Do top Professional photographers use film still ?

[photo5]

<blockquote>

<p><em>He shoots with large format cameras and I think he also uses medium format sometimes</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>I don't think digital will ever out-resolve large format, though it has already matched medium format with the top end high megapixel digital backs for medium format cameras. <em> </em></p>

<p>One day I visited the Seattle Art Museum in Volunteer Park and saw some incredible large prints made by a Korean-born photographer called <a href="http://www.cs.washington.edu/building/art/JohselNamkung/">Johsel Namkung</a>. His work blew me away, and these were huge prints of images he took with large format cameras over the years. I don't think digital will ever match this kind of quality.<em><br /></em></p>

[andylynn]

<blockquote>

<p>I don't think digital will ever out-resolve large format</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Never say never. Semiconductor manufacturing keeps getting better.</p>

[r_dolfs_putni__1]

<p>I think the question might sound more like- "Is there any demand for film photography?"</p>

<p>I am not a professional photographer though for me it seems that there are less and less people who appreciate high quality photography. So please hush me by telling that I'm biased by the place I live in. In Latvia there are some fine-art photographers who dabble in analog capture, but the market for their work is nearing nil. Other professionals (wedding, comercial and photojournalists) just say that the client does not give a flying crap about the method of capture- if only the product is acceptable. Film is expensive and using such a material significantly ups the expenditures so the math is dead simple. Even medium format as a species is quite rare and endangered and used only as a luxury method mostly for high profile comercial work. Large format is mostly left for amateurs to fool around.</p>

[kparratt]

<blockquote>

<p> <a href="../photodb/user?user_id=6070738">Rūdolfs Putniņš</a>, >> So please hush me by telling that I'm biased by the place I live in.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>You are biased by the place you live in. ;-)</p>

[bill_caulfeild_browne]

<p>For those who doubt digital will ever out-resolve large format - I think it has already exceeded 4 by 5 inch.<br>

Last week I had the privilege - and pleasure - of using Phase One's new IQ180 MFDB. It clearly out-resolves my (admittedly quite old) 4 by 5 images. It also has a greater DR.<br>

Bill</p>

[Spearhead]

<p>I never realized that I need to photograph resolution charts. I start out and try to make great photographs, whether prints or for clients or for online, and go from there. I apparently haven't reached the nirvana of shooting resolution charts and thinking that way. Maybe I will have to reorient myself, I think too much about the light, communicating ideas, showing something.</p>

[steve m smith]

<blockquote>

<p>Last week I had the privilege - and pleasure - of using Phase One's new IQ180 MFDB. It clearly out-resolves my (admittedly quite old) 4 by 5 images.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>The IQ180 back is 80 megapixels. If you are comparing it to 4x5 film of 20 square inches then that's 2 megapixels per square inch. If you translate that to the 1.33 square inches of a 35mm frame then that's 2.66 megapixels.</p>

<p>I don't think anyone will try to claim that 2.66 megapixels of digital would equal or even exceed the resolution of a 35mm frame. Therefore, 80 megapixels will not out resolve 4x5 film.</p>

 

[q.g._de_bakker]

<i>"For those who doubt digital will ever out-resolve large format - I think it has already exceeded 4 by 5 inch."</i><br><br>It really is fascinating to follow this 'credo' through time. It has been said, as part of the grand paradigm shift, ever since "professional quality digital" meant 3 MP. And it will be repeated, over and over again. So much so that it will be hard to notice and mark the point at which it will actually become true (if it ever will).<br>Notice how it just says "digital", and puts that against a particular format.<br><br>Mind you: this is not an anti-digital rant, but relevant to the thread. It is, because large part of that paradigm shift involved a marked lowering of standards, not just in what consumers were willing to accept. People indeed did accept featureless 3 MP images for professional use. It was not even uncommon to see pixelated images in 'professional' magazines. It did not matter, because it was that undefined, general "digital", and that alone was 'good enough'.<br>Will it ever matter whether <i>"digital wil ever out-resolve large format"</i>? I doubt it.

