Is buying a dSLR at today’s prices worth it? Ignoring, for now, the difference in time to get results between film and digital, let’s look at the costs. The cheapest dSLR body on the market today is the Canon Digial Rebel at around $900 ($700, if you’re willing to buy it from someone you don’t trust). A comparable film body with roughly the same feature set runs about $200. Of course, I’ll need a flash card. I can get roughly 3 "rolls" of film on a 256MB flash card which can be had for $100. Assuming I’ll never need more than 3 rolls of film at any one time (which I’ve gotten by with so far) that should do well. So we’ve got $1000 for the dSLR and $200 for the SLR. That’s a difference of $800. At $5/roll for processing (assuming I don’t use B/W and do it myself) and about $4/roll for 36 exposures, I’d have to shoot 89 rolls of film to make up the difference. That’s 3200 shots. Amazingly, the total number of shots I’ve taken (that I have a record of anyway) with my digital camera(s) is 3276. That’s about 2 years time. Additionally, it should be noted, that I take a lot of "extra" shots, just because I can, with the digital. I almost always shoot in the same ISO for each "session", so, while being able to change that on the fly is NICE, I can get by pretty well without it. So that means it’ll take me 2 years to pay for the dSLR.
Now for a few more factors. I don’t want Canon… I want Nikon. That ups the cost of the digital by $500. Additionally, since I already have a GREAT Nikon film body, that decreases the cost the film camera to $0 (more really, since my Nikon film body is miles ahead of the Canon film body I was using as an example above). With those price changes in place, the dSLR is $1500 more than the SLR. That’s 6000 shots or, about 3.75 years time.
Ahhh, but wait. I’m not getting "digital" images this way. Processing plus a PhotoCD will run me $16/roll plus the $4 for film. That’s 2700 shots or about 1.5 years. Or, if I go with the Canon comparisons, 1440 images or .9 years. That’s not too shabby.
I could buy a scanner and save that money, since the PhotoCD doesn’t really produce images that are of good enough quality to be edited and printed (actually… I don’t know that for sure… I’m just guessing). A decent scanner will run me $200.
Of course, with film, I now have to store tons of negatives and deal with transporting them, and their the effects of aging. Additionally, I won’t be able to control the final look of the prints as easily as I do now.
Additionally, with the dSLR the lenses I want cost a bit more because they have to be so much wider to accommodate the 1.6x multiplier due to the size difference of the sensor versus 35mm film.
With the digital, however, I don’t get to carry around lots of rolls of film. I’m limited to the 3 that fit on the card. I could get a bigger card, or a couple of cards, or I could get a 40GB image holder which would let me have 36 rolls of film at any one time. They run about $300.
So, (aren’t you glad you read all this?) in conclusion, there is no way to compare the two. I would have to narrow it down to a specific photographic application or task, which is difficult to do considering my inconsistent usage patterns.
I’m so glad I took the time to do this. (stupid over analyzing brain. Will you stop already?!)