Cost-Effectiveness of Digital Photography
Recently I saw a post on DPReview.com that reminded me of the calculations I was making back in 2000 about whether and when to buy my first digital camera.
"In 2000, I went to Greece with 22 rolls of 36 exposures, came home and had them developed and put onto CDs at the cost of US$440. Today with digital, I could have bought a lens with what I spent on film and developing on that trip.”
This author nails one of the underappreciated aspects of the digital photograph revolution: It's cheaper.
Of course, we had to go out and buy new cameras. That cost money up front. And there was a new piece of gear we needed: memory cards. Those were pretty darn expensive when I bought my first digital camera in 2001. I believe I paid about $650 for a 3 Megapixel Sony camera and another $120 for two Sony Memory Sticks that each held approximately 40 pictures.
On my first trip with a digital camera, two days in Yosemite, I more than filled those cards plus the tiny 8MB card that came in the box with the camera. ..."More" than filled, meaning on the first night I went through and pruned pics that weren't keepers so I'd have room to take pictures the next day.
The guy above boasting about saving $440 on those 792 shots? He'd have spent a lot of that on memory cards and/or a laptop to transfer pictures to every day. Though it would've been a one-time cost (per camera). And thankfully the cost of storage has come down exponentially. Now I have a card that stores about 1,000 pics from my 24MP camera, it cost less than $30, and I've never come close to filling it.
I've got to say, though, while cheaper was definitely one of the calculations I made in deciding to go digital years ago, it was not the #1 objective. The #1 objective was fast feedback. With a digital camera the picture is right there, ready to look at, the moment you take it. That enables me to review it with a critical eye right away, checking things like composition, lighting, and focus. I didn't have to wait until days after the trip was over to see how good my photography was. Having that immediate feedback meant I could improve my photography faster, and really that was my main goal.
"In 2000, I went to Greece with 22 rolls of 36 exposures, came home and had them developed and put onto CDs at the cost of US$440. Today with digital, I could have bought a lens with what I spent on film and developing on that trip.”
This author nails one of the underappreciated aspects of the digital photograph revolution: It's cheaper.
Of course, we had to go out and buy new cameras. That cost money up front. And there was a new piece of gear we needed: memory cards. Those were pretty darn expensive when I bought my first digital camera in 2001. I believe I paid about $650 for a 3 Megapixel Sony camera and another $120 for two Sony Memory Sticks that each held approximately 40 pictures.
On my first trip with a digital camera, two days in Yosemite, I more than filled those cards plus the tiny 8MB card that came in the box with the camera. ..."More" than filled, meaning on the first night I went through and pruned pics that weren't keepers so I'd have room to take pictures the next day.
The guy above boasting about saving $440 on those 792 shots? He'd have spent a lot of that on memory cards and/or a laptop to transfer pictures to every day. Though it would've been a one-time cost (per camera). And thankfully the cost of storage has come down exponentially. Now I have a card that stores about 1,000 pics from my 24MP camera, it cost less than $30, and I've never come close to filling it.
I've got to say, though, while cheaper was definitely one of the calculations I made in deciding to go digital years ago, it was not the #1 objective. The #1 objective was fast feedback. With a digital camera the picture is right there, ready to look at, the moment you take it. That enables me to review it with a critical eye right away, checking things like composition, lighting, and focus. I didn't have to wait until days after the trip was over to see how good my photography was. Having that immediate feedback meant I could improve my photography faster, and really that was my main goal.