As your wedding day approaches and you interview photographers, you'll likely need to choose a photographer who uses all-digital or all-film cameras. Both offer beautiful results, but many people question whether one is "better" than the other or if it's possible to tell the resulting photographs' difference. While many factors are taken into account, there are some misconceptions about digital wedding coverage that need to be dispelled.

 

The internet is full of wedding chat boards and planning tools that offer anyone with an opinion a place to speak. Frequently those opinions aren't from formally trained photographers when it comes to the film vs. digital debate. The most commonly repeated fallacy is that digital photographs lack the crispness and detail of film images. This could be true if you compare a high-end film camera with that of a two-megapixel point and shoot digital camera. However, if you hire a qualified professional wedding photographer, the digital camera they will use will likely be known as a digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) camera. These cameras boast an average of eight megapixels or more per image. Manufactured by companies like Canon and Nikon, these cameras can produce stunning, crisp enlargements of sixteen by twenty inches or more with no image quality loss. 

 

The other component of receiving a photojournalistic portrait depends on the way it's processed and printed. Most people printing photos at home leave the job to an ink-jet printer and plain photo paper. This set-up is acceptable for family vacations and picnics with friends, but this is not an area to overlook when it comes to your wedding. Professional wedding photographers use professional processing labs with specialized digital printers and high-quality, low fade paper. This specialized equipment creates a timeless portrait that will have a long fade-free life. When interviewing digital photographers, ask to see actual print samples from the lab they use. You won't be able to tell the difference between digital and film prints.

 

With improvements in technology, digital wedding photographs are becoming more popular due to image storage capabilities. While film has dominated the wedding arena for over a hundred years, digital storage's increasing accessibility has digital images taking center stage. Three years ago, it became clear that digital photography technology was expanding in ways the film market couldn't keep up. Upon close inspection of digital vs. film prints, the evidence of better image quality and clarity in the digital images prompted a switch.

 

Brides and grooms who select an all-digital photographer gain some advantages over those who choose an all-film photographer. Besides getting digital copies of their images ready for online sharing, the ability to change pictures to black and white or sepia tones and having photographs saved on a CD or DVD for secure storage are bonuses. From the photographer's perspective, retouching images and the ability to save more photographs at the event via a digital memory card allows for a more fabulous assortment of photos to choose from for your final wedding album. Ultimately, the choice is yours, but as a professional photographer, I’d recommend hiring an all-digital photographer.