The Mother of All Photographic Debates

gzhuang · Dec 11, 2015

A great insight into the carbon foot prints of both digital and film imaging.

Are Digital Images Really Free?

http://www.japancamerahunter.com/2015/12/are-digital-images-really-free/

480sparky · Dec 11, 2015

Anyone who says digital images don't cost anything either got their digicam as a gift, or stole it.

Theo Sulphate · Dec 11, 2015

A few things to keep in mind:

- aside from the FM10 and a few others, all the film cameras that are ever going to exist have already been manufactured. Digital cameras are in full-scale production, consuming metal, plastic, and other resources.

- far fewer people use film than digital and that trend is increasing

- the manufacture of phones, laptops, tablets, exceeds that of cameras

- regardless of which uses more resources or results in more waste products, people will do what they want

- the best thing we can do is greatly improve recycling

mauro35 · Dec 11, 2015

I might have missed it or maybe I did not understand all the parts of the articles correctly, but it seems that the actual electricity used to recharge the battery of a digital camera is totally ignored in the equations of the carbon footprint and costs per year.

gone · Dec 11, 2015

Considering how much toxic waste is put into the air and the earth from fossil fueled cars, car building and repair, road construction for cars, fossil fueled power plants, and worst, radioactive waste put into the earth's oceans and ground waters from nuclear power plants and spent military armaments, the whole subject is ridiculous.

There needs to be a word for a medical condition that makes people obsess on picayune details and prevents them from understanding the big picture of reality. Diversionary? Delusional? Denial? I haven't got a good word for it (how about 3-Dism?), but I see this sort of thing all the time these days.

faustotesta · Dec 11, 2015

Toxic waste, air pollution is a benefit for our health. In the middle ages air was tottally unpolluted and so were seas, oceans and rivers. No cars around, no electricity.....but very few persons lived more than 40 years

Jim Jones · Dec 11, 2015

Theo Sulphate said:
A few things to keep in mind:

- aside from the FM10 and a few others, all the film cameras that are ever going to exist have already been manufactured. Digital cameras are in full-scale production, consuming metal, plastic, and other resources. . . .

Several companies are designing and making new film cameras today, but for larger film than 35mm. This is despite the availability of many used large format cameras. Digital cameras rival 35mm film in image quality and greatly surpass it in convenience, but large film has several advantages. One is image quality in large prints. Another is the negative large enough for contact printing by any of the exoteric printing processes. Many large format cameras are more versatile than any digital camera.

railwayman3 · Dec 11, 2015

To be fair to the author of the article, and speaking as a qualified accountant (well used to being landed with the job of trying to cost obscure ideas and impossible projects!), there are (inevitably) too many variables and assumptions to make any accurate or worthwhile conclusions.

A more meaningful idea might be to make a comparison of the environmental impact of the technical costs of making, say, a 90-minute movie, on 35mm film, and the identical production on digital media. One could factor in accurately the cost of equipment hire, film, processing, and wastage, and go onto the differences between providing, say, 500 theatre prints on film reels and on digital media. (I'd guess the costs of film prints, and transport to the theatres, would be a LOT more than digital media.)

RalphLambrecht · Dec 11, 2015

faustotesta said:
Toxic waste, air pollution is a benefit for our health. In the middle ages air was tottally unpolluted and so were seas, oceans and rivers. No cars around, no electricity.....but very few persons lived more than 40 years

That is a myth and anybody who's done genealogy knows it.There were just as many old people then as there are now.The medical profession and the pharma industry likes us to believe other wise,claiming that the Neanderthal life expectancy was 17.I wonder how they populated then.

Sean Mac · Dec 11, 2015

The "average" lifespan was greatly skewed by the massive rate of infant and child mortality.

"Three score and ten" is a old old estimate for those lucky enough to see their tenth birthday.

"Lies, damned lies and statistics" kind of covers it.

blansky · Dec 11, 2015

Well since nobody is making the decision to be a digital vs analog photographer (or both) with concern for the environment as their main or even secondary concern, this whole exercise is mildly interesting but not very persuasive one way or the other.

Almost all of it is either anecdotal, fanciful or dismissive of major components. If X professional photographer did a side by side comparison of his digital vs his analog business, he may be able to find some evidence for one vs the other but it's a constantly moving target. And one that usually misses things he forgets to mention.

Even in modern life where we recycle more today than we ever did 25 years ago, but 25 years ago life didn't produce anywhere near the number of consumables and with the degree of built in obsolescence.

In my opinion, you live your life and do the best you can to be responsible.

markbarendt · Dec 11, 2015

blansky said:
In my opinion, you live your life and do the best you can to be responsible.

Yes.

One of those big things that gets left out of this type of debate is any discussion of the intended use of the photos being created.

Regardless of how photos start, anyone who expects to be able to share any image electronically at some point gets on the digital treadmill.

Sirius Glass · Dec 11, 2015

This is not news except to a dunderhead at a northern Virginia photo store employee that thinks that developing film at home causes more environmental damage than all the mining in California, Nevada, Utah and Colorado and the damage caused by the steel industry. Hopefully they fired the jerk.

DWThomas · Dec 11, 2015

A few years back I read that 9% of the world's CO2 emissions comes from cement mills (which go 24/7 heating rocks to around 1450ºC with fossil fuels). I suspect that and auto/truck manufacture and use far outweighs that of tech toy production (but I could be wrong -- it's happened! :munch: )

Nodda Duma · Dec 11, 2015

Increased CO2 means plants thrive. We get increased crop yields and cheaper food / less starving people in the world.

RalphLambrecht said:
That is a myth and anybody who's done genealogy knows it.There were just as many old people then as there are now.The medical profession and the pharma industry likes us to believe other wise,claiming that the Neanderthal life expectancy was 17.I wonder how they populated then.

