Perhaps an old tired question, but one that is hitting me hard right now about film and digital...

<p>Well Jeff, as I say, I've thought a lot about this aethetics issue with black and white, but I don't know enough about color and don't yet love it enough, to know for sure. I think it is easy to tell a digitally processed print from a chemical one in b&w -- the depth, the edge, and the always present faint glow of ink on the paper. Unfortunately I don't have a darkroom or know how to print/enlarge, but someday I hope to. I am a huge Ansel Adams fan -- not just the pictures but the writings about technique. And Eugene Smith. These guys were magic in the darkroom, with the print, and both considered the print to be the true photograph. <br /> <br /> I just shot a roll of Velvia with a Minolta X-700. I am excited to get the film back and see. It's been about a year since my last color slide work. <br /> <br /> In color print film, I use Kodak Ectar 100, which has a real richness and depth, compared to a kind of dull flatness that I detect in other color print films. What do you use? Certainly aesthetics begin with the film. Do you use any higher ISO print films? <br /> <br /> If the expenses and the workflow of film don't drag you down and you love film (I love film too but can't afford to use color film all the time) then in all I agree that the final product, at its best, has a kind of visual authority even in its relative "imperfection" -- like the wise and accomplished older man who outshines the young, talented, handsome one.</p>

<p>Hate crayons? I bow to no man in my affection of a good box of crayons.</p>

<p>Like all my subjects I strive to present crayons in the best light. I like deep natural colors. I like to see every detail.</p>

<p>I present my favorite box of crayons.</p><div></div>

<p>I think a really good way to view the aesthetic differences between a DSLR and film camera is to go out shooting with some one who had a DSLR and shoot the same scenes with both digital and film, using RAW for the digital shots. Get the film scanned and then see how close the digital shot can match the film shot. A lot of the issues that people have with the images from DSLR is the colors will often seem a bit dull compared to film, if you keep the default setting for saturation and contrast on the DSLR, but these are easy to adjust.<br /><br />On the other hand if you really just want to shoot film then shoot film, there is nothing wrong with that.</p>

<p>I don't doubt that digital is better in what is more accurate but that does not represent what is the preferred way. </p>

<p>Based on economics, I will use digital for portraits, sports etc .. but I don't shoot much of that. My famiily are not into photog so they just want a magazine look for portraits. </p>

<p>For my own work in landscapes, I like Velvia due to the colour and that in PP there is not a over million adjustments involved. Ie., one could adjust down to a "1" kelvin, haha. I don't shoot much maybe 1/2 a 135 roll per day out, therefore I am looking at 120 format for my main camera and even going to 4x5 :)</p>

<p>Jeff,<br>

On aesthetics, I have to say that I can now easily and cheaply show the world how bad I am at printing good negatives. That's the main aesthetic disadvantage of digital for me; I have to become a better printer, not just a better photographer. The main aesthetic advantage for shooting film is the enjoyment of pressing the shutter: because it involves imagination, I can imagine the shot that I <em>think</em> I took. (The effect is more pronounced with rangefinders!) This isn't an aesthetic advantage for the final print, in fact, it can be a source of disappointment when I develop the negatives.</p>

<p>As a matter of practicality, I shoot a large amount of digital because that is the way I will become a better photographer, faster. Life is short, and I'm not going to forgo instant feedback on composition, lighting, exposure, or technique. Obviously cost is another reason.</p>

<p>I will cheerfully shoot film for four reasons: When I need more dynamic range (which is another way to say, when I can't meter right), when I need to be free to destroy a camera (messing about in boats), when I need bigger prints (medium format instead of a DSLR I can't afford), and when I need an innocent looking camera. (DSLRs look like weapons to a lot of people.)</p>

<p>You asked about perceived image quality. I can't say anything about the difference between film and digital in terms of ultimate image quality. What I perceive, is that I respond to a photograph, as a photograph, regardless of source, unless there is some specific giveaway that is "unfamiliar." You know, jagged diagonals, jpeg smearing, posterization. Alternatively, large format contact prints are also distractingly unfamiliar*, as are pictorialist soft focus techniques, 70's era star filters, and other dated stylistic tricks.</p>