[Spearhead]

<blockquote>

<p> People indeed did accept featureless 3 MP images for professional use. It was not even uncommon to see pixelated images in 'professional' magazines. It did not matter, because it was that undefined, general "digital", and that alone was 'good enough'.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>What you have completely missed is that what mattered was what the photo did when people looked at it. It's only resolution freaks on photo forums that spend their time analyzing resolution chart photos to have this kind of discussion.</p>

<p>I have a photo I took a number of years ago with a Canon 10D, a very primitive camera by today's standards. that still runs full page in a magazine. I don't think, as a photographer, it looks like something I would do today, but people still talk to me about the photo. It has impact. The technical stuff doesn't matter.<br>

<br />That's why I don't shoot resolution charts. I'm not interested in producing photographs for other photographers, but for anyone who can appreciate a photograph. And that's why it doesn't matter if it's pixelated or noisy, either the photograph speaks or it doesn't, when one wants to do photography beyond resolution charts.</p>

[ondebanks]

<p>Bill said:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Last week I had the privilege - and pleasure - of using Phase One's new IQ180 MFDB. It clearly out-resolves my (admittedly quite old) 4 by 5 images.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Steve replied:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>The IQ180 back is 80 megapixels. If you are comparing it to 4x5 film of 20 square inches then that's 2 megapixels per square inch. If you translate that to the 1.33 square inches of a 35mm frame then that's 2.66 megapixels.<br>

I don't think anyone will try to claim that 2.66 megapixels of digital would equal or even exceed the resolution of a 35mm frame. Therefore, 80 megapixels will not out resolve 4x5 film.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>What we're seeing here is the difference between <em>potential</em> and <em>actual</em> performance. Steve is right: potentially, 4x5 film is way better than 80 megapixels. Bill is also right: in actual use, most 4x5 shots probably won't exceed that. I can think of 4 reasons why this is so:</p>

<p>1) Getting critical focus on the gg is hard enough, especially with wide-angles; but even if you succeed, the gg plane and film holder's plane are often subtly non-coplanar, and there's no way of knowing this without extensive and repeated testing on sheet film. The IQ180 has a form of live view which makes nailing focus guaranteed, whether on a MF SLR or a view camera, and this makes up for a lot of the real estate difference.</p>

<p>2) On top of that, there are random variations in sheet film flatness vs. perfect digital sensor flatness.</p>

<p>3) For "the same shot" (same angle of view and depth of field), the IQ180 can be shot 2 stops wider open, which means half the amount of diffraction; e.g. f/11 instead of f/22, a typical Large Format working stop. This dof-diffraction tradeoff is really important - it means that where substantial dof is required, unless tilts or focus stacking can be employed, there is in effect a ceiling to the attainable resolution of the scene. Bigger and bigger film/sensors are neutered by worse and worse diffraction. However, shooting scenes at infinity (e.g. astrophotography) is immune to this because the same f-stop can be maintained.</p>

<p>4) Not all digital sensors are the same: MFDBs like the IQ180 have no anti-aliasing filter to reduce resolution.</p>

<p>Having said all that: would you believe that the IQ180 cannot do exposures longer than 1 minute?!!! One area at least where $1/sheet film trumps the latest $44,000 PhaseOne backs!</p>

[graham_mitchell]

Probably <1%

[simon_crofts]

Or possibly >50%

[miesnert]

In fine art most photographers use film still.

It's also very common to make large format c-prints.

 

It's not just about resolution, the dynamic range of negative film is very different from digital.

[miesnert]

And I must say, I don't like to sit behind a screen to make/edit for printing, when I could be looking trough a lens

instead. Making analogue prints is also a very nice process.

[iangillett]

<p>There are some impressive 4x5 black-and-white images taken by Tomasz Gudzowaty using a Linhof Master Technika and Ilford HP5 that won him Second Prize in the Sports Category of the World Press Photo 2011. You can see them - with the technical details - on the new App for the iPad. Kenneth O'Halloran also won 3rd prize for portraits using a Linhof Technica and a Pentax 6x7.</p>

[q.g._de_bakker]

