September 20, 2005
Comparison of digital and film
It's interesting to look at the price of digital cameras versus film cameras. While the initial investment in a digital camera is higher than in a film camera the overall cost of digital quickly falls away as the film expenses mount.
If your look at the raw print cost the two are roughly the same. A digital print costs $0.35 and a film print costs around $0.40 ($7 for the film, $7 for the processing and prints, divided by 35 prints).
But that doesn't account for the fact that we don't actually save all of the prints from either print or film. In general we save about one in ten. And since you can simply discard the nine digital images you don't want (as opposed to discarding the prints) the cost savings quickly become substantial.
The graph below shows the inflection points is around 50 saved prints.
So at the point that you have 50 prints you are at the cost of a digital camera. And after that the price for film just goes up and up, while with digital cameras the cost roughly flat lines. This graph assumes a $400 digital camera is roughly comparable to a $200 film camera.
Posted by jherr at September 20, 2005 08:38 AMNice analysis! I've been reviewing a new digital media camera, the Sanyo Xacti C5, and had a somewhat related analysis to media storage requirements for digital media cameras. You can find the thread at http://www.technorati.com/tag/sanyoc5
Posted by: deeje cooley at September 20, 2005 09:12 AMI'm worried that in 20 years I won't be able to view all of the digital pictures that we're taking now. We know that photos last a lifetime, but those Super 8 movies that my father took of me as a baby got thrown out when parts for his projector were no longer available. And I still have my film equipment, but as you said, it's so darn cheap to take digital that I let my 6 year old kid use a point-and-shoot as a toy.
Unfortunately, as easy as it is to share digital pictures, I notice that the 10 year old still hasn't posted her trip to Grammy and Grandpa's house or Niagara Falls. Not even the ones of her riding the horse. That's worse that not putting photos in an album, because the album costs money!
Link below is to what we have put up....
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