Digital for the semi Pro

It seems like every time I am around many photographers one question comes up. It is usually ask by people who want to sell their work and are shooting film. The Question is " should I switch to film?" At this point I don't think there is a wrong answer to the question, but here is some things I recently wrote in answer to this question. These thoughts may or not be valid for you but they are worth your consideration before investing Time and money in digital equipment.

It is an interesting time with great choices for photographers. I shoot
both
digital and film. I also sell stock and contract photography, here are
my
thoughts.

Right now there are several problems with digital when you are doing
photography as a business.

1. Image quality. This is determined buy your clients
willingness to use digital files. Some of mine do and many do not, but
this
is changing fast. The clients who do use digital have strict size
standards
of file size. You will need to check with your clients to see how they
feel,
but a rough guide is to look at page reproduction size based on 300
dpi. I
don't have any clients who do not use film.

2. Digital storage and retrieval is still a problem for large numbers
of
images. It is very time consuming compared to film.

3. Cost, I think there is a lot of forgetful bookkeeping when people
tout
the cost savings over film.

Of course that depends on if you have much of the equipment already. I
figure my $1400 dollar 10d cost near $2000 ready to shoot with batteries
and
CF cards. That doesn't count a field digital storage unit (laptop,image
bank-) of some type. So say $3000 to the field. Not too bad really
unless
you want to add an 11mp camera and most pro/semipro shooters do. OK
you
still save on film. The best CD's sell for $1.50 and if you are in
business
you need to store your images in 2 locations on the best. So if you are
shooting 34mp files from a full frame camera you can get 20 images to a
CD.
That $1.50 takes a big bite out of the film saving alone.

4. Digital is still an evolving technology. How much work is there to
changing 1000 CD's to the final DVD standard? Then which standard comes
next?

Personally I love digital and have enough uses for it to write a book.

Still I haven't sold my 1V's and Eos 3's...YET!