I was wrong

There. I said it. I was wrong and I'm not too proud to admit it. I freely admit that I was wrong about digital photography.

We just came back from vacation and I have been going through the pictures. We took (I think) 5 cameras, all digital. Let's crunch the numbers.

I have reviewed the 544 pictures I kept from my little Canon Powershot. 544 pictures. In the olden days, that would mean over 20 rolls of film -- to carry, to load and reload, to worry about taking through the x-ray machine, to have to take (and pay) to get developed. That's substantial. And since I have them on the computer, I can manipulate and share them, and even print them out as pictures or as part of a photobook.

Julie's fancy camera (the Canon Rebel T3) was useful for multiple shots and artsier photos...over 1100 of them. Think about another 40+ rolls of film and not knowing if the pictures taken are any good. We must have deleted another couple of hundred as we took them. I was concerned thatt he film SLR would still have an edge over digital because of the speed and options, but the Rebel, while not quite as simple as the controls on my old Canon AE-1, did some great work, even for the formal shots. The higher megapixel count allows for post shot zooming and blowing up. Not yet on the level of a solid bit of film, but soon that will be standard as well.

I haven't been through the girls' cameras yet, but the idea that each can have a reasonable quality camera and take pictures without any worry over wasting film makes taking pictures an incredible educational opportunity.

I honestly didn't think that the quality would go up, price down and learning curve be so scalable so quickly. I'm glad I was wrong. Digital is a pretty neat thing.