yet another film versus digital debate

If you are like me, and the whole digital thing is driving you bananas, this

article may shed some light: <p><a

href="http://www.naturephotographers.net/articles0105/dw0105-1.html">click

here</a><p>The author is a very accomplished photographer, as you can see from

his excellent work <a href="http://www.darwinwiggett.com/galleries.html">here.</a>

For a photographer of static landscapes like Wiggett, film is still a viable option. It can also hold its own for black and white shooting, and color shooting in a studio. <p>

 

For certain other types of shooting, though, digital offers advantages that film can't match. <p>

 

For example, digital has the edge for: <br>

 

<li>news, sports, and anything else with tight deadlines (a digital shooter can caption and postprocess shots on site and e-mail them to a waiting editor minutes after shooting)

<li>sports, airshows and other situations that call for bursts of shots at high frame rates (very expensive to do this with film)

<li>low light situations at concerts, in clubs, on stage without flash (setting a custom white balance or even using auto WB gives much more predictable results than the rigid color biases of various film types)

<li>any location with variable or mixed lighting, or strong colour casts

<li>weddings and other irrepeatable events, where digital shots can be checked and files backed up immediately

<li>travel photography, to avoid the nightmare of getting film safely through security checks, and because multiple backups can be made daily, stored securely, and mailed home.<p>

 

There's nothing wrong with shooting film, as long as you're not in a hurry, aren't travelling, have lots of light, and can control its qualities.

What is this film thing people keep talking about? How did people take pictures before digital cameras were made? I've seen lots of pictures in books and stuff... how do they get the pictures from the screen onto paper? I'm so confused...

Either the article was written in 2004 and is outdated or the author hasn't kept in touch with technology since then. Computers are much faster, memory is a lot cheaper, even entry level cameras have 10 megapixel sensors. A camera like the 5d can be had for more pixels, better ISO performance for 1/3 the cost of the 1ds.

 

Now there are work flow tools especially for raw users such as Aperture and Lightroom.

 

That said I think a lot of what the author says is valid. For example when shooting digital, people tend to get lazy and fix it in post and people spend more time playing in photoshop that out there shooting.

He has a valid point of the time-factor of shooting digital - or, more correctly, the time-factor of PROCESSING digital files and editing. With slide film, you shoot, it's done! I use both mediums, would never give up film because it has latitude (negatives) and "personality" unique to each emulsion.

He has a valid point of the time-factor of shooting digital - or, more correctly, the time-factor of PROCESSING digital files and editing. With slide film, you shoot, it's done! I use both mediums, would never give up film because it has latitude (negatives) and "personality" unique to each emulsion.

"Amplified mediocrity" is indeed the right term .

"With slide film, you shoot, it's done!"

 

Not if you make your own prints it's not.

 

"I use both mediums, would never give up film because it has latitude (negatives) and "personality" unique to each emulsion."

 

DSLR digital has a lot more latitude (dynamic range, actually) than even negative film, for those of us who know what we're doing and expose for the highlights. (This is because negative films have hideous noise in the shadows.)

 

With film, you are stuck with the personality that happens to be in the camera at the moment. And I've wasted a lot of time on a lot of films with personalities that I've found that I don't get along with.

 

Meanwhile, B&W conversion from digital is amazingly flexible, and raw capture gives you phenomenal control over tonal and color rendition.

 

Here, I can get a tad more detail if I shoot TMX100 or Provia 100F in my Mamiya 7, but it's only meaningful for 16x20 and larger prints (which I don't do). At which point maybe I should be shooting 4x5. And the Mamiya 7 lenses are slow and pricey (but lovely lenses, for those 16x20s I don't make).

I read it on the internet - it MUST be true!

http://clarkvision.com/imagedetail/dynamicrange2/

 

"Conclusions

 

Digital cameras, like the Canon 1D Mark II, show a huge dynamic range compared to either print or slide film, at least for the films compared."

 

My personal experience is that normally exposed color negative film is truly ugly in the shadow areas. I suppose one could try overexposing color negative film two stops to improve the shadows, but I don't know what that would do to rendition in the mid and upper tones. And that would turn Reala into an ISO 25 film, which would get old real quick.

