The fourth problem with digital photography is the way they are printed.

Printing your own digital photos is not better or cheaper in the long run than having your digital photo printed by a lab. Why do they give you a free printer so often with a computer or camera? Because they plan to make a small fortune from you in ink. Add the cost of ink to the cost of photographic quality paper and you are paying as much as a print costs at a lab. Add the cost of redoing a digital print because the color was not what you saw on the screen or the printer heads were dirty and now it is even more expensive. Do not forget the time you spend waiting for the printer to print. You often end up with a print that you would not accept from a lab that cost just as much. Not really worth it.

Labs have a color management system to make sure the print comes out as close as possible to how it is recorded in the file. Not only that, but photographic prints have improved their archival quality over the past few years. While some ink jet printers have improved image stability and some are even much better than photographic prints, many ink jet printers have very poor image stability. Some ink jet digital photos deteriorate in as short as 5 years.

Printing digital photos at home can be difficult and a headache as well as expensive. It is a matter of having the right tools and software.

Finally, digital photos need special care.

Digital photos are more fragile that film photos. While digital photos printed on photographic paper are not more fragile than film images, the files may not be as safe as putting the negatives in a shoebox. Film negatives are susceptible to fire and flood and physical damage, so are digital files. Digital files are also susceptible to mechanical failure in the hard drive. I just had a drive fail and lost some of the data on it. It really is not just a question of if, but when your drive will fail.

Also, for the first time, your memories could catch a virus. There are real losers out there that have nothing better to do than write viruses that can damage your computer. Some of them actually target digital photos on the computers they attack. I have met people who have lost their all digital photos to a computer virus.

Ok, there are 5 problems that are unique to digital photography.

All of these problems are manageable as long you know what to expect. Use fill flash to fill shadow (does not always work). Be careful with your exposure. Have quality prints made of your favorite digital photographs and make sure to back up digital photography files to quality DVD’s or CD’s. Make sure you run virus software that updates itself daily to keep digital photos on your computer safe from viruses.

Read Part One of Five Problems with Digital Photography

Digital photography is the future, if not already the present of photography.

Of that, there is no doubt. However, there are some potential problems in digital photography that are often swept under the rug by the digital photo zealots.

This is not meant to be any kind of discouragement to anyone still considering going into digital photography.

I myself have not used a roll of film for any use in over two years. There is a good chance I may never use a roll of film again. It is important to be aware that there those out there that are always doom and gloom and just cannot accept the change. Do not listen to them.

If you know the potential problems with digital photography, you can better deal with them.

Some problems are being addressed by manufacturers and are being researched, these problems will eventually be fixed and digital photography my eventually outdo film in these cases. Other problems are unique to the way people currently look at digital photography and digital cameras. This type of problem will only be solved by individuals changing themselves.

Alright, ready for the 5 top problems with digital photos?

First, digital cameras do not have the dynamic range that the negative film you used to use, had.

What is dynamic range? Simply put, dynamic range is the difference between the brightest white with detail and the darkest black with detail. You are more likely to find heavy shadows or burnt out highlights. A digital photo at the beach could easily give you problems with a dark subject or an overly bright sky or sand. Digital photos with flash often have a washed out highlight on faces.

Is this terrible? It is not too bad. Many pros think of digital photography like shooting slide film which has a similar dynamic range. This is one of the problems that I am sure digital cameras will improve to the point it beats film.

Second, digital photos were presented as photo quality long before many would agree they were truly equal to film.

While a 2 megapixel camera will make great 4×6 photos, nearly anyone with decent eyesight can tell the difference between a good 35mm photo and a 2 megapixel camera at 8×10 size. Not only the lack of resolution will show but color transitions will also show some problems. A three or four megapixel camera will be much harder to see a difference but film would still provide a better picture.
Who would buy a 2 megapixel camera nowadays, you think? Well, people do buy them, but that is not the real point. I just recently heard a commercial exaggerating the ability of 4 megapixel cameras. Digital cameras now do provide film quality in detail and color gradation at the six megapixel range. Of course if you thought your Kodak Disc camera took great photos, go ahead and buy a two megapixel camera. If you are really trying to economize, you may be happy with a 5 megapixel camera but I would discourage anyone from purchasing anything with a resolution less that 5 megapixels.

Third, often digital photos are presented as more easy to fix than they really are.

There is the idea, that since it is digital, a bad photo can be fixed up in Photoshop later. Bad photography, fixed in Photoshop, is still bad photography. Movies and television often show computer fixes that just are not really possible or are very expensive and time consuming. Often, people see this science fiction and think it can be done, when the opposite is actually true. The JPEG format that most cameras save images in, does not allow corrections to be made to the file without a loss of quality occurring. Whenever you make changes to a digital file, at least a small bit of information is lost. The larger the changes made, the more information that is lost. Small changes may not make as much of a difference.
Combined with the lower dynamic range, many professionals have had to start being much more careful with exposure than they were with negative film.

There are two more problems with digital photography covered on page two.

Page Two of The Dark Side Of Digital Photography