Digital cameras have become all the rage in photography, but in reality they are not the 'absolute best, do everything' cameras they have been sold to the public as. There are many aspects about digital cameras that do not make them superior to film cameras. Inversely, film has many qualities that does make it superior to even the best digital cameras. Film can do everything a digital camera can but digital cameras cannot do everything film can. For many situations, where the quality of the image is the most important aspect of the photograph, film is better than a digital camera.

Film and digital cameras have a quality known as latitude, more easily understood as dynamic range. Latitude is the ability of a camera to have highlight and shadow detail. While the best professional digital cameras have about 5 stops of latitude (a stop is the difference from one exposure setting to the next), color films can have 7 or more stops and black and white films can have 15 or more. What this means is color films can record about 50% more information than a digital camera and black and white films can record 300% more information. Where this is most apparent, and films clearly excel over digital, is in the highlights. When a digital camera will make highlights white film will still record information. This capability of film over digital causes the bright areas in a color photo taken with film to have better color in addition to better detail that a digital. In many situations the digital camera will have shadows that are black and highlights that are white where film will have details in the shadows and richer color and details in the highlights.

One of the most important aspects of color film compared to digital is film has far better color saturation, accuracy, and quality. The most accurate color photography is done with slide film. Compared to negative film and digital cameras, slide film does a far better job of producing a photograph where the colors match the subject. Part of this superiority is from the way digital cameras record color. It is very technical, but to sum it up a digital camera sensor is actually three black and white sensors, one sensitive to each of the three primary colors used in the color photographic process, and the information from these three sensors is processed and combined by a microprocessor to make a color photograph. This color separation is done with minute filters on the sensor, and these filters have qualities that affect and distort the color information passed through to the sensor. Color films work with what are also essentially three 'black and white' layers of film, and each layer only reacts to one of the primary colors in a way that when these three layers are combined they represent the color of the subject. The process is more 'natural' than the digital system and it is also sharper and 'smoother'. In a digital sensor, the three filter sections are beside each other, so there are gap in the coverage, for example, red light striking a green sensor will not be registered. In color films the three layers are right on top of each other and there are not gaps where the color of the light will not be recorded.

When color accuracy is the most important, reversal films are the best to use. When the subject is a person or many people, there are a number of films that have a color quality that enhances skin tones and give the subject a 'healthy' look. If the situation is going to be in a dark area high speed films do a much, much better job both with color and detail than a digital camera. And there are high speed black and white films that go even a step above high speed color films. When it comes to comparing digital to black and white film, there is no comparison. Black and white film has many qualities that make it far superior to a color photo taken with a digital camera and 'converted' to black and white. From the latitude to aspects like grain structure (which can give a black and white photo artistic qualities) and how a photographer can control the image with filters, black and white is supreme.

The main reason high speed film is better than digital is a digital camera is essentially one type of film, usually ASA 100 or 200. When you adjust the ASA in a digital camera to make it more sensitive it's essentially the same as increasing the volume in a stereo. The circuitry amplifies the signals off the sensor. But it also amplifies noise that corrupts the] sensor information. In order to remove the effects of the noise the camera's electronics average out the information from neighboring sensor cells to produce the photo. This reduces the sharpness of the photo, a 10 mega-pixel digital set to high speeds essentially becomes 5 mega-pixels. The color accuracy also suffers in low light situations due to the way the sensor cells react to the different colors passed through the filters. Fast films will take a photograph that is substantially sharper will have better color properties as well since they are designed to be used under those conditions. While fast films do have grain that becomes more visible, grain will retain the sharpness of the subject.

"You can just photoshop a photo to make it look right", not always. While you can make adjustments to digital photographs with editing programs, such as altering the color and the overall brightness and contrast, if you do too much alteration the photograph will look manipulated. Focus, for example, is one aspect you can only 'sharpen' to a small degree. If you try to sharpen a digital photo too much it will take on the look of an illustration, not a photograph. And there is no way you can add detail to black shadows or white highlights. Also, you can scan film to produce a digital version of it and enhance it as easily as you can a digital photo. Digital camera's are really just the modern version of a Polaroid. If you need a photo now, and don't care about the quality of the shot, they can work just fine. But if you don't need the photo 'now' and do care about the quality of the photo, film is usually the way to go. While digital cameras do have their place in professional photography, in many situations you need film's superior properties to capture the photograph at the quality and detail level you expect from a professional photograph. And just like negatives, the raw image straight out of a digital camera is not the final product, they will need to have at least the brightness and contrast levels set, they might need some work with the color adjustment, and they might need digital noise and errors removed as well. A professional photographer won't let you download image files from a memory card straight out of the camera.

The above statements are not just 'one man's opinion'. Robert Torre has taken many test photographs with both film and digital cameras at the same time of everyday objects and photographic test cards under various situations, from sunlight to artificial light and flash, both properly exposed and under and over exposed to extremes. Mr. Torre has also done several tests of fast film 'pushed' to even faster speeds and compared them to a digital photo of the same subject adjusted to the same speed to determine exactly which system works best in low light situations. These tests have proven to Mr. Torre, without a doubt, that film is vastly superior to digital in low light. You don't want the shots of an indoor wedding ceremony taken with a digital camera if you ever want something larger than a 4x6 print.