Advice on Switch from Film to Digital

[dglickstein]

Cathy,

 

That is an excellent point--now a days I almost exclusively shoot Kodak 100VS and I asked my dealer how to achieve similar saturation with digital and he said through Photoshop. I use CS2 now but with film I get the shot color I want when I take the photo (most of the time) and I don't want to be stuck behind the monitor doing the same with PS (I just don't enjoy it)--other people's experience with color saturation and digital would be appreciated.

 

Maybe I should have started a new post?

 

dG

[byronlawrence]

If you are interested in digital backs, don't forget to consider Leaf's new back the Aptus 22 (I hear it is a wonder).

 

there are methods of increasing saturation for digital files that work very well. also there is a color profile (I think it is calle ektaspace) that was designed for Kodak ektachrome film. My main problem in the past was getting color from film to digitize well, but I never had a high quality scanner. a digital camera really helped me a lot in this aspect. and with RAW files the color space is very large,, larger almost, than human vision can perceive. because of this, you can convert a RAW file to a color space like ProPhotoRGB and put color into ranges that are unprintable and technically unveiwable with your monitor... a dangerous thing for those who are not careful. I do however one day want to get a nice MF film scanner to compliment my RB67. I really do enjoy my results with that camera on Ektachrome film. when that day comes hopefully I can get great results from my film (I have an epson flatbed right now).

 

so to sum up I think that digital is just as capable in the color aspect of things, as film, although matching particular film curves and responses can be a challenge.

[bernard_korites]

I happily shot film, mostly landscapes with some family stuff, for over 40 years. Then, mostly because my kids kept telling me I was old and a retard and should get a life, I picked up a Sony 717. Actually, I needed a digital camera anyway to photo things for ebay and my web site and it was on sale at Ritz and Sony was offering a $100 rebate, so I bought it. I also got an Epson 2200 to make prints.

 

When I saw the quality of the images coming out of the Sony I thought I had finally reached photographic Nervana. Perfect pics with almost every shot, automatic white balance, perfect focus, no film/processing cost, more or less instant feedback. But then, the downside of digital started to set in.

 

First, for outdoor use I have found a digital camera to be a miserable tool. The lcd's are difficult to read in bright sun. Electronic viewfinders are no better. Memory sticks fill up at the worst possible time. I haven't bothered to calculate how many combinations of setting there are, but it must be in the thousands. Have one setting off, say resolution inadvertently set to low rather than high, and back up the mountain you go to retake all your shots.

 

Second, digital cameras are fragile. I was out with mine a few weeks ago, luckily just in the front yard, when the screen filled up with splotches of white. Fussed with the damn thing for half an hour before giving up and going back in the house for my faithful NIkon FM10 loaded with Velvia. Then a few days later I happened to stumble across a note on the net that Sony was issuing a recall. Apparently my 717 is one of dozens of different cameras made by Sony, Minolta, Fuji and others between 2002 and 2004 using faulty Sony sensors. Good thing it happened in my front yard and not after I had driven hundreds of miles or climbed several thousand feet.

 

My daughter's new Nikon 8700? crapped out last year shortly after she arrived in Panama on a photo expedition. Luckily she was able to borrow a friend's film camera for the rest of the trip.

 

She did have good luck with another digital camera on a trip to South America, but she spent a good part of her time looking for Internet Cafe's in Paraguay so she could download her filled up memory sticks.

 

Third, there's also something different about digital images. They're flatter than film in color, tone and depth. Pleasing, but different. I can understand the differences in color and tone, which can be overcome with post processing, but the flatter perspective is inherent, I think, and a result of the different lens/sensor geometry.

I haven't used a digital slr, maybe they are better in that regard.

 

Fourth, there's the archival problem. My slides go into plastic pages in loose leaf notebooks which I have indexed. I can find a slide from a trip to Vermont in 1998 in seconds. My heirs will, I like to think, treasure my slide collection. What would they do with a pile of cd's, most of which would probably be unreadable a decade or two from now?

 

Last summer my compter picked up a virus. The only way out was to reformat the hard drive. I watched while months of digital images went off into pixel heaven.

 

My Sony, once it gets repaired, will stay in the studio. For outdoor use, I will continue to use my reliable manual film cameras loaded with Velvia which I scan to 16 mp on my Minolts Scan Dual IV.

 

My suggestion would be to get a cheap pocket digital to play around with but stay with film for serious work. Get a scanner and scan slides. That way you have achivability, good quality images and all the benefits of the digital world.

[tom_m2]

<i>It is interesting to see that everyone is comparing film and digital and no one is discussing color...That is a topic of interest for me, usually working with Kodak E100VS and GX and some Velvia I am curious as to whether I will be happy with the colors of digital or the photoshop plug-ins which duplicate the films vs film itself. Maybe should be a seperate topic but it also deserves to be discussed here. Any thoughts?</i>

<p>

Change the contrast and saturation settings on your camera presets to match your preferences; that's the equivalent of choosing a particular film type. Alternatively, you can take RAW images and make the choice when you convert. Many cameras allow you to have multiple groups of presets and switch between them (the equivalent of interchangeable film backs).