Is It Worth It?

[aplumpton]

<p>Nozar, very good points favoring film. Well processed B&W film negatives will last a few centuries, and maybe longer. I don't know about the pending arrival of better popular budget scanners. You may be right, although some of the best we had are now no longer made (Ex. the Nikon scanners) and technology improvement will be available only if there is a satisfactory market to bring it into production. </p>

[vrankin]

<p>Nozar, the 5 to 7 zone sensitivity argument no longer holds water. Current digital sensors from APS-C size and up, are easily capable of 12-14 and beyond, depending on which brand/model. There are other factors in favor of film, if one likes that look.</p>

[brett_rogers]

<p><strong>Alan</strong> that shot is gorgeous in every way that matters. Love it. Thanks for sharing it with us.</p>

[AlanKlein]

<p>Thanks Brett. That's very kind of you. Alan.</p>

[john_enea2]

<p>i have moved to almost 95%+ film in the last four years. I just prefer the workflow and the speed at image capture time. I found I slowed down, took my time and actually did much more pre visualization when shooting film as I know the number of shots was limited per roll. I do scan all my film, both black and white and slide. I enjoy it and the results are, for me, superior to digital (yes I have a very nice FF digital nikon camera).<br>

but the choice for you is the end results. are yo just gonna post images on the web? make 8x10 or smaller prints, or go larger? that was my deciding factor. I have yet to see a digital camera B&W print at 11x14 or larger than matches a film baased, enlarger used, print. Maybe soon, the pentax 645z looks very promising. but for a lot less, I can get, to me, better results more robust camera bodies and not have to worry about my camera be out dated in a year or two. film lets me worry about the end results, not what camera am I using</p>

[william_levitt2]

<p>I have been scanning my archive of black and white negatives over the past few months, all the time wondering if my shooting style can be replaced 100% with digital equipment. Up until last night, I was convinced that I could. And yes, I know it CAN be done, but at what cost? <br /><br />I have been scanning several hundred 8X10" negatives all the while totally forgetting that the type of work I've done over the years is a good mixture or landscape and architectural photography. The use of a view camera affords the photographer the ability to manipulate, on the ground glass, such things as converging lines and perspective, as well as the plane of focus. I realize there are digital backs for view cameras, but for me they remain far out of reach financially. So, can you go 100% digital? Sure. Would the digital file be better than scanning a negative? I would say yes. But keep in mind there may be limitations to the type of work you can produce, unless of course you have a nice size budget for equipment.</p>

[glen_h]

<p>I haven't done it, and I don't know which software supports it, but you should be able to do the manipulations you mention digitally. (Sometimes I read comp.dsp, the usenet newsgroup on digital signal processing, but I don't so often actually do it.) </p>

<p>Even more, you might be interested in the Lytro, which really allows for plane of focus manipulation later.</p>

<p>But most often, I do B&W film negatives because it is fun to work with them.</p>

[wblynch]

I use film and simple film cameras because it's fun and because the worldwide corporations ( the corpse ) tell me I can't

 

That makes it worth it to me.

[glen_h]

<p>Sometimes I use more complicated cameras, but old, simple cameras are fun, too.</p>

<p>I have a Kodak 1A folding camera that uses 116 film, and some rolls that I bought on eBay. Maybe only 25 years old, so most likely they work just fine. And everyone else is taking pictures with their iPhone.</p>

<p> </p>

[tate_jackson]

<p>Only if you think it is. I shoot sports photography 10 months out of the year. If I feel like I am getting bored or my creativity is getting cold, I break out a few film cameras from the collection and leave the digital cameras at home. Shooting a few dozen rolls of black and white reinvigorates me.<br>

After writing this, I have decided to shoot tomorrow's double header with a pair of F3HP's, a couple of primes and some Agfa APX 100 that has been in my fridge. Hopefully, I can find some time next week to go to the darkroom<br>

So yes, shooting film is very much worth it for me. I wish I could do it more often.</p>

[Uhooru]

<p>In my humble opinion, yes its worth it, but that doesn't mean pure digital capture and b/w workflow isn't. I shoot much more digital. I