Is Film Photography More Expensive than Digital? by Neil Milton

Written by Neil Milton

Every penny’s a prisoner is a well-known phrase to many a Scot. It is often spoken in fond, mock irritation of a miserly relative. I drag it out occasionally to make fun of myself when taking advantage of an enticing deal.

Still, I’m not known for being thrifty, and my own choice of camera system portrays a taste for the more expensive that life has to offer.

As a Leica M photographer using both digital and film bodies, I may not be the most relatable voice to write about about the cost of film photography versus digital photography, however, it has drifted into my thoughts over the last few weeks, and, as I return to Shoot It With Film after a hiatus, I thought I should scratch this itch.

My Experience with Film and Digital Photography

Is photographing on film really more expensive than making photographs on digital cameras?

I started my life in photography on digital cameras, and as I learned the craft, I fell in love with the beautiful, photojournalistic grain that was characteristic of the Kodak Tri-X 400 film used in the photographs of many of my favorites like Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, and Garry Winogrand. I was tempted to try my hand at shooting with film, but even in the mid-2000s, the accepted wisdom was that analog photography was just too damn expensive.

Instead, I found a usable film emulation and gave my photographs a decent approximation of that famous grain.

It took 15 years, and a world-defining global pandemic for me to finally decide it was time to give film a try, and for several years, I stuck to my Leica M3 and, with a little financial outlay, a fridgeful of Tri-X.

Only this year, when I started to again work for a photo agency, I realized I had to return to the 1s and 0s of digital, and, in March, I bought the Leica M11-P, which has become my workhorse digital body.

Comparing Film and Digital Photography Costs

In late Autumn, I was asked by a young photographer who asked me to mentor them whether film or digital photography was more expensive, and, in an odd coincidence, a photo editor I follow on Instagram, Emily Keegin, authored a series of stories on her thoughts on this very subject. That would be a great Shoot It With Film article, I thought. And here we are.

For this article, I’ve set the Leicas aside, and have focused on midrange, prosumer-level gear. I’ve tried, where possible, to compare like for like, but, as they say, your mileage may vary

For each, I have tried to be fair in my cost estimations. I’ve compared private, store, and eBay sales and made a rough average. I’ve erred on the more expensive side for each as a worst-case scenario, and, in all cases, I’ve opted for gear in near-mint or mint condition.

I’ve also chosen to set aside anything that may be useful for both film and digital photography, so there won’t be any discussion of tripods, filters, cases, bags, and the like. Let’s get on with it.

The Cost of Film and Digital Camera Systems

For this comparison, I’ve chosen a Canon AE-1 35mm SLR (find at KEH Camera or on eBay) as the analog choice. A solid, dependable body, and with a shutter that lends its voice to Apple’s camera app. Every time you’re making a photograph on the iPhone or iPad, you hear the sound of the AE-1.

From what I can find, the AE-1 body currently sells for approximately 150 Euros ($150 USD). If this comes bundled with a lens, all the better, but let’s add a Canon FD 50mm f1.8 lens in mint condition for a maximum of 50 Euros ($52).

Finally, we should account for cleaning, lubricating, and adjusting (CLA) of the camera, particularly if bought online with no opportunity to test. A good CLA certainly helps me feel more confident the camera won’t drag to a halt halfway through a once-in-a-lifetime trip. Costs for CLA vary spectacularly, however, I found highly recommended workshops advertising 100 to 200 Euros ($105-$210) for a CLA, so let’s add the top end to our costs.

With the analog taken care of, it’s time to pick out a digital option. Sticking with Canon, the Japanese manufacturer hasn’t taken to the trend of retro digital bodies as its competitor Nikon has. While a full-frame sensor would be a more like-for-like comparison, it would render this comparison somewhat ridiculous given the disparity in price, so I’ve opted for a mirrorless camera with an APS-C sensor, the Canon R50 (find on Amazon).

At a decent price, this camera will set you back between 500 to 700 Euros ($700). For a lens, the clear choice is the RF 50mm f1.8 for 200 Euros ($200). There’s no need for a light meter except in niche circumstances, so we can save some money there, but we will need a decent memory card. Variety in price for these is wild, so let’s budget for a 256GB Sandisk for around 75 Euros ($80).

Another consideration, particularly with mirrorless cameras, is sensor cleaning. Though some photographers don’t want to touch the sensor and would prefer to have a professional do it, let’s consider ourselves brave and every quarter we’ll buy sensor cleaning swabs, adding up to around 100 Euros ($105) per year.

So far, our digital choice of an R50 with a 50mm lens and a memory card has cost us 1075 Euros ($1116). Score 1 for film photography then? I think so, yes.

But it doesn’t stop there. An AE-1 purchased today will be the same AE-1 purchased three years from now. There are no hardware or software improvements, there are no megapixels added. In contrast, purchase a Canon R50 today, and in a few years, a new model will replace it. A new model with a faster autofocus, a new model with a better processor, and a new model with higher resolution. We may not necessarily feel the need to upgrade, but for the sake of argument, let’s say we do. That’s another 700 Euros ($726) added to digital’s tally, while film is keeping us frugal.

We’ve picked up a Canon 35mm SLR with a 50mm lens, we’ve had it CLA-ed, and this has cost us 400 Euros ($415) at most.

In contrast, our digital option over three years has cost us 1975 Euros ($2050). Ouch.

