Is film still superior than digital for clarity / depth of colour?

[ellis_vener_photography]

<blockquote>

<p><em>Putting a filter over the lens changes the information in the RAW file that is available for interpretation in the first place.</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>True. very true - you are filtering out information that may prove very useful later. which is why I very strongly the conviction that what you say in the next sentence</p>

<blockquote>

<p><em>Changing in-camera or RAW file colour balance or channels is a poor cousin by comparison.</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>is the reverse of reality. By filtering a lens with a strongly dyed filter you are starting off by throwing away real world information you can be useful later in controlling local as well las global tonal relationships, even in B&W. </p>

[simon_crofts]

<blockquote>

<p>By filtering a lens with a strongly dyed filter you are starting off by throwing away real world information you can be useful later in controlling local as well las global tonal relationships, even in B&W</p>

</blockquote>

<p>You are throwing aways some information, but gaining other information. The amount of information gathered in the RAW file is the same, it's just different information. If that different information is the information that you needed to capture to achieve your intended result (this is what Ansel Adams meant by visualisation), then you get a much higher quality result than if you try to rescue information from the RAW file or negative afterwards.</p>

<p>To take an example, if you're using a digital camera in a tungsten light situation, you can set the WB to tungsten. That is what most of us do, because it's convenient. What that does is, very roughly speaking tell the RAW converter to interpret the RAW file in a way to boost the blue channel. So, let's say, it boosts the blue channel by one stop. But then it turns out that you slightly underexposed the whole file by one stop. Or you want to look in the shadows for extra information for some reason. But the blue channel has already been boosted by one stop and all the latent shadow detail in that channel has been used. When you tell the RAW converter to increase exposure by an extra stop, there is no information left in the blue channel, but plenty in the red and green channels. What you end up with is mucky shadows with a wierd colour cast. If you had used a tungsten filter and left the WB on daylight, there would have been plenty of info left in the blue channel and you would have had a much better file to work with - where all three channels had good information.</p>

<p>The same applies to colour negative film. Films like Portra have so much dynamic range, that it's often said that you can use them in tungsten light without using a tungsten filter. That's true, in the sense that they capture enough RGB information to give you a file you can work with (ie. rescue). But you get a different, better quality result if you use a tungsten filter and use the full capabilities of the negative. Really, taking Ansel Adams' concepts of visualisation and matching the negative - or RAW file - to the result that you wanted to achieve right along the change of production, from capture, through scanning (or RAW processing) to the final print (or other display media).</p>

 

[ellis_vener_photography]

<blockquote>

<p><em>To take an example, if you're using a digital camera in a tungsten light</em><br /><em>situation, you can set the WB to tungsten. That is what most of us do, because</em><br /><em>it's convenient. What that does is, very roughly speaking tell the RAW</em><br /><em>converter to interpret the RAW file in a way to boost the blue channel. So,</em><br /><em>let's say, it boosts the blue channel by one stop. But then it turns out that</em><br /><em>you slightly underexposed the whole file by one stop</em>.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>But the in camera color temp setting is only a suggestion. Once you are in your computer's raw processing program you can choose to use it or use a different color temperature and tint (magenta/green balance setting. You can also use one setting to output a TIFF or JPEG and then reset your Color temp + tint setting and output a second ( or a third, etc.) and then use these different documents as masked layers to control and blend the color balances in different parts of the image and possible do your Black and white conversion on the composite .</p>

<p>When you place a strong filter ( like an 80 series or one of the commonly used filters for enhancing B&W contrast in film days like yellow, orange, blue or green) over the lens you have a serious impact on the colors blocked by that filter. </p>

<p>Simon I need to thank you as our discussion has gotten me to work on a blog post for http://blog.ellisvener.com showing what can be done. I should have it finished by tomorrow if all goes well. </p>

[simon_crofts]

<blockquote>

<p>our discussion has gotten me to work on a blog post</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I'll look forward to reading it!</p>

