Now that we home from our recent month long vacation with a home base of our vacation home in the sunny south, I am taking a bit of time to go through the digital photos I took. I took a lot of photos! The total comes to 1,793 but with some deleted as they were uploaded to the computer the true number is likely over 2,000. I thought it would be interesting to see how much my digital camera saved me. At 1,793 photos I would have used 56 rolls of 36 exposure film at a cost of about $242.48 at $12.99 per 3 pack of film. That is a very conservative cost as film tends to be more expensive in tourist areas. Processing of the 56 rolls of 36 exposure film would cost $839.44 at $14.99 per roll. This price could be slightly less or slightly more depending on where I got the film processed. The total cost for film and processing would come in at $1,081.92 on the conservative side! That mean my main digital camera, a Panasonic DMC-TZ5 bought back in April of 2010 more than paid for itself. In reality this little beauty along with my Canon PowerShot A540 that I repaired in April of 2010 paid for themselves within the first month of me buying them. With my savings on film costs I could easy have bought 2 to 3 more digital cameras! Aside of the cost savings I saved a lot more by using a digital camera.
Film comes wrapped onto a plastic spool, tucked into a plastic film case then packaged in a cardboard container. Can you imagine how much plastic and cardboard would have been used in 56 rolls of fill all of which would end up in a landfill? In addition to that silver in used in the film processing creating another environmental problem. Finally non-rechargeable alkaline batteries work better for cameras that do not have a rechargeable battery pack. If each pair of batteries gave me 200 pictures then I would have used 18 alkaline batteries that would have ended up in the landfill. Using the digital camera saved all of this waste from going to a landfill and eliminated the environmental problem of the silver.
Film is subject to light, heat and water damage. The card in a digital camera is subject to mainly water damage but even that may not be permanent once the card fully dries. The camera may be sluggish if it is left in freezing temperatures overnight but once warmed it will continue performing as normal. However, with film there is no way to create a backup system. The card from a digital camera can be uploaded to your laptop each day and if you don't have a laptop or computer with you, the files can be burned to CD or flash drive at the end of each day at many department and drug stores thus creating an automatic backup of your pictures. Cards are quite inexpensive now so for well under $100 it is possible to have two or three cards with considerable storage space so you don't have to erase after uploading to the laptop just in case. When the card is full upload to your laptop but don't erase the card. Pop in a fresh card and you are ready to go with two copies of the previous card. In fact you can upload digital photos to a couple of sources just in case. This is virtually impossible to do with film.
Unlike a flash drive or digital camera card, film takes up a lot of room. Fifty-six rolls of fill likely would have filled at least two large zipper-loc bags. Now that doesn't seem like a lot but when you are traveling with limited space whether by car or plane that is a lot. My one card at 2 GB holds 500 pictures at my settings. Along with it's little case it takes up about a quarter of space in my purse as a packet of Tic-Tacs. All around a digital camera is the way to go for day to day as well as vacation photography!
Garden Gnome
©2006-2011
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