The Cost of Consumables: AKA Buying Film

Where the FOMU (Fear of Missing Upgrades) powered by rampant unchecked capitalism makes the digital choice expensive, it is in consumables where analog photography becomes unstuck. It is in the price of film, development, and its expendable nature, that analog photography gets its costly reputation.

The only consumable of note for digital photography is the batteries needed to power the R50. One will come with the camera, of course, but it seems responsible to have a spare which will cost around 50 Euros ($52). If we buy a further 3 batteries in the space of 5 years, and we buy a spare memory card and then both over time, we bring our digital consumables to a total cost of 425 Euros ($441).

The number of rolls of film shot per year by a reader of Shoot It With Film can vary. From the reading I’ve done and asking around, as an average, I’ve decided to settle on 50 rolls per year. I burn through over double that, and there may be some who shoot less. We’ll stick with 50 and if this is a wild underestimation, I’m sure I’ll hear of it in the comments. Of course, there is a wide spectrum of film stocks and prices to choose from. For this comparison, I’ve opted for a staple stock for both black and white and color.

For 35mm Kodak Tri-X, the going rate seems to be around 10 Euros ($11) per roll. For color, I was tempted to go with Portra, but decided we’ll stick with Kodak Gold 200. In much the same way as a full-frame sensor above, the sheer cost of the option would skew the comparison.

As a black and white shooter, I was surprised to find that Gold 200 retails for also around 10 Euros ($11). That makes this calculation a lot easier. So, 50 rolls, 10 Euros per roll. 500 Euros ($520) for a year over 3 years: 1500 Euros ($1560). For the sake of our sanity and not getting stuck in the weeds, let’s double that for lab processing, prints and/or scans. 3000 Euros ($3115) over 3 years.

So, film now certainly seems like it’s a lot more expensive. Our analog option has added up to 3400 ($3530).

Our digital choices are now totaling 2400 Euros ($2500), so a good 1000 Euros less expensive than its analog equivalent.

Image Storage and Other Costs

While one may argue that analog photography is now something of a verbose method of creating and ending with digital files, I want to look at film photography in this article as a purely physical process ending with work prints.

Of course, if one chooses to scan every frame of a negative, this requires digital storage, however, this is a choice. In digital photography, there is no choice.

While it may be controversial, it is for that reason that I’m separating out digital storage and back-up solutions and laying it squarely at the feet of digital photography, while for analog photography, we will consider physically storing negatives and prints.

Storing negatives and prints, while at times complex, is not an expensive affair. I shoot over 100 rolls of Tri-X per year, and my storage solution of sleeves, folders, and boxes costs no more than 50 Euros in 12 months. Let’s add 150 Euros ($155) to our analog photography 3-year total and move swiftly on to digital.

It is in storage, software, and back-ups that digital starts to make up the ground lost to analog photography in the high cost of rolls of film. For my agency work, I shoot in RAW on a digital Leica M11-P. I have an external 2TB solid state hard drive, with an identical one for a local back-up, each costing approximately 250 Euros ($260). I use IDrive as a software to manage my back-ups, which also gives me 5TB of cloud storage for an off-site back-up of my photographs. This costs approximately 300 Euros ($312) over our 3 years.

I won’t insult anyone’s intelligence, so I will presume that anyone reading this likely has a computer already, and I won’t add that to the digital cost, however, we should consider software. Adobe’s Photography package with Lightroom and Photoshop costs 12 Euros per month. Add that up over 3 years and we are saying goodbye to 432 Euros ($450). While many hobbyists may be content to work on photoshop using a trackpad or a mouse, the more serious digital photographers will want to pick up a graphics tablet and pen. Second-hand, I found my Wacom Intuos Pro S tablet for 50 Euros ($52) on eBay. A bargain.

After our storage and other costs, our analog option is 3550 Euros ($3686), whereas our digital option has now risen to the lofty sum of 3682 Euros ($3823).

In Conclusion

Setting the costs of film photography side by side with the costs associated with digital photography, it’s useful to see that over 3 years, taking into account upgrades, software costs, and other related purchases, there is very little difference in outlay.

While the costs for almost all of the above can vary dramatically, it is clear the main, dramatic cost of film photography is in the film stocks themselves. While I’ve chosen Kodak Tri-X and Gold for the comparison above, there are many film stocks that are considerably cheaper, particularly the excellent boutique stocks that have appeared over the last few years.

At the end of the day, I wanted to write this article on the one hand as an encouragement to those unsure whether to opt for digital or analog. Analog isn’t radically more expensive.

On the other, I hope this may prove useful for those conversations around the dinner table – conversations with those relatives baffled by the choice to opt for such an antiquated medium. Surely it’s an expensive business, making photographs on film, they may ask. No more than with digital you can reply.

Thank you so much, Neil! Neil is a regular contributor here at Shoot It With Film, and you can check out his other articles here, such as Street Photography: 5 Assignments for Beginners and Getting Started with Concert Photography on Film.

You can find more of Neil’s work on his website, and sign up for his street photography newsletter here.

Leave your questions about film vs digital photography below in the comments!

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Neil Milton

Neil Milton is a street photographer and a regular contributor for Shoot It With Film. Find his other articles here, such as 5 Tips to Improve Your Street Photography and Kodak Tri-X: Why I Love It & Why You Should Too.

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