I Many of us take photos to preserve present moments for the future. Photography has many uses for both business and pleasure. It is often the basis of advertising and in fashion print.

Photography can also be viewed as a commercial and artistic endeavour. Photography is used to preserve memories of favourite times, to capture special moments, to tell stories, to send messages, and as a source of entertainment.

Like at Data Pro Graphics in Kigali City, commercial advertising also relies heavily on photography and has contributed greatly to its development. Because of these factors, photo studios solely depend on how people invest in photography for their survival.

Kilino Photo Studio and Photo-Lab being some of the oldest studios in the country explain this. This also explains why small studios that do not develop or exist in suburbs.

The industry employs right from the person who captures images (cameraman) to the studio where the printing is done.

It only costs one a camera to fit into this industry. Technicalities only apply if the camera is sophisticated without a pre-focused lens.

Photographers adjust the camera and lens to expose the light recording material; film to the required amount of light to form an image on film. For the digital cameras, the image is a raw file which, after appropriate processing, is converted to a usable image.

Fight between cameras - film cameras against digital

The evolution of technology has greatly impacted on the photographic industry. Gone are the days when cameramen carried boxes of Kodak or Tudor films incase of emergencies.

At Simpro Digital Studio, one of the leading digital studios in Rwanda, a photographer explained that the country’s photographic industry is turning to digital largely due to options provided by digital cameras, which simplify work.

The more they simplify work by providing functional options for a better image, the higher its prices and its outputs. The prices of the two are different just like their quality of the output, functionalities and procurement prices.
Why?

Image or spatial resolution

There are many measures that can be used to assess the quality of still photographs. The most discussed of these is spatial resolution; the number of separate points in the photograph.

This is measured by how many picture cells make up the photo, usually counted in the millions and hence called mega pixels.

The comparison of resolution between film and digital photography is compound. Measuring the resolution of both film and digital photographs depends on numerous issues.

For film cameras, this issue depends on the size of film used (35 millimeters, medium format or large format), the speed of the film used and the quality of lenses in the camera.

Additionally, since film is an analogue medium, it does not have pixels so its colour resolution measured in pixels can only be an estimate. Similarly, digital cameras rarely perform to their stated mega pixel count.

Other factors are important in digital camera resolution such as the actual number of pixels used to store the image, the effect of the sensor filters on the digital sensor, and the image processing to image pixels.

Convenience and flexibility

Though there are many photo studios in town, not all of them do the developing of films and printing from a darkroom. Many are only studios for pose photos or passport photos.

The time for turning a photographic exposure in order to produce the desired negative is relatively long. This takes about 10 minutes to transform the latent image into a visible image that can be seen, it makes the visible image permanent, and it renders the film insensitive to light.

It is at this level that sorting of the good and bad is done to perhaps have the best photographs printed. However, since the viewing on the negative is not the final output, chances of selecting the best are minimal.

Next is the printing of photographs depending on the selection done. This is done on gloss paper and takes about 20 minutes. The printing quality only provides a few colour options; natural, natural brown among others, depending on the desire of the owner.

The gloss paper used gives a shiny look but not durable. If kept in a damp or hot place, the colour will be lost. Digital photography is flexible to the extreme; a photographer can change anything about a photograph after it has been taken.

These two pictures are before and after demonstrating the capabilities of the digital photographer. This has been one of the major drivers of the widespread adoption of digital cameras.

Before the advent of digital cameras, once a photograph was taken, the roll of film would need to be finished and sent off to a lab to be developed. Only once the film was returned was it possible to see the photograph.

However, most digital cameras incorporate a Light Crystal Display (LCD) screen which allows the photograph to be viewed immediately after it has been taken.

This allows the photographer to delete undesired or unnecessary photographs, and offers an immediate opportunity to re-take. When a user desires prints, it is only necessary to print the good photographs.

Its printing takes only five minutes especially if there is no further colour manipulation. Digital photography is flexible with paper type but more preferably is the mat and silk paper types.

The mat is expensive but greatly used in digital photography for it is more durable and almost water proof. It lacks the shiny appearance but can last for ages. The print-out can still be reprinted.

Another major advantage of digital technology is that photographs can be conveniently moved to a personal computer for some modification.

Many professional grade digital cameras are capable of storing pictures in a camera raw format that stores the output from the sensor directly rather than processing it immediately to an image.

When edited in suitable software, such as Adobe Photoshop, the photographer can manipulate certain parameters of the taken photograph (such as contrast, sharpness or colour balance) before it is developed into a final image with exact specifications.

Less sophisticated users may choose to simply retouch the actual content of the recorded image with software which is often provided on cameras.

Price

The two formats (film and digital) have different cost emphases. With digital photography, cameras tend to be significantly more expensive than film ones.

This is counterbalanced by the fact that taking photographs is effectively cost-free. There is no need for film and developing before preview to delete unwanted ones.

With film photography, good quality cameras tend to be less complicated and, therefore, less expensive, but at the expense of ongoing film and processing costs.

In particular, film cameras offer no chance to review photographs immediately after they are shot, and all photos taken must be processed before knowing anything about the quality of the final photograph.

However, there are additional costs associated with digital photography. Digital cameras make heavy use of batteries, some of which are proprietary and expensive. Even as rechargeable, they degrade over time and must be periodically replaced.

Although there is no film in digital cameras, they must store the images on memory cards or micro-drives; flash discs, CDs among others, which also have limited life.

Additionally, some provision for long term storage of the digital image must be made. This may be either an optical disc produced by photofinisher or on the personal computer.

Jean-Claude Mugisa, a freelancer photojournalist said, "After a year and thousands of pictures, I decided that a Canon digital camera, with all of its wonders, had a negative impact on the way I take photos. Because I was no longer worried about the amount of film that I was using, I frequently take three or more shots of the same subject.”

With many photographers switching to digital, many film cameras and associated equipment like lenses are now available on the market at often much reduced prices. This has allowed people on a fixed budget to own a quality film camera when they might not have been able to afford the digital equivalent.

Or alternatively, they are able to purchase more equipment like lenses, filters, among others than they could have with a digital camera. However, the price differential between the two cameras is often dictated by the intent of the photographer and the purpose of the work. Professional photographer or photojournalists could go for the most efficient and reliable, that being the digital.

Because photography is popularly identical with truth - "the camera doesn’t lie” - digital imaging has raised many ethical concerns. Many photojournalists have declared they will not crop their pictures, or are forbidden from combining elements of multiple photos to make graphics, passing them off as real photographs.

Many courts will not accept digital images as evidence because of their inherently manipulative nature. Today’s technology has made picture editing relatively simple for even the novice photographer. This explains why nowadays at occasions say weddings, invitees come along with own cameras to have the precious moment in their records, unlike before.

The emergency of mobile phones with cameras has also posed more impact on the change to digital. Even though these phones have limited mega pixels to have a good photograph when printed, owners need no professionalism to have the subject at their phone’s screen.

Safari Kugabonira, a photographer for 12 years, confirmed the impact saying that back in the olden days, photographers were highly sought after during ceremonies such as weddings, gusaba (introduction), baptisms etc, since people never owned cameras.

"We could come without invitation, take photos and get paid. People came tracing for us just for their photos,” he explained.

However, the existence of these phones and more small digital cameras only affects commercial photographers. Digitalised studios still find this profitable as they do print from all these camera-equipped devices.

Considering the advantages offered by the digital cameras over film cameras, using digital is not only the up-to-date photographic experience but also the most flexible and efficient undertaking.

Despite the existence of many film photographic studios, the emerging market for digitalised photography will soon take a firm stand.

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