15:28 +0000

In reply to jim kay. Thanks for the comment, Jim! I agree with you on processing, as it happens, I find myself going back to the files from my 5DMk2 and re-processing them, yay for raw! Fun stuff.

By: jim kay

jim kay — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 00:26:44 +0000

I started my photography journey in 1973 with a Petri V6; I was stationed in Germany and my V6 was stolen. I replaced it with a Petri FTii (FT2); it had TTL, which made exposure so much easier. I learned how to process my own black and white film and even bulk loaded my own B&W film. I took a lot of color film and slides while in Europe. I got out of the Army and went to college, where I still processed my on B&W. I went digital in 2007 when I purchased my Nikon D40; I shot in auto mode for a whole year because I couldn't figure out the exposure controls! I finally got on YouTube and learned how to set the aperture and how to back button focus. I took tons and tons of photos in my first 10 years of digital. I learned about post processing 5 years into digital, working my way up to PhotoShop Elements+. I took two trips from Connecticut to the California coast and photographed everything along the way. I found that once you got west of Missouri just about everything was photogenic! I still haven't processed all of the photos from those trips. Now that I'm back in Connecticut and I find that I take fewer photographs. When I go to a scene, I have a good idea what I want to capture. I'll expose for the highlights manipulate the images and exposure blend them to give me a reasonable representation of what I originally saw. I now take fewer photos and have better results. I read about photographers complaining about post processing, but I have as much enjoyment processing the photo as I do taking it.