<i>"What you have completely missed is that what mattered was what the photo did when people looked at it. It's only resolution freaks on photo forums that spend their time analyzing resolution chart photos to have this kind of discussion."</i><br><br>No, no, Jeff.<br>The results were absolutely awful. Portraits, for instance, looked like people's skin was made of plastic. The editor/photographer/printer (or all of them) tried to eek out too much out of the images, far more than they had to give, producing all sorts of artefacts. That nevertheless were allowed to 'grace' the pages of hitherto quality magazines.<br>Nobody missed that.<br>The advent of digital photography was accompanied with a quite considerable drop in standards. The frame of reference, standards, the set of accepted believes changed dramatically.<br>What those awful, but fully accepted (because New Technology), images did was fill the viewer with 'disgust' (a bit of dramatic exaggeration, for effect ;-) But still, not untrue.) That same viewer however was told he should accept, and even like, the new professional way of creating images. If he did not, he would denounce himself as a bit of a retard. An Emperor's New Clothes type of thing.<br>That's what made the advent of digital imaging so interesting. We are not often given the opportunity to witness how believes (whatever they are) shift so dramatically.<br><br>Having said all that: is it possible to create memorable images using a 1.2 MP camera. Of course you can.<br>But that too is not the begin all end all of what makes images good images. It's like colour: you can make great images without. So what? Doesn't mean that colour doesn't provide an extra way to create equally great images that would not have been possible without it (i.e. the same image without colour would be mediocre, at best).<br>So you can create memorable images using a primitive device. Doesn't mean that non-primitive machines are for freaks.

[Dave Luttmann]

<p>Many different photographers in many different fields still do. As a wedding photographer, I have no problems with film. I chuckle at the comments about cost, etc. First off, I can grab 2 Nikon F5 bodies for under $1000. Two D3s bodies will cost $10,000. So the $9000 in savings goes a long way. Then there's the saved time in front of a computer when using film. I spend 1-2 hours or so sorting and completing a wedding shot in film....and 15 to 20 in digital. I guess some people think those extra 15 or so hours come for free....and some people think those multi thousand dollar DSLRs that get replaced every few years are free as well. <br>

If your film and processing costs are $450 to $650....just up the price by $500. Problem solved. I'm saving a fortune shooting with film. And when you think about it, I can get 2-3 Nikon F5 bodies, 2 Mamiya 645 bodies and a 4x5 camera for less than I can get a D3s body.....and yet people worry about $450 for film costs that they don't even need to pay. Kinda missing the point in my opinion.</p>

<p>Oh, and the clients have been loving the look of film.</p>

[richardsperry]

If you took a quality high res 35mm digital image.

Printed it to a medium format negative.

Then printed that negative to paper with an enlarger.

 

Show of hands, who could tell that it was shot on 35, please.

[bill_caulfeild_browne]

<p>Ray, you make some good points about why MFDB might more often match 4 by 5. I agree.<br /> The trouble with mechanical theory is that in practice the lack of film flatness, GG focussing nearly always get in the way! <br /> I don't shoot resolution charts - in fact I never have, and don't own any - but I do shoot very highly detailed landscapes. There is absolutely no doubt that my present P65+ images equal 4X5 in 40 inch prints - and that the IQ180 will certainly exceed. Forget theory - I'm talking about viewing large prints from proper distances in real life.<br /> Incidentally, the IQ 180 will make 2 minute exposures.<br /> Bil</p>

<p> </p>

[ellis_vener_photography]

<blockquote>

<p><em>I don't think anyone will try to claim that 2.66 megapixels of digital would equal or even exceed the resolution of a 35mm frame. Therefore, 80 megapixels will not out resolve 4x5 film.</em></p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>In my time I have shot quite a lot of 4x5 film, as well as a boxcar load of 35mm, medium format ( 6x4.5 to 6x17cm) film and even some 8x10. Not to forget several TB of digital images from 5.5 to 39mp. I've also recently shot with an IQ180 back as well. And yes the IQ180 does absolutely resolve , at a minimum, at least as much subject detail as even the best scanned 4x5 film or even 4x5 film looked at on a lightbox with the best loupe you can buy.</p>

<p>You can do the numbers all you like Steve, but I've seen the results with my own eyes. It is also a far more flexible and faster system to work with than any 4x5 camera (Sinar P, P2, & C, Arca-Swiss F, Linhof, Canham, Calumet, Graflex) cameraI've ever worked with.</p>

