I found JADA’s January issue interesting because it carried both Dr. Gordon Christensen’s excellent article on digital photography, "Important Clinical Uses for Digital Photography," and Dr. Jack T. Rummel’s letter to the editor, inquiring about the legal value of digital images, which can be so readily altered.
At the risk of provoking the kind of reaction I get when I explain to patients that they would be better off with gold instead of porcelain (perhaps Dr. Christensen would like to expand on his statement, "esthetically pleasing, but relatively weak, all-ceramic crowns"), I would like to suggest that there are still benefits to using 35-millimeter photography.
Unlike digital, there is no question of the image having been altered if the original negative is retained, no matter what state you live in. I know clinicians who still use 35-mm photography, along with digital photography, when they want bulletproof documentation. Practitioners who were wise enough to purchase single-lens reflex digital cameras with interchangeable lenses and flash systems will find that these will work perfectly on a basic single-lens reflex camera by the same manufacturer (both Nikon and Canon make excellent "pro-sumer" film cameras for as little as $300).
Having digital and film cameras also solves the problem Dr. Christensen calls "discouraging." As digital cameras and their sensors become rapidly obsolete, the separate macro lens and ring-flash will usually be compatible with a few generations of camera bodies.
It is also easy to digitize 35-mm images during processing, and it is convenient to have a hard copy to throw in the chart and send out to the lab. In addition, image quality of 35-mm photography still exceeds that of most digital equipment; just ask my lab. I think digital photography is terrific, but 35-mm photography is sort of like gold—there are situations where it just works better.
