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Know Your Digital Film OptionsFeb 01 '01 (Updated Mar 07 '01) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Digital film is expensive to buy initially, but if you like digital photography, it will pay for itself many times over. Cheaper digital film options have started to appear.
Regardless of the choice you make, all of these digital film options are cheaper than taking film pictures with a regular camera--if you just count the film purchase and development costs alone. This article primarily focuses on a cost comparison with using digital film versus regular film, digital film types, and ways to save money through various options. Why buy lots of storage? For vacations, you will want lots of memory to take pictures--unless you plan on taking a laptop to download pictures from your camera or digital film reader. Once you buy your camera, you may be committed to spending perhaps hundreds of dollars on digital film, depending on your needs. Some options have started to appear to make the media end of digital cameras much cheaper. Digital film is a bit expensive up front, but when you work out the cost of buying and developing film, you make up the cost very fast. For example, with a 32MB SmartMedia card ($59.95) in a 2.1 megapixel camera (2.1 megapixel cameras frequently only support 1600 x 1200 resolution--however IOMega lists this as 1.9 megapixels), I've estimated that the SmartMedia card is paid for after using it to capacity (75 pictures) about 3 times (or 225 pictures with an estimated price per exposure of $0.14 at the cheapest for the film purchase, see www.walgreens.com, and an estimated $0.19 for developing prints--making that $0.33 total cost per exposure for prints--or 225 pictures x $0.33 = $74.25 in film costs versus $59.95 for 32MB SmartMedia). There are much cheaper options which I discuss later in this article. In addition, 225 pictures may seem like a lot, but I've generally found that most people I know take a lot more pictures with digital cameras than they ever did with film cameras. Perhaps, it's the gradification of seeing your pictures immediately after taking them or the freedom in knowing that there's no waste--you can delete the pictures you don't want right there on the spot and use that space for more pictures. I don't think this behavior is limited to "enthusists". There's something about digital cameras that's just more fun. Anyway, now we move on to more details about the media types. The first one is SmartMedia. SmartMedia is very small and thin. It's about an inch by about an inch and a half with a thickness of about 1 millimeter. They come in 8MB, 16MB, 32MB, 64MB, and 128MB sizes. My camera is limited to the 32MB size (and lower) at $59.99 which for me at 2.1 megapixels turns out consistently to be about 75 pictures (consider how much it would cost to purchase and develop film for 75 pictures to help put things in perspective). It's possible that SmartMedia consumes the least power among the digital film types. I'm getting a lot more pictures from one set of batteries than at least two people I know with CompactFlash cameras. I don't really have any hard evidence for this because there are other factors involved (e.g. both CompactFlash cameras are 3.3 megapixel), but I've almost got them beat 2 to 1--and sometimes more. At least one SmartMedia manufacturer is advertising "very low power consumption". A negative is that SmartMedia, due to its thinness, is probably also the most fragile. Two years in a row, representatives from a local retailer claimed that a disproportionate number of SmartMedia cameras are returned after Christmas because of this issue. Personally, though, I haven't had any trouble. CompactFlash is a much more flexible standard. My next camera will probably be CompactFlash (unless I've already bought lots of SmartMedia). CompactFlash comes in different standards which I will try to explain. Products that talk about having a CF memory feature are usually only CF Type I (limited to CF cards as large as 192MB), CF Type II appears to be limited to cards no larger than 300MB (and has backward compatibility with CF Type I), and CF+ Type II can use CF Type II cards or IBM microdrives (1GB microdrives can be found at www.ibm.com for $459, while 300MB CF Type II cards are only available for no less than $734.99 at www.sandisk.com through their "online store"--all prices do not include shipping and taxes). The key here is that the IBM microdrive is much cheaper per MB than either SmartMedia or CompactFlash and is also smaller, and thus more portable, than any of the other memory options discussed in this article. The IBM microdrive is paid for after taking about 1391 pictures--or much less if you previously liked using more expensive film (my estimate was based on 100 speed film). My parents went to Europe with a digital camera and took over 800 pictures in about two weeks, so taking 1391 pictures is not hard to do. Over the course of a year, I took 1100 pictures on a number of small trips, holidays, festivals, etc., so even around home I'm getting very good usage. Personally, if I could do it again, I would have gone with a camera that supported the IBM microdrive, such as the Casio QV3000 EX ($599.99 at www.casio.com). If you go this route, carefully consider getting the 1GB IBM microdrive--or start slow at first and by a 32MB CompactFlash memory card ($74.99 at www.sandisk.com or check your local retailer) for use close to home to evaluate how much more you want to spend. There are several other "digital film" options currently available. Sony has cameras that use ordinary 3.5" floppy disks (the same you use in your computer). They also have memory sticks in the 32MB and 64MB capacities. I don't recommend either option because 3.5" floppy disks can only hold a few pictures, unless you take low resolution photos, and memory sticks only work in Sony cameras and are a bit expensive compared to SmartMedia and CompactFlash. Another more interesting option is that Panasonic has a camera that supports the SuperDisk (120MB disks), unfortunately this camera is huge (can't remember how it compared in size to Sony's floppy disk cameras), however 120MB SuperDisks are one of the cheapest digital film options, running at $83.95 for a box of ten at buy.com. Finally, Sony has a camera called the MVC-CD1000 that uses mini 3" CD-R 156MB disks. While I can't find these disks available at www.sony.com, I'm sure that they'd cost between $0.50 to $2 a piece, absolutely demolishing all the other digital film options on price alone. The size of the camera didn't look bad at all. It does run a bit expensive at $1299 for a 2.1 megapixel camera which, unfortunately, takes away from most of the cost savings. Still, unlike all the other digital film options, you can just pop the CD-R out of the camera and put it in just about any computer--without requiring any special hardware. I'd like to see a camera like this with a CD-RW drive; I've just gotten used to being able to delete pictures I don't like--I want to continue doing that. Finally, some options are available to reduce your need for expensive digital film. The most obvious is that if you have a laptop computer you can use PC card adapters for at least CompactFlash (www.sandisk.com for $9.99 plus shipping) and SmartMedia (www.olympus.com for $149.95) to transfer your pictures. For SmartMedia, the best deal, if your notebook has USB, appears to be the SanDisk SmartMedia ImageMate (or similar devices from other manufacturers) for $49.99--there is also a version that works with a parallel port for the same price. Alternately, SanDisk has a FlashPath floppy disk adapter for SmartMedia which sells for $74.99. I'm sure, however, that there are a lot of people who don't want to take a laptop computer on trips. For them, IOMega (www.iomega.com) has a version of the IOMega Zip drive, called IOMega FotoShow ($299.95), that can transfer pictures from SmartMedia, CompactFlash, and IBM MicroDrives to 250MB or 100MB IOMega Zip disks without needing a computer (or TV) -- be warned though that using 100MB Zip disks according to the manual seems to be impractically slow. 250MB Zip disks run at $55.95 for a pack of four. I chose this option because my Olympus C-2000Z camera uses SmartMedia. I've bought enough SmartMedia to be very portable on a trip to Europe. Adding to that five 250MB Zip disks makes my capacity nearly unlimited for the time I will be there. Rather than having a huge number of SmartMedia cards (that I wouldn't be able to use outside of big vacations), I can use IOMega FotoShow to show my pictures on my TV or on a friend's--so even with the cost of the drive included, I still got a much bigger bang for the buck. The drawback, however, is that now I have to pack something about 1/3 the size of a laptop computer--still it's much smaller than my shaving kit.  |
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