<p>I am often more delighted with my black and white negatives than conversions from digital, and I am more often baffled at the odd color casts with my color negatives than my digital files. It might be significant that I use an Olympus, which allegedly has nicer colors than other makes - certainly the auto white balance is very accurate. In my opinion, you will find that there is much more variation within models of digital cameras, and within different type of film, than there is difference between film and digital.<br>

Will</p>

<p>*not bad, just unfamiliar. I just haven't seen enough.</p>

 

<p>The aesthetics are something most people don't understand, or can't see. Which is why most people talk about resolution and latitude. Digital is higher quality in number of pixels (in small formats), but looks completely different. Whether or not you like that look, or can even recognize it seems to vary from person to person. Sometimes, I don't understand how people don't see this 'quality'. It's not colours or contrast, since different films have different levels of these. It's just something else, in both neg and slide. I just use film since I like that quality, even though I don't know what it is, and I know I can't get it any other way. If you don't see it, or prefer the digital 'look', you'll be happy with a dslr.</p>

<p>Hey Vince, I'll take your word for it about b&w prints, and I have friends that feel the same way. As I think I mentioned, I've seen beautiful digital capture b&w in Lens Work magazine, but the only prints I've seen were non-digital in all ways, including both Weston and A.A. exhibits. They were mpressive, to say the least! I have printed b&w on my Epson derived from C-41 process b&w, and one from TMY. By all accounts the results were pretty decent, and in prints as well as on screen, the respective characteristics of each film were apparent. Yes, I'm a huge fan of both of those guys you mention, too.</p>

<p>It seems clear that you like vibrant color from your film choices! That's great for many subjects. Recently, I've become a big fan of Kodak's Portra, but the NC (neutral color), not so much the VC (more saturated). I'm not sure if they would fall into the "dull flatness" area you mentioned, but I find the colors understated, usually, and I've come to like this, but I guess it's mostly evolving personal taste and preferences, and maybe subject matter. You might not like them if you really like the color to pop. But the VC version comes in 160 and 400 speed, also, and they may be to your liking. The contrast in all seem perfect. I generally shoot whatever speed is needed, and I really like all of them. I hope your Velvia results are pleasing; I've grown to like that look more and more, especially for certain landscapes, but I'm a big fan of Kodak's e100g, too. If you're not acquainted with the work of the late, great Galen Rowell, you definitely want to check out his many books, and google his gallery website to see some samples. He used a lot of Velvia, and I especially like the work he produced with it from around his home in Bishop, CA.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>...I agree that the final product, at its best, has a kind of visual authority even in its relative "imperfection"...</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Well said!</p>

<p> </p>

<p><em>It's just something else, in both neg and slide. I just use film since I like that quality, even though I don't know what it is, and I know I can't get it any other way. If you don't see it, or prefer the digital 'look', you'll be happy with a dslr.</em></p>

<p><a href="http://deoxy.org/emperors.htm">*click*</a></p>

<p>Jeff, from my experience, vast is it is from over 40 years, I shoot what I have.</p>

<p>There are many digital prints that I print as a printer that others cannot tell if the input source is a digital capture; or scanned film.</p>

<p>Once the input source is mentioned all the 2 decade old dogma and bias comes out.</p>

<p>It is really often not a technical issue; but one of folks bias; hatred; ignorance and agenda. Once the input source is revealed; the deep hatred come out.</p>

<p>There are many prints that folks are wrong; what they thing is digital is film; what they think is film is digital.</p>

<p>This whole subject is now over 21 years old for me; we got our first 35mm slide scanner in 1989.</p>

<p>On photo.net and other places; there are a million dialogs already on film versus digital.</p>