<blockquote>

<p>But the in camera color temp setting is only a suggestion. Once you are in your computer's raw processing program you can choose to use it or use a different color temperature and tin</p>

</blockquote>

<p>You can - but you can only do so within the limits of the information captured in the RAW file for each channel - R, G, and B. No RAW processor can use information that hasn't been captured in the RAW file in the first place, no matter what settings you use.</p>

<p>So, on a camera like the D700, somewhere around, let's say, 7 stops of information is captured in each channel (it may reach 8 at lower ISO's, I haven't tried a scientific test to check). At the default RAW setting, somewhere around 5 or maybe 6 stops of information in the middle of each channel is used for the default output.</p>

<p>By instructing the RAW file to apply a particular WB to the file, you are telling it to boost one or more of the channels - in the case of tungsten WB, to boost the blue channel by looking into the unused darker stop of information in that blue channel. But there are strict limits you can do this in, and once you've done it, you can't brighten that channel any further. Nor can you brighten the RAW file without getting bad quality. If you'd used a tungsten filter instead of relying on tungsten WB setting in the RAW file, you'd be using the middle, high quality part of the blue channel, and there would be plenty of information in the RAW file for you to play with.</p>

[richardsperry]

<blockquote>

<p>It may be a rip off of the process, or inspired by it, but it's actually quite different.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>It is the process. It is detailed pretty much how I explained, it is found on pages 104 to 110 of The Print.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>Ansel Adams was on the contrary all about getting the contrast in the negative right in the first place to match the final print, so that the final dodging and burning was just the icing on the cake.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>To minimize the amount of dodging and burning. Not out of some purity of film principle or aesthetic.</p>

<p>Adams did not see blackened skies over Yosemite or Hernandez when he looked at them, any more than you will if you go there yourself. And those blackened skies, as printed, never made it to his negatives. They are very unrealistic, but they are how Adams wanted them printed. And his technique was not entirely perfect either, you can see a trace halo effect where his dodging and burning took place in Moon and Half Dome. At the intersection of the rock of Half Dome and the sky, and the foreground rock to the left and the sky; it is rather obvious when you look for it.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>It's not what Ansel Adams was suggesting at all, far from it, and the results are quite different, if bearing some similarities on a very superficial level.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Page 108 of The Print has extensive dodging and burning schematics. It is exactly what he was suggesting. And the results can be achieved with either an enlarger or computer just the same.</p>

[simon_crofts]

<p>I have Ansel Adam's book The Print in front of me at the moment, open at pages 104 to 110. And those pages only have a fairly basic description of dodging and burning.</p>

[ellis_vener_photography]

<blockquote>

<p><em>Ansel Adams was on the contrary all about getting the contrast in the negative right in the first place to match the final print, so that the final dodging and burning was just the icing on the cake.</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>He was, I suspect , given the media and tools that were available at the time, working to get the negative as close as possible to at oa good starting point for how he envisioned the final print - probably to make his life i the darkroom easier!</p>

<p>Ansel Adams often used a musical analogy from his life as a pianist: "The negative is the score, the print is the performance." and if you have ever seen different prints made at different times in his life fro the same negative you'd really get a sense of that. As he got older for example , skies were printed darker. </p>

<p>this is an early vision of "Moonrise over Hernandex, N.M." http://www.photographyuncapped.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Adams-Moonrise-Over-Hernandez1.jpg</p>

<p>This is how he interpreted the negative later in his life after living with and thinking about the possibilities of the same negative the photo for years ,as well as just getting physically older: http://www.westongallery.com/images/Adams_Ansel/moonrise_final.jpg </p>

<blockquote>

<p><em>Page 108 of The Print has extensive dodging and burning schematics. It is</em><br /><em>exactly what he was suggesting. And the results can be achieved with either an</em><br /><em>enlarger or computer just the same.</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>Except that with a computer it can be more precisely done (and undone and redone to get it right) and repeatable from print to print -- if you choose for prints to be identical to each other -- that is an option not a necessity -- and with less wasted materials and their expense. </p>