 

In actual use, I find that highlights blow out in Reala about the same as they do in Provia 100F, so I simply don't see the claimed advantage of color negative materials. (Provia 100F is actually very good in the highlights compared to, say, the Velvia films, though.)

Thanks David, that's an interesting link.

 

I haven't felt that Provia's latitude is comparable to Reala.

For night photography where I bracket extensively, Provia blows out highlights and blocks up shadows while Reala keeps smooth tonal transitions in pretty extreme situation (streetlights, moonlight, deep shadows). The more exposure I give Reala, the less grain (and less contrast) I get, but the highlights don't lose detail very easily. Contrast and color balance can be restored in post processing.

 

I suppose latitute could also mean tolerance for grain in shadows, and with Noise Ninja, I'm pretty tolerant with how normally exposed negatives look. Digital SLRs seem to stay smoother and more detailed into the shadows.

There are a couple of things you can do to reduce or even eliminate grain and dye clouds in the shadow areas of negatives.

 

Firstly, use a noise reduction software. Secondly, apply curves so that the image looks much like a transparency shot.

"Digital cameras, like the Canon 1D Mark II, show a huge dynamic range compared to either print or slide film, at least for the films compared."

 

The author made the conclusion based on comparing Canon 1D Mark II with Kodak Gold 200 and Fuji Velvia 50. Has anyone seen the flaw of the fundation of this comparison which in my opinion resulted in the wrong conclusion?

 

Kodak Gold 200 is a consumer grade print film which is a contrasty film. Velvia 50 has a very high contrast, if not the highest, too. Why did the author choose these two high contrast (low dynamic range) films for his comparison? Velvia 50 has a very narrow dynamic range. This is a well known fact. Why make the comparison with an extremely high contrast film?

 

When Honda came out with its first generation Civic it was an impressive small car that ran fairly fast. You could easily say it's faster than a bycle for sure. But that did not make it a real fast car. How about comparing it with a BMW 2002?

David's point was simply that the typical DSLR has more usable dynamic range than negative film. The problem is that the shadows degrade very quickly into noisy mush. This is consistent with the data presented on ClarkVision, and my personal experience as well. By whatever method the negative is translated into print, this intrinsically limits available options for pulling detail out less exposed portions of the scene.

 

Here're some sample images from a quick test I ran a couple of years ago.<div></div>

<i>With slide film, you shoot, it's done!</i>

<p>

Who are you kidding! Somebody has to process and print your film, even if it's an undertrained teenager at the helm. It's done? You might get it in your customer's hands the same day if you do a few handsprings yourself.

<p>

In case you haven't been to a minilab recently, most have a kiosk or will accept a CD or a memory card and finish the job for you. We "process" images (or film) ourselves to retain total control over the process and the ensuing quality.

"It's done" in the sense that, if you have a reliable lab (I do), you just have to enjoy the results on a lightbox with a good loupe. Of course, where you go from there is a choice - scanning, printing, etc., or do nothing but store the slide until later.

 

The nice thing, for my limited finite mind, is that all the hard drives in the world cannot be as safe as a stored original transparency, as long as it's not humid or hot climate. Even the latest E-6 films can be stored for decades.

 

The crux of any film shooter's dilemma is this - will I be able to scan those nice chromes in 20, 30, or 50 year's time? Will Nikon still be making dedicated scanners? Probably not.

 

The advent of digital imaging has forced us to re-think many things. As little as ten years ago, I was quite happy with using my old Carousel to occasionally project my slides and I'd store them in Print File pages in binders - that's where they still live. I used to fish out a few for photo club competition and make the odd enlargement from internegs or whatever, to grace the walls of my house or my family/friend's walls.

 

 

Now, there's more of a sense of needing to digitize; this frustrates me to no end, as it's all time-consuming. No less so for processing RAW files. Optometrists must love the age of frequent changing of glasses=)

FWIW, I think that Canon is quite wrong. They simply don't want to bother correcting the plethora of misunderstandings about film, dynamic range, and latitude.

les - your tired, old, copy-and-paste rants are starting to make you look obsessed. possibly a little crazy. both here and at other sites on the web.

 

canon's marketing material does not say what you want it to say. even if it did, it would be in obvious error given the tests linked above.

