Weekly Poll: Did you start with digital or film?

[Selected Pixels]

I started as a kid. My dad was a professional photographer so I was around cameras a LOT. In high school I worked on the staff of photographers that created the annual book.

But I never did much with photography after that, except for the usual snapshots of my family.

But a couple of years ago I caught the bug again, this time with digital.....

[tuxcomputers]

Originally Posted by falafelicious

Well I "started" as a kid with those disposable film cameras you get at the checkout stands in grocery stores but I don't know if I'd really call what I was doing photography. Really it was just a way of remembering people, places, things.

My actual interest in photographs as art didn't begin until just a couple years ago and that was with a digital camera. I've never developed anything in a darkroom or even changed a roll of film. So I'm going to say digital.

Are you me from a parallel universe? If you are, I think you should go back there before we meet in person and the time space continum collapses.

[JFSanders]

Kodak brownie was the first camera I used regularly. Then went to a Kodak 110 that was a lot easier to use but still made marginal snapshot type pictures. First real camera was a Pentax given me by my Grandmother. Didn't get the bug to really learn how to be a photographer because it was a serious pain to develop and print film. My budget being near zero and due to living beyond God's outhouse. I had a full time job at the tender age of 8 yrs. as a ranch hand but the salary was room and board. So no extra money beyond tack and horse possibles.

[Igor]

Started out in the early 60's taking animal tracks for a Scouting assignment. Anyone still remember the little flash bulbs? They were shaped like today's high intensity lamps. Definitely film, probably 110.

Father-in-law gave us (me) his old Konica SLR with a very heavy zoom lens. Probably in the 70's.

Bought my first digital camera this last January. Like the gratification of pulling the pictures into the computer without the 3 day turn-around for film processing.

[rediguana]

I've said digital even though it was really film. I tried to get into photography on film (as a hobby, e.g. more than just snapshot) but because of the long feedback loop between taking shots and seeing what happened, I never got that far and left it for a long time. Started travelling a bit and taking photos with first digital P&S in 1999, first DLSR in late 2003 (Canon 10D), but it wasn't really until midway through last year that I started reading, and learning, and experimenting. This is the point that I think I really got started on making the transition to better understanding photography, so in that regard it is definitely digital.

[djcassar]

I find most of the poll questions really ambiguous and often find myself splitting hairs and voting for a specific option when another option applies depending how you take the quesiton.

While I used film cameras prior, I never used them as regularly as what I do now. With film I wouldn't take photos unless I had to record something because of the cost of film and developing. With digital this doesn't become a factor so I find myself taking the hobby a lot more seriously.

So I'd have to say definately digital.... or is it film... no it's digital ... I think... maybe ... No I'm sure! perhaps.

[briandee]

as soon as digital came out i baught one. they didn't have the digital SLR back then but this was one of the first consumer digitals ever made. it used 4 AA batteries and you could take about 40 pictures before they were all used up, and the darn think cost me about 400$ back in 1997 which was a lot back then. Highest resolution was 640x480 and 8bit color wasn't available. here is a scenery pict from my vacation to montana in 8-7-1997

[crunch]

Started with my dad's 1981 Pentax ME Super about 8 years ago (in high school). Used that for 6 years or so. Bought myself a 35mm Canon 300X (which I still occasionaly use) about 2 years ago. Finally got my digital last year!

[spagboy]

Wow, I'm impressed that a few people have mentioned Kodak Brownies. My grandfather gave me one from the fifties in 1979. I took rolls and rolls with that thing, I still have some of the spools sitting around at my mother's house. After that, my parents gave me a 110 camera that I played with almost as much. My dad had a Nikkormat that he let me use for school projects and got me hooked SLRs. After college, I bought the first decent SLR I could afford, a Pentax P3N, I got a zoom and a wide angle and tried my best to learn exposure etc. I took some great shots, but I let my enthusiasm for the hobby die out.

My first digital was a Sony P&S I bought it for my wife because she wanted something small that she could fit in her pocket. I found myself playing with it more and more but getting frustrated because I couldn't take the shots I wanted. So after six months of saving my pennies I bought a Nikon D40 and I'm loving it. I like that I can see and correct my mistakes right away, I think I'm becoming a better photographer for it. I really like that I can play with my images to get them to match what I had in my head and that I'm not dependent on what some guy in a lab thinks the final print should look like.

I also love that there are places like this available to share knowledge and get some good feedback from a wide range of smart folks. I'm really enjoying the hobby much more the second time around.

And as for that P3N my seven year old is using it for 4H projects now.

G

[wulf]

I'm old enough that there wasn't a digital option when I took my earliest pictures but I don't count my film experiences - I largely took the typical shots of people in places and relied on sending my film away to be processed.

It was getting my hands on a digital camera in 2001 that started me getting more interested in photography as an artform because, at last, I could take pictures and "develop" them without delay. That provided the feedback to evaluate what I was taking and gradually begin to work on taking better pictures.

Therefore, I voted digital.

Wulf