[simon_crofts]

<blockquote>

<p>He was, I suspect , given the media and tools that were available at the time, working to get the negative as close as possible to at oa good starting point for how he envisioned the final print - probably to make his life i the darkroom easier</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I think he was trying to achieve much more than that. he wanted to match the tones of the negative as closely as possible to the tones he had visualised in the final print. The point being not to make life easier, but because you get a totally different quality of print where you have captured exactly the information that you want in the negative, and you are using the best part of the tonal curve in the negative. Ultimately, it is not possible to rescue a thin negative, or one lacking in contrast, or one with too much contrast. The final result cannot be as good as a negative that has had its dynamic range manipulated to fit the scene (through push/pull processing).</p>

<p>RAW file processing is a bit different, but the general idea is the same. Ideally you want to capture all the information you need in the RAW file, and not waste capacity on unwanted information. And generally, you want to capture the critical information in the mid tones to the brighter part of the file, because that's where most of the information is. Recommendation for RAW files is generally to expose as brightly as you can without actually burning anything out.</p>

<p>The difference in approach is that with the negative film you could push/pull the film to match the contrast of the original scene, you can't do that with a RAW file (you can only change the contrast instructions when extracting information from it, which is a different thing, a bit like using higher contrast paper).</p>

[simon_crofts]

<p>If you're interested, there is an <a href="http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/expose-right.shtml">interesting article here</a> about the importance of exposing critical tones at the right part of the RAW tone curve. You can't fully rescue mistakes on this in post processing on the computer - you can try to hide it, but you can't create quality of information that wasn't there in the first place.</p>

<p>This is very much the kind of thing I was talking about - capturing all the information in the part of the RAW tone curve that you want to, and making sure that all the info you need is captured. And the equivalent of what Ansel Adams was banging on about in connection with negatives and film.</p>

 

[ellis_vener_photography]

<blockquote>

<p><em>he (Ansel Adams) wanted to match the tones of the negative as closely as possible to the tones he had visualised in the final print.</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>But getting the exposure right makes raw ( or film) processing easier and simplifies getting a photograph ready for reproduction as a print, reproduction by offset press, or in other forms. </p>

[simon_crofts]

<p>I don't disagree, I'm really saying it makes the processing not only easier, but also actually leads to a higher quality result, a result that you can't achieve with a badly exposed RAW file or negative.</p>

 

[richardsperry]

Simon,

 

I'm probably misunderstanding you.

 

But anyway. I've been PhotoShopping for a very long time. I've been doing wet photography for much shorter; and

most of that was intuition, trial and error, self taught. But the majority of that time I was trying to do my wet prints with

the least amount of photoshopping. Only relatively minor dodging and burning, using one MG filter, etc.

 

It really was after reading The Print, I realized how extensively wet prints can be photoshopped. I had the techniques

down from PhotoShop; it was more kind of a permission thing.

 

Ellis rightfully states that with PS I have much more control, small brushes for example. I thought spotting brushes and tools were primarily for repairing old or damaged prints. Adams, in The Print, explains he used them for new, to be sold prints. He even subbed that job out to others, and explains how to do it. I suppose one could even use those tools to whiten flaws with some kind of bleach. But it is extremely fine photoshopping, say equivalent to a small 5 pixel brush in PS.

 

I wouldn't want to do this detailed work on a 200 run of prints. I'm sure Adams didn't either. But on a single print, not a big deal. So again, it was kind of a permission or behavioral thing. And you can read that Adams himself struggled with this, combatted contemporary critics and colleagues, and I infer from his statement that he believed that he only became a good photographer in 1927; I believe that this is when he realized the extent that he was able to photoshop extensively his prints(for his prints before that had much less of his trademark qualities).

 

The film, the negative is not something to be considered in and of if itself, or retained in some pristine state. I don't think that photoshopping wet prints is really all that technically hard or complex either. I've been doing those same techniques in PS for years. The film negative is merely a glob of clay for a sculpter, tubes of paint for a painter, a written score for the pianist.