 

you really need to get out more. stop worrying about who is using digital and who is using film. have some fun.

les - it's not canon's white paper, it's your rant.

 

since there are no tests to contradict clark's, what could i have to contribute? another test to confirm his results?

 

"king of dslrs"...yeah...you need to get out more.

"""""""With digital I had more demands on my time both at home and in the field. Every evening in the field I had to transfer the images from my camera to a laptop, and then make a backup of the files to a portable hard drive. I hid the laptop and the hard drive in different parts of the vehicle in case of a break in. With film, I just tossed the exposed rolls into my dirty laundry bag (no-one steals soiled undies and smelly socks!). The digital camera added at least an hour (usually more) onto each shooting day ? time that I would generally have used sleeping""""""".

 

If the end product of a roll of film that day is tossing it into the dirty laundry why couldn't he then just toss the memory card into the same dirty laundry bag or just take a large memory card. Why does he have to do all that computer stuff if he does not want to. I shoot film and digital and I don't take a computer in the field, I don't throw my film in a dirty laundry bag either.

 

""""'With digital I often have the ?fix it later attitude? which in the end creates even more work for me behind the computer""""".

 

All of the carefulness, planning and execution in shooting film can also be used when shooting digital. Just because you have a different format is no reason to change your attitude and to seek out low quality in your work. Getting it right in the camera is valid regardless of the format you are working with.

Basically the article is goofy. Film and Digital are both excellent formats and each has it's usefullness to me and many others..I think I will utilize both formats to the best of my ability. I shoot medium format (film) and digital (D200).

Les said,<i>"David, what evidence do you have to substantiate your claim that DSLRs have more latitude then negative film? Examples? Charts?"</i>

<p>

Fuji, Kodak and probably others publish characteristic curves for film, from which the dynamic range can be extracted. The charts are logarithmic, so if you divide the ordinate range by log 2 (0.301) you can find the equivalent differential in f/stops. The curves have a rather extend toe (low light) in which the density does not change much as exposure is decreased. For consistency, I extrapolate the corner point using tangents. DPReview has been doing something similar for digital cameras being reviewed. It's really not hard to make these measurements because the numbers in a digital image are there for the interpretation.

<p>

From published data, Fuji Velvia has a dynamic range of about 3.5 stops, Provia about 5 stops. Negative color film is better. Reala has a dynamic range of about 8 stops, while NPS160 and Tri-X have a range of 10 stops.

 

By comparison, a D200 (per DPReview) has a dynamic range of 8 stops. Interpreting DPReview's curve by the tangent method, I would place that at 7 stops, which is still very good.

Les,

 

You don't need an absolute starting point (i.e., light intensity) to measure the dynamic range, just a reasonably accurate way to measure the relative change. I rely on published data because I don't have a densitometer, nor any reason to get one.

 

I don't think is is reasonable to 'dis DPReview either. Their tests are fairly well standardized and they don't gush over everything they review, like most mags.

 

You don't need a densitometer with a digital camera, as long as the light source is consistent and the shutter and/or aperture is reasonably accurate. You change the exposure in steps and read the numbers from the image file.

Here's the 5D at ISO 200 shooting a Kodak gray scale; overexposed by 3 stops and then underexposed by 3 stops (relative to spotmetering 18% gray and centering the camera's meter readout), exposure corrected in Lightroom to place "M" at 50%, downsampled in Photoshop to 6MP.

 

Interesting that it holds highlights a full five stops above medium gray, but that one has to look closely to see that -5 EV is still just a tad above black. That gives a range of 10 stops with detail, 10 and 2/3 if you include true black and true white.

 

http://www.pbase.com/davidjl/image/76131098/large

 

http://www.pbase.com/davidjl/image/76131302/large

If you're testing dynamic range, wouldn't you be better off testing a backlit transparent target than a piece of paper? The dynamic range of a piece of paper isn't all that impressive compared to a slide or actual scene, is it?

Also, the -3 exposure pic was broken.

The dynamic range of reflected light from the paper step tablet is no match to that of anything with sky on the top and ground on the bottom. I am still questioning why comparing 5D MK II with extremely contrasty Velvia 50 and conclude that 5D MK II has greater dynamic range than all films. It's laughable that many people actually believe the false conclusion.