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freetime101 wrote:
Here's how to justify the cost of that new camera to yourself - how many shots did you take with your last camera?
You see, digital cameras are a one-time cost - you pay for the body but the images are free (shutter life aside). When shooting film, you pay for the body, then again for each and every shot you take.
Now let's say the average price of film is £5. You can get it cheaper but there's processing etc to pay for too.
The 1DxII is about £4800 now, or 960 rolls of film. With 36 exposures per roll that's 34,560 shots to get your money back (in film terms, and ignoring the cost of a film SLR)...
A 5DVI was £3600 when it first came out, or 25,920 shots on film :P
The 6DII is £2000, or just 14,400 shots ...Show more →
You left something out there in your calculation. Time.
Here's how it works out for me. I have averaged 8 rolls of film a month for the last 3 years ("since records begun", before that I didn't count). That's 360 shots. It is also about £150 in film and processing (proper processing, so when I get them back apart from cull and straighten I have nothing else to do). That's £1800 for 3456 shots. The cost of 35mm camera bodies is negligible today (unless you shoot Leica, a Nikon F6, or some other collectible stuff, which I don't).
Alternatively I could go back to shooting digital. That would be an average 20000 shots/year (since records begun and ended). My problem with those 20000 shots is that I would start by paying £2000 for the privilege (the camera). Assuming I post process 1/4 of those photos and assuming I would spend 30 seconds with each, that is 41 hours of my life that year.
Contrast that to the editing time for the 3456 shots, just a cull and maybe 5 seconds to straighten. So assuming 1/2 of those processed that's 2.4 hours. So my net deficit film vs digital is: £200 and 38.6 hours. The £200 we scrap as the cost of the film body. That leaves the time. Those 38.6 hours are anything between £258 (if you're on minimum wage) to 4 figures. I am not on minimum wage, as such it is more economical to shoot film.
The above is lightly hearted and humorous, so take it as such.
Then again, we could just not shoot anything and thus waste neither time nor money. We would have more time to savour the moment than hiding behind a piece of plastic, electronics, glass and metal.
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