 

How many photographers say, "here, look at my photographs", then show someone their perfectly exposed negatives?

[simon_crofts]

<p>Richard, we seem to be talking about two totally different things. You seem to be talking about dodging, burning and other adjustments in Photoshop. That's all fine, whatever you want to do - you can do this more or less, it's up to you.</p>

<p>I'm talking about creating the files (whether digital or film) in the first place. Later, you can take those files, and do whatever you want with them in Photoshop. But if you don't have good material to work with in the first place, then you're severely limited with what you can do with your dodging and burning or whatever.</p>

<p>In other words, in Ansel Adams terms, you seem to be talking about the performance, I'm talking about how to write the Symphony in the first place. If the Symphony is badly written and boring, even the best performer is not going to perform it as a masterpiece.</p>

<p>From what you are writing, I have the feeling you might not have fully read up on Ansel Adam's ideas on the Zone System. You can't read "The Print" in isolation, the dodging and burning bit is almost a last detail - just part of the performance. You need to read and understand "The Negative" and "The Camera" bit first. "The Negative" is really the core of the system.</p>

<p>A very brief overview on Ansel Adam's ideas ofvisualisation and the Zone System <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_System">here</a>. The next task is to work out how it might be applied in a digital RAW environment, which is what I was banging on about in my previous posts.</p>

 

[James G. Dainis]

So, which is better, film or digital?

[photo5]

<blockquote>

<p>So, which is better, film or digital?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Why not decide for yourself?</p>

[richardsperry]

<p>Simon,</p>

<p>As long as there is information in the pixel, not 255, 255, 255 or 0,0,0, you can manipulate it to whatever you like.</p>

<p>And from my experience, I have yet to find a paper with the same photographic response range as film. I can see detail in the whites, and details in the shadows on the negative. When I go to print to paper, I can have one or the other without photoshopping a lot. If I print for the shadow detail, the wisps of shadow in the clouds are pure white; if I print to get those wisps of shadows in the clouds the shadows are pure black. Like I said, I am self learned with this, if you have a way to get all of the negative image onto the paper with no manipulations,,,please enlighten me. If you know of some Supapaper, please tell me which one it is.</p>

<p>I am not really sold on the Zone System yet. A pixel has 256 zones(in black and white), not 10. It seems like a great system to get a good middle ground negative. Which can then be molded to my will.</p>

<p>And for instance, how does it help when BOTH digital and film/paper do not have anywhere the dynamic range of a scene. At best they can at the highest, print paper white or pixel white. For example, I take a photo of a white car with chrome in full sunlight. At best, the white car is the color of the paper. What about the reflections of the sun off the chrome. It is completely impossible to capture that on either digital or film/paper. If I cram all of the light of this scene, into 10 zones, it's not at all demonstrative of the scene, for the white car is going to have to be grey. I can walk that white paper over to that white car, and its going to be the color of the paint(maybe), not the highlights and reflections(which are way whiter/brighter than white paper or a white pixel).</p>

<p>And I don't see what is so special about the RAW environment. It is merely unfiltered data captured by the camera, without camera processing. Usually filtering that I would apply later in PS manually myself(my Nikon is set to Vivid almost always). I could capture in TIFF, and it wouldn't make any difference besides file size being greater. As long as there is data stored in that pixel, I can do something with it.</p>

<p>And I disagree about your conclusion of The Print, for now. I have been working hard to get away from your line of thought, actually. The printed out image is the only part of the performance which matters. When I do do that, stop thinking like you, a whole range of prints become available to me. </p>

<p>When I stop and think that that paper is only paper with gelatin and silver salts on it, and does not care how it is exposed to light, all sorts of printing become available way beyond a single perfect negative. What if I expose a neg with a photogram, multiple negatives combined to form collages of sorts. What if I spray the developer onto the paper instead of dunking it, or just spray the fix. What if I tilt the easel. These things only come into my head after I realized that a paper print is just as malleable as a digital file, softer than any clay or oil paint.</p>