Well, they went extinct.....

Theo Sulphate · Dec 11, 2015

Jim Jones said:
Several companies are designing and making new film cameras today, but for larger film than 35mm. This is despite the availability of many used large format cameras. Digital cameras rival 35mm film in image quality and greatly surpass it in convenience, but large film has several advantages. One is image quality in large prints. Another is the negative large enough for contact printing by any of the exoteric printing processes. Many large format cameras are more versatile than any digital camera.

I know that. See my Avatar.

My point was that the manufacturing of film cameras is minuscule in comparison to that being done to support Digital today.

blansky said:
In my opinion, you live your life and do the best you can to be responsible.

Exactly. Well stated.

blansky · Dec 11, 2015

Nodda Duma said:
Well, they went extinct.....

But they apparently did last 200,000 years.

Although it could be argued there are still a bunch around today.

Ken Nadvornick · Dec 11, 2015

Nodda Duma said:
Increased CO2 means plants thrive. We get increased crop yields and cheaper food / less starving people in the world.

Problem with that is with less people starving to death there are more people available to reproduce. And they will. Which again then stretches the food supply back to the point of starvation. Or equilibrium, if one chooses to look at it through a different set of eyeglasses.

The solution to starvation has never been increased food availability. That only exacerbates the situation. It has always been having less mouths to feed so the supply of food is sufficient to feed them all, but without excess reproduction occurring.

And the non-PC translation of that principle, understood by anyone who remembers their high school biology labs (recall those sealed Petri dish bacteria cultures and what became of them over time?), is that Nature's solution to starvation is... starvation. Less mouths to feed, less reproduction.

The trick in a population controlled by natural selection is to never be the one left without a seat at the table when the music stops and the meals are served. It's called survival of the fittest.

Ugly, I know. But there it is.

Ken

cowanw · Dec 11, 2015

RalphLambrecht said:
That is a myth and anybody who's done genealogy knows it.There were just as many old people then as there are now.The medical profession and the pharma industry likes us to believe other wise,claiming that the Neanderthal life expectancy was 17.I wonder how they populated then.

Considering the rates of maternal mortality prior to this past century were about 150 x higher in the middle ages and perinatal mortality even higher; considering various plagues and sweating sicknesses; considering military deaths like the middle European religious wars; considering a staph or strep skin cut infection would kill, I find it hard to believe your premise. Do you have a reference?

Jeff Bradford · Dec 11, 2015

Don't forget that every single time someone wants to look at one of those digital photos, they have to run a computer at 400+ watts. And in order to "share" them across the internet, some server-farm in Utah is consuming more power than most American cities. Film is just a little fart in comparison.

Ken Nadvornick · Dec 11, 2015

War is the poster child for survival of the fittest. Natural selection in its most primal incarnation.

Ken

[Edit: A now strange sounding response originally made in reply to a post located directly above it that has mysteriously disappeared...]

:eek:

doughowk · Dec 11, 2015

Its fortunate for the world that digital imagery is ephemeral. One really has to make a concerted and long term effort to preserve a digital image. The cost of preserving digital may be as much as ten times that of film [citation Richard O'Connor in interview at Phogotraphy.com ]

Theo Sulphate · Dec 11, 2015

doughowk said:
Its fortunate for the world that digital imagery is ephemeral. One really has to make a concerted and long term effort to preserve a digital image. The cost of preserving digital may be as much as ten times that of film [citation Richard O'Connor in interview at Phogotraphy.com ]

Sure. Film is much easier to preserve. Regardless of media, I believe the most important criteria is a willingness to preserve the image. Twenty years from now, someone can go to their late aunt Exa's house, open up an old shoebox, look at the negatives, and decide the box's contents are worth keeping. If they open up a desk drawer and see ancient USB sticks, SD cards, or CD's - will those simply get tossed or will someone make the effort to read them?

Digital images are viewable only as long as the following is true: the data is preserved, a device exists to read the media, a software application can interpret it, and that application can create an image on a current display device.

If they make the effort to read the media, will that media still be readable (how long do USB sticks or CD's hold data)? If it is physically readable, will there be a device that can read it (in 20 years will there be a CD reader that Exa's nephew might have access to)? Although I actually do have a dual 8" floppy reader (DEC RX01), I can't expect my successors to be willing to try to find a USB 2.0 reader. Even if they get that far, will they be able to read the NEF file Exa created in 2015 with her Nikon D810?

So that's the point: to preserve a digital image over a hundred or so years someone has to copy that image from its current media to the next new media and maybe re-save it in the next less obsolete format. Sure, it can be done, but it requires not only effort, but also requires will. It's a lot easier to put negatives in a safety deposit box and be sure they'll need no long term maintenance.

markbarendt · Dec 11, 2015

Actually I'd suggest that war doesn't necessarily effect natural selection much. The killing is too random and war worries about things that nature simply doesn't care about, like politics and borders.

For example, people in my family a few generations back lived, intermarried, raised families, and shared their lives with the same neighbors for their whole lives without ever "moving", yet they lived in three different countries during that time.

Wars kill lots of people surely but not necessarily the weak. Many strong and smart Germans, Brits, French, Japanese, etc... died in the ariel bombings in the last few years of the second world war; but from natures POV, that seems to be a so what moment.

Natural selection, IMO, is driven more by who can reproduce the most. I'd actually guess that given the incredibly large number of soldiers that left behind their genes before their early demise.

Truzi · Dec 12, 2015

Ken Nadvornick said:
[Edit: A now strange sounding response originally made in reply to a post located directly above it that has mysteriously disappeared...]

:eek:

Yes, occurrences like this can be a souring experience.

The Mother of All Photographic Debates

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