When you think about going digital (in terms of photography) I know many people forget to factor in the cost of storage. Compact Flash (CF), Secure Digital (SD) or other similar memory aren’t cheap and near-line storage like the Nixvue and others like it aren’t too cheap either plus all the power requirements; chargers, spare batteries and all.

However, how do you afford such things and do you really save (or if you’re a professional, what’s the return on investment – ROI)? On my recent trip to Western Australia, I shot over 1500 photos over the span of 13 days. That amounts to over 43 rolls of film. In my part of the world, a roll of Kodak E100G costs about US$5.20. My 43 rolls shot will cost me around US$225. A local professional lab I frequent charges me about US$3.00 per roll for E-6 processing and sleeving. 43 rolls will cost me about US$129. If I had to do digital printing (prints from transparencies cost a lot locally) for one-fifth (20%) of my photos, that will cost another US$60. So, the photography part of my trip with film cost US$414! The price of a Digital SLR like Canon’s EOS-300D (Digital Rebel) is around US$900. I would say two trips will pay for the camera already!

Of course I didn’t account for printing my digital photos but neither did I factor the time spent scanning each roll or how bulky 43 rolls of film will be. Digital does offer the additional benefits of instant feedback resulting in (hopefully) better shots or less missed shots. I know that a properly exposed and scanned frame of Fuji Velvia or Kodak E100G will yield greater detail than my 6-megapixel Digital SLR at this point, but the exposure latitude with RAW mode more than makes up for that… and oh, there’s always next year for the next sensor size.