<p>You've probably had years of photography higher learning. I don't have that, I will leave the Symphony stuff to you. I will go back and read The Camera, it may be a light bulb to go off, who knows. But honestly, if there is any data(in the form of exposed grain) on my negatives(from Zone 1 to Zone 9), I can get that info out and manipulate it any way I like. I have shown people my negatives just as a matter of conversation I suppose, not one of them has said to me, "Ohh, ahh, great negative, can I have one".</p>

[richardsperry]

<p>Oh, and here is my Adam's El Capitan knockoff, I was talking to Dan about. I just did this this morning doodling around.</p><div></div>

[simon_crofts]

<p>Richard, I don't mean this in an offensive or patronising way, so please don't take it like that, but from what you're saying it's clear that you haven't yet grasped how the Zone System works at all, or where Ansel Adams was coming from.</p>

<p>To explain it all here in a short space is probably a greater task than I'm capable of (and I'm in the middle of processing tons of RAW files to a deadline, so can't even try!), but I would really recommend going on an advanced developing/printing course specialising in this sort of thing - and advanced image processing courses. And re-reading The Negative, The Camera, and The Print. But read them in the right order, don't start with the last one. And read up other people's descriptions on how the Zone System works.Then you need a lot of practical experience - print, print, print. Adjust hundreds of images a week in Photoshop, print dozens more, use traditional and modern techniques, variable contrast printing, scanning, Photoshop, adjust and prepare and print hundreds, nay thousands, of images day in day out.</p>

<p>You don't need to use the Zone System in your day to day photography - very few people do that. But if you properly and fully <em>understand</em> it, then you can use that understanding as a basis for all sorts of approaches.</p>

<p>Again, the El Capitan "knockoff" is really not an example of good processing at all - burnt out clouds, blocked up shadows, mucky mid tones, it is many worlds away from Ansel Adams. Again, I don't mean this in an insulting way, we all have a lot to learn, but it is just further evidence to me that you aren't clear about how Adams worked, the kind of quality of his prints, the way his visualisation and Zone System worked, and the fundamental differences between his kind of large format craftsmanship photography, and knocking out badly processed small format images using a few filters and a bit of dodging and burning in Photoshop.</p>

<p>Again, that sounds a bit brutal, and it's not meant to be. Ansel Adams was a master of his art. I don't actually like his photography that much - but that's beside the point. He was a full time professional, not only that, one of the greatest names in photography of all time. He knew what he was doing, and he was a master craftsman. As a part time amateur (I assume) you really can't hope to rival him just by discovering the red channel in Photoshop and darkening and lightening parts of the image.</p>

[richardsperry]

Solve the problem then.

 

How do You put 20 zones of light into 10?

 

The clouds I saw that day were completely white(paper white). The shadows in the trees were completely black. That

is what my eyes saw that day. The sky was obviously blue, and much lighter in tone.

 

El Cap was taller, of course.

 

How would you shoot that scene that day?

[simon_crofts]

<p>This is getting way beyond the scope of this thread. But, in brief, there are ways to achieve it. Again, read the Zone System.</p>

<p>But, in very brief, you wouldn't have had 20 zones outside. Acquire a spot meter, like Ansel Adams used. I'm sitting in a darkish room with bright sunlight outside, and the most I can achieve from shadow areas in the room to brightly lit bits outside, is 13 stops. In a wholly outdoor scene, you won't find 20 stops difference unless you head into a cave.</p>

<p>But, Ansel Adams' approach was to expand the dynamic range of the negative through exposure and processing. A negative achieves greater dynamic range when it is pulled in processing. So he would measure all the tones around the scene, and expose that scene with the intended processing in mind. So, if the scene's contrast was beyond the normal dynamic range of negative film, then he would overexpose the film by a given number of stops that he established through testing, and then he would pull process the film accordingly.</p>