<p>Tomorrow the same question will be asked again.</p>

<p>As far as scanning is concerned; newcomers to scanning film are from another planet. One can tell them that scanning takes time and they never listen. After the Honeymoon phase reality sets with many new scanner users; duh it takes more time than I thought.</p>

<p>FILM IS KING. </p>

<p>Got it?</p>

<p>I'm an amateur, and a film user. For me largely it's an issue of aesthetics, particularly for higher ISO shots (800 ISO or higher). I regularly shoot Tri-X and HP5+ at 1600 and 3200 ISO, and do my own development and scanning.</p>

<p>I have looked at examples of higher ISO shots from numerous cameras, and I just don't like the way the sensor noise looks vs. the film grain. The technology is improving, but it's not there yet for me.</p>

<p>Sorry I haven't been able to get back to this until now. Thanks for the interesting comments. Right on Andre! I'm just hard-headed sometimes! </p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>"...Once the input source is revealed; the deep hatred come out..."</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>Sounds kinda like what those pesky "haters" do to a certain Sarah, Kelly, doggone them! : )</p>

<p>Hey, check this out:<br>

http://www.photo.net/film-and-processing-forum/00XJiR</p>

<p>Hi Jeff,</p>

<p>Here are a few opinions from a mostly digital shooter who still shoots Velvia on occasion.</p>

<p>(1) <strong>EFFORT</strong> - The DSLR will give you images quickly and with potentially less work. I say potentially, because if you have your film printed at a lab, that's less work than doing digital post processing yourself. But if you scan your film, that process starts out with a labor-intensive workflow, and afterward you end up doing as much digital post processing as would have with DSLR images.</p>

<p>(2) <strong>LOOK</strong> - I think it's safe to say that film and digital images look different. One is not inherently better than another. That said, there are so many potential steps and variations in between capture and the final print that it could be difficult to tell the difference when it's mounted on a wall. Was it taken with MF film or a 24 MP digital sensor? Good luck telling the difference depending on how much processing happened in between.</p>

<p>(3) <strong>PARTICULAR ADVANTAGES</strong> - Both film and digital capture have numerous advantages over the other. The crayon example shows the latitude of color print film, but slide film has less latitude than digital sensors. So depending on which film you use and how much latitude you want, digital could be better or worse. Even though it's technically a limitation, the extremely shallow latitude of slide film has creative uses.</p>

<p>Film has grain. Digital sensor produce noise under certain circumstances. Two different issues, but each a potential problem that could be noticeable in large prints unless you handle them properly.</p>

<p>Some digital cameras can produce very clean images at ISO 3200; I don't know of any film camera that can do that. That said, film handles specular highlights more gracefully than digital sensors do.</p>

<p>Film and processing cost $$. If you take 1,000 shots at a sporting event but only end up using 20 of them, with film you have to pay for all thousand exposures. However, film is self-archiving. You don't have to buy multiple hard drives to store your portfolio. That said, you can keep an extra copy of your digital photos at a remote location in case your house or studio burns down. Good luck doing that with your negatives.</p>

<p>Digital permits combining images easily into panoramas, focus stacks, and HDR images. Oh well, two out of three ain't bad. <em>Full disclosure: I loathe HDR, but that doesn't make me a bad person.</em> :-)</p>

<p>(4) <strong>EXPOSURE</strong> - Print film, slide film, digital sensor. Each requires a different approach to exposure. If you expose a digital sensor like slide or print film, you won't get an optimum result. So, you need to understand how digital works in order to get the best out of a DSLR.</p>

<p>(5) <strong>POST PROCESSING AND PRINTING</strong> - If you scan your film, scan post processing is nearly identical to digital post processing. A DSLR lets you start the process with a RAW file that can offer a few advantages for recovering shadow detail, etc., but otherwise things like contrast and white balance will work identically on a scanned image as with a digitally captured image. The advantage of digital post processing (whether from a scan or DSLR) is that everything is repeatable and adjustable, and in the case of something like Lightroom, completely non-destructive to your original file.</p>

