When switching to digital, many photographers believe that they are cutting costs. After all, they no longer have to buy film, nor do they have to pay a lab big fees to process the prints. Also, you gain the freedom to print things out at your leisure, and enlargements cost less money because you do it yourself. The problem is that this is simply not the case. Digital photography is not currently any cheaper than film, and in many cases, costs more. As always, the devil is in the details.
The first item to consider is the actual cost of the camera. Top digital cameras cost over $1000, and professional models are in the range of $2500-5000 (or more). A more reasonable camera with 2-4 MP that will work well for snapshots will run in the range of $400-600. Up front, you pay a great deal for the camera. Compare this to a standard point and shoot camera, where $200 will get you a good name-brand model. So right off the bat, you have to take this cost increase into account.
At current costs, a roll of film will run about $5 and processing with prints will be about $10. So the total cost to take a roll of film is about $15. If your digital camera cost you $400, that would be equivilent to buying a P&S camera and processing roughly 13 rolls of film. For a higher end model costing $600, that would be like buying a P&S camera and processing 26 rolls of film. And you haven't even made any prints from your digital camera yet! Any additional costs for photo quality paper or other items for the digital camera (such as more memory cards) will increase the disparity of cost between digital and film. While memory cards are getting cheaper, you'll still spend $45 or so for a 32-64mb card. Also keep in mind that if you shoot for photo quality images, you will fill up cards quickly. A typical 2.1 MP camera (Elph S110 or S300) at full resoltion will fit only 9 images on an 8mb card. So a 64mb card will only hold 72 images at full resolution, which is only equivilent to 2 rolls of film! So you need to consider your volume of shooting; you'll have to take more than one roll of film per month to make digital a reasonable consideration from a cost point of view, and you'll also need to buy enough additional memory cards for what you need.
Next, you need to remember that it takes a good computer to work with those digital files, and a high quality printer to give you photo quality results. You'll need something with a 1 GHz processor (or faster), at least 256 MB of ram (512 if you plan to work with large files), and a CD writer to save hard drive space and backup image files. Even with computer prices dropping, a good machine for photo imaging will run you $1000-1500. If you already have a computer, you may have to lay out a few hundred dollars to upgrade your system (unless you bought your system in the last 12 months, and spent at least $1500). Likewise, you'll need a decent printer. Not all inkjet printers do well printing photos, and you'll need to do a little research to find one that will work well (particularly if you want a printer with archival inks so your prints last - more on this in Part 5). In short, you may find yourself needing to spend more money to upgrade your computer system to handle digital images.
But where most people get sticker shock is not at the cameras or computers, but at the cost of printing digital files. First and foremost, you need to keep in mind that most professional labs capable of printing digital files onto photo paper do not necessarily do it at low cost. In many cases, they charge reprint prices (and may have an additional charge because the file is digital). So you may end up spending $0.50 to $1 for a 4x6 print, and $2.50 to $5 for a 5x7 from your local minilab; no better than film reprints. When you get right down to it, this is actually worse than film if you want to print the equivilent of an entire roll of film, as your digital files will be charged at reprint rates instead of time of developming rates (which is generally in the range of 10 to 15 cents per print for 4x6, or less if free doubles are included). I have yet to see any labs that offer bulk digital printing at anywhere near the cost of a roll of film at the time of development. So labs are expensive... But isn't the point of digital that you can do it yourself?
The problem is that digital printing at home isn't much less. First, consider the cost of good photo quality printer paper. For good paper, you are spending in the range of $15 for 25 sheets; that's about 60 cents per page (and top quality papers, such as those from Legion and Epson, can cost up to $30 for 25 sheets, or $1.20 per page). Even if you get the cheap stock at $10 for 25 sheets, it's still 40 cents per page. So if you're printing only 4x6 size prints, the cost adds up quickly (particularly since you can only fit one image per page, unless you do some fancy moves in Photoshop to put two images into the same file). Next, you need to keep in mind the cost of ink. Printing full color images is a fast way to use up your ink cartridges, and at $25-30 each, ink cartridges aren't cheap. The Ilford rep for the camera store I work with did a test to see how long cartridges last. He chose a full color 8x10 print, installed a fresh cartridge, and reprinted it until the cartridge was exhausted. He found that it took only 9 prints to kill the cartridge (and his print wasn't even full bleed 8x10). At $30 for the ink and $6.60 for the paper (at 60 cents per sheet), each print cost him about $3.94! That's not much cheaper than a minilab, which will charge $5-7 for a single 8x10 print, and $4 or less if you order prints in quantity. Add to this the time spent touching up the image before printing, and are you really saving all that much over film (especially if you make a test prints to tweak the final image)?
In the end, you'll find that digital photography can easily cost more than film, and require a much higher investment up front. Those who benefit the most from digital (and see the greatest cost reduction versus film) are shooters who use 10 rolls per week or more, and those who used to use film for direct publication (newspapers, real estate brokers, web pages, etc). For most people, the cost is still higher than film, particularly when you consider the additional memory cards, new printer, RAM for your computer, or other upgrades you might need to make. Even if you already have such things covered by your existing computer system, digital cameras and printing paper aren't cheap, and the savings aren't there. Getting into digital, you need to understand that it is more likely you will spend more with digital than if you stay with film. Also remember that digital quality is not yet that of film unless you use very high end systems, so you may be paying more for less quality. Given time, this will change as labs purchase more digital equipment and volume increases, but for now be aware of the costs of digital.
Even if you do spend a little more on digital now, isn't it nice to be able to instantly send images to friends and family? And doesn't digital make things much easier? After all, the big deal with digital is point, click, and download! Stay tuned for the next section:
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