<p>There were other techniques - for example you could use a two-stop bath developer which considerable increased the dynamic range of the film. In some circumstances you might use coloured filters to help too (eg. green filter to lighten dark foliage).</p>

<p>With RAW files, you can't do this. You are stuck with the dynamic range of the sensor. What you can do is make more than one exposure, and combine these exposures in post processing afterwards.</p>

<p>But the whole idea is not just capturing highlight and shadow details, it's also about how mid-tones behave. And with colour, you have all the same considerations, but three separate colour channels to consider.</p>

<p>Again, it's way beyond the scope of this thread, but those are a few of the things that you would be looking at. There are other techniques. For example - flashing the film to obtain even greater dynamic range (just the same as you can flash the paper). And processing RAW files in different ways to extract details that are otherwise hidden. And so on and so forth.</p>

[simon_crofts]

<p>Also, as a general observation - in photography, there are no prizes for coming up with excuses about why you couldn't get the results in a particular set of circumstances or on a particular day. As a professional photographer, clients don't want to hear that the lighting was really hard so that's why the tones are burnt out. They just want great pictures.</p>

<p>Ansel Adams prints would not be worth millions if they were accompanied by notes telling buyers that it would have been a really great photo, if only he'd been able to retain the highlights or if only the mid tones weren't so mucky.</p>

<p>That's where the craftsmanship comes in - having the technical knowledge, the skill, the experience, to get results where others couldn't.</p>

 

[scott_ferris]

<p>At the risk of seeming flippant, and I am not being. I would have shot 5 bracketed RAW digital images, doing that I would have retained every bit of detail in the clouds and the shadows. If the image was subsequently worth the effort I would have taken the time to blend the exposures in post in any number of ways to get the tonal range and clarity I wanted.</p>

<p>Whilst Ansel Adams was a master, a true master, of the technology of his time, I think it is too easy to proclaim his way, and the way he got his results, as the way to get similar results now. I believe, if he were working now, he would be using digital imaging techniques, not in the hamfisted way that so many people do, but in the masterful way that he had. Who would bet against an Ansel Adams PhotoShop plugin?</p>

[simon_crofts]

<blockquote>

<p>I believe, if he were working now, he would be using digital imaging techniques, not in the hamfisted way that so many people do, but in the masterful way that he had.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>That's exactly what I am arguing in favour of doing. Using digital techniques to their full to get the ultimate quality, from capture, through RAW processing (or development and scanning, if you're using film), into processing the output, and right up to the final print/projection/web display/light box, whatever the final form is.</p>

<p>What many people don't realise is, the importance of capturing the right information in the RAW file/the negative, and the scan, and interpreting that information in the right way. Too many think that you can fix it all in Photoshop afterwards. With predictably bad results.</p>

<p>Of course, I'm not saying we should work like Ansel Adams. All I'm saying is, that if you can't understand the principles behind how he worked using traditional methods, then you stand little hope of doing a good job using digital techniques in the model age.</p>

 

[tom_mann1]

<p>Simon, Richard - Just a minor side comment from the peanut gallery, and I certainly don't mean to derail the interesting conversation ... On my system, it's pretty obvious that Richard's clouds are not even close to being completely blown out, and there is substantial detail in the darkest areas -- it's just that these areas lay in the lowest and uppermost 10 or 15 levels of the 256 level tonal spectrum. To illustrate that there is detail in these ranges in his image, see the attached image. This version is not meant to be put nose-to-nose with an Ansel print, just to illustrate that detail is there and is available to work with. If I had been working with a larger, 16bpc version, the results would have been even better.</p>

<p>Back to our regularly scheduled programming. ;-)</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

<p>PS - I just noticed that there are a couple of small areas of the clouds that are maxed out. I hadn't noticed this earlier.</p><div></div>

[simon_crofts]

<p>Tom, they're very burnt out, as you can see by a quick glance at the histogram for a crop of the image (which I haven't altered in any way from the original):-</p>

<p><img src="http://www.croftsphoto.com/photonet/clouds.jpg" alt="" /></p>