<p>Now does an IQ180 frame look like 4x5 film? No. But that is a different aesthetics based discussion. </p>

[photo5]

<blockquote>

<p>If you took a quality high res 35mm digital image. Printed it to a medium format negative. Then printed that negative to paper with an enlarger.<br>

Show of hands, who could tell that it was shot on 35, please.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Well that's not a very intelligent thing to do, is it? When you dupe a negative on to another piece of film, you're losing a generation of quality. So you lose fine detail and gain grain. If you already have the 35mm film, there is no point to dupe it on to medium format film. If you're going to dupe it for some reason, it's going to be 4x5 film anyway. But why dupe film? Dumb if you ask me. A native medium format shot will always look better than a 35mm piece of film duped to medium format or large format. Believe me, we used to burn film from digital scans (because the photographer can't find the original film to rescan) and it always looked like crap. Because you're losing a generation every time you do it.</p>

<p>A print made from the original 35mm film will always look better than a dupe, period.</p>

 

[q.g._de_bakker]

The comparison was between an optically printed, tiny sensor digital image and a medium format film image printed the same way.<br><br>I have my hand up in the air, Richard.

[gregory_c]

<p>What is film ?? just kidding !</p>

[richardsperry]

Q.G.,

 

Let's do an experiment.

PM me your mailing address.

I'll send you few black and white enlarged prints.

At least one is from a digital file converted to medium format negative. The others from medium format film shot with a

film camera.

If you can tell the difference, and explain why, I will pay postage both ways.

If you can't, you pay postage both ways.

[f_ph1]

<p>hi.<br /> i agree with Q.G. DeBakker.<br /> i remember a salesman at a local camera store telling a customer that the new, sub-$1000 digital rebel was likely the camera that would finally kill film.<br /> before that, it was the d100 that was supposed to kill film. then they were saying the d1x was really gonna kill it. then the d2x was supposed to be on par with medium format film.</p>

<p>i was a commercial art major in high school. we had to actually draw letters by hand with "primitive" instruments like the compass and ruler. we learned to use quill pens and ink, designer's guache, watercolor, and many other ancient tools, media and methods. <br /> then, along came photoshop and illustrator (and a little program called freehand). suddenly, much of the non-photographic art work on the covers of magazines looked like they were all done by the same artist. and most (not all) of it was not very good.</p>

<p>the advent of illustrator and its successors opened a field in which talent, skill and patience were absolutely indispensable for one to obtain success, let alone notoriety, to the slobbering masses, if you will (no offense to the masses intended).<br /> suddenly the bar was made much, much lower than it used to be.</p>

<p>now... to the point of the original post...<br /> i was hoping (against hope... audacity is not always enough) that this thread would not morph into the perpetually self-resurrecting digital vs. film post, but it has.<br /> i would like to know if there are any well known, sought after, still living photographers making their livings shooting film. why?<br /> because..<br /> i like film. despite all the b.s. repeated on forums such as this, despite what the marketing people say, despite what the salespersons at camera stores insist,<br /> i am convinced beyond any shadow of a doubt that digital technology has opened the field of professional photography to those with significantly lesser talents than were<br /> required in the days when film dominated. and it shows.<br /> even some of the "top" photographers are producing work that just does not seem to be inspired, to my eye. Annie L. has always been a favorite of mine; she may be one of few exceptions.<br /> although i much prefer the work she did with the 6x7 format, i always felt her claim to fame was an uncanny ability to orchestrate a scene. proof positive (pun intended), in my mind,<br /> that a great photographer can make compelling photographs with inferior equipment.</p>

<p>i, too, have grimaced at the sight of "jaggies" on magazine covers. i, too, have wondered why so many people would spend so much money on a medium format digital back, when the<br /> results still look digital (and to my eye, inferior... one could argue the "look" is different, and i agree. i also think that, in this case, different <em>does</em> denote inferiority, especially when talking about black and white).</p>

<p>finally, i have to agree with what i think is the spirit of Jeff's position. a photograph is compelling... or it is not.</p>

<p>so... which famous photographers still use film exclusively... or at least the majority of the time?</p>

<p> </p>