<p>The chemical darkroom and optical enlargers are only available to film shooters. In the right hands these tools can produce amazing images. I was a big fan of the look of Cibachrome prints before they disappeared. I have yet to find an equivalent in the digital world, but digital offers other beautiful paper options. Plus, Cibachrome was not exactly environmentally friendly.</p>

<p>B&W chemical printing is still unparalleled (in my own humble opinion). I have yet to see Adams-like contrast in digital B&W prints, but I always keep an open mind in case the digital B&W guys want to demonstrate to the contrary. That would be a happy day for the digital camp.</p>

<p><strong>SUMMARY</strong><br /> Jeff, I wasn't clear as to whether or not you own a DSLR now. I would encourage you to try using one at some point. As a film guy, I can tell you from experience that it takes a while to learn how to get the most out of a digital camera. First, you start using it like you used your film cameras, but that's like driving a Jeep like a road vehicle (or vice versa). You need to learn how to get the most out of a new and different technology, and that takes some experimentation and a willingness to work in new ways.</p>

<p>If you want to scan, the Nikon scanners produce very good results. Just be prepared for a lot of tedious hours of work.</p>

<p>Anyway, that's my two cents. My goal was to be as fair and accurate as possible - except on the subject of HDR. ;-) Hopefully these comments will provide you with some useful information.</p>

<p>Dan South, you've just posted the best analysis I've seen on this topic, after reading thousands of posts over the years. -Hope it gets a lot of hits.</p>

<p>Hi Dan, Thanks for the thoughtful post. I think Les makes some good points, too, and I think the fact that it's such a hard thing to draw precise conclusions about might say something, as well. Jmho.</p>

<p>I still think that what David Austin said might be valid. At any rate, the fact that so many of us think that film still provides an appealing aesthetic that may very well have a different quality than images derived through digital capture- despite the incredible efforts of the engineers- says something interesting, too.</p>

<p>I purchased another book recently in which the images were definitely shot on film about 15-25 years ago (it was printed in the last few years), and besides great compositions, there is a "certain something" present, I think, akin to the "quality" that David mentions. I simply don't see this sort of appeal in any of the books that I know originated through digital capture, with the exception of some impressive looking b&w images in Lens Work (although I am inexperienced in b&w, and although LW is a magazine, it seems comparable to books in quality of printing). Perhaps this is simply due to the somewhat limited universe that I've actually viewed, I'm not sure. And I'm not in any way saying that this quality is necessarily "better", just that I still feel it, and it seems that others have had similar experiences.</p>

<p>Bottom line for me so far: there is certainly nothing <em>wrong</em> with this real or imagined "film aesthetic" and a lot that is right, I think, so if at all possible, I will continue to shoot and enjoy it.</p>

<p> </p>

<blockquote>

<p ><a name="00XJbc"></a><a href="../photodb/user?user_id=2279539">Glenn Mabbutt</a> <a href="../member-status-icons"></a>, Sep 18, 2010; 06:05 p.m.</p>

</blockquote>

 

<blockquote>

<p>I'm an amateur, and a film user. For me largely it's an issue of aesthetics, particularly for higher ISO shots (800 ISO or higher). I regularly shoot Tri-X and HP5+ at 1600 and 3200 ISO, and do my own development and scanning.<br>

I have looked at examples of higher ISO shots from numerous cameras, and I just don't like the way the sensor noise looks vs. the film grain. The technology is improving, but it's not there yet for me.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>The point for me is that film grain is beautiful....digital noise is ugly!</p>

 

<p>I have thought about the same issue aswell, and it was around 2.5 years ago when I was weighing up the Canon 5D against the Nikon F6. I think that you can only make this judgement subjectively, in as much as that there is no objective test of a good hi-fi system either (blind listening tests are still subjective!).</p>

<p>There are several areas in which I believe film is better than digital (even scanned). They are:</p>

<p>Depiction of highly-detailed images, particularly nature scenes. I think the organic nature of film is better at depicting organic nature, and the electronic heart of digital is better at depicting man-made objects. The reason is that digital often makes decisions for you - as it as to interpret the image from the bayer array</p>

