Each of these circles represents a director, and its size represents the number of movies they make in the specific period.

A decade ago, the majority of directors still chose to shoot on film, but around 2012 more directors began to prefer digital.

Some of these directors are film loyalists who never switched to digital. Christopher Nolan shot all of his movies on film, including his latest movie Dunkirk (2017). Quentin Tarantino is another example of a film loyalist; he even states that he would stop making movies if he cannot shoot on film anymore.

On the other side, we also have early adopters who jumped to digital in 2006-2008 and have been using it ever since, such as Robert Rodriguez. He started to shoot on digital in 2002 with Spy Kids 2 and shot all of his later films in the same medium. Similarly, James Gunn is also a digital early adopter who is not afraid to try new technology. His latest movie, Guardian of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) was the first to shoot with a RED 8K digital camera.

But other directors don’t always follow a consistent path. Judd Apatow returned to film on his latest movie Trainwreck (2015) after previously using digital on This is 40 (2012). Some directors such as Danny Boyle use both technologies. In Steve Jobs (2015), he used both digital and film formats to cover Apple’s product launch on different timelines.