<p>As has already been mentioned: noise. There is more of it in film, for sure, but it's nicer than digital noise. On the whole, digital noise is something to avoid at all costs (hence the extensive use of noise reduction - which I think is nausea-inducing), but film noise can often add to an image. I can't explain why this is, but most people don't mind film noise.</p>

<p>Artefacts: Apart from grain, there aren't any other artefacts! And if you don't mind grain, then film is effectively artefact-free. Digital has moire, maze, blooming, CA is worse, noise reduction, sharpening, banding, pattern etc etc artefacts.</p>

<p>I won't go into all the downsides of film, but scanning is one of them!</p>

<p>Duncan</p>

<p> </p>

<p>"There is more of it in film, for sure, but it's nicer than digital noise."</p>

<p>I generally shoot low ISO film so perhaps you can help me. This is a digital shot at ISO 1600 with no noise reduction. I have added a crop to show more detail.</p>

<p>What part of the digital noise is most objectionable? What film do you recommend that would be more aesthetically pleasing? </p><div></div>

<p>Now the crop.</p><div></div>

<p><a href="../photodb/user?user_id=4182520">Duncan Murray</a>,<br>

I agree with you, and I'd say that two characteristics that digital has going for it is that it produces very smooth transitions very nicely, and it picks up edge detail at enlargements where it would otherwise be invisible. Which is to say, it does an excellent job of "making stuff up" at precisely the point film gets too grainy to really "see" things. Notice I said "produces" smooth transitions, not "reproduces".</p>

<p>For iso 1600, I use pushed provia 400x for colour and neopan 1600 for black and white. They both look nicer to me, although I'm sure they're 'objectively' worse. I'll see if I can upload one of the images (I've not tried this before). </p>

<p>Jeff -- I think you've set yourself an impossible task in trying to decide which is better aesthetically: film or digital. It's the photographer and their abilities with either format and the skill in processing the image that really have the greatest aesthetic impact on the final result. Film and digital are different processes -- it's somewhat like trying to compare large format to 35mm. There are pros and cons to each -- it depends on how you like to shoot, what you're trying to shoot and the effect you're trying to achieve. Since you're not sure which way you want to jump, I would suggest renting a digital camera for a few days. It might not be long enough to completely master using one but hopefully it should give you an idea of whether or not you enjoy shooting digital -- and knowing that should help you to be able to decide between the scanner and the camera.</p>

"...

Anyways, I hope what I'm asking is clear enough; I very honestly am asking if others feel the same way towards the aesthetic qualities of film images vs. those digitally captured, especially those of you also using top of the line digital cameras...."

 

 

I've never used a digital camera, and consider the digital workflow beyond my means.

 

 

With respect to the "aesthetic qualities" of the images, I know there are many things one can't do with film in camera. Furthermore, I've acknowledged some digital images as indistinguishable from a good slide.

 

 

And I agree with Jennifer Spencer.

 

 

Jennifer Spencer [subscriber] , Sep 16, 2010; 06:42 p.m.

"...

Slide film (positive film) is another story. That's got a special color quality that I wouldn't know where to start replicating digitally...."

 

 

My apologies to the other contributors, but I only had the time to read the first page of responses.

 

 

Do you have slides? Do you still shoot slides? I have slides, and I love transparency film. I would choose the scanner. Or use the money to have someone else scan for me.

 

 

In terms of the aesthetic qualities of my images, I find transparency film simpler. I find it simpler than color negative film as well.

 

 

BTW, I've been a computer guy for nearly twenty years, and for me, using a film camera with slide film, and shooting manually, is simpler. In this case, because the emotional demands of the equipment and workflow are limited, I can easily devote my attention to getting a shot. And for me, the "aesthetic quality" of my keepers fits easily within my cost/benefit ratios.

<p>Thanks for posting that crop Marc. It gives me a chance to type "YUCK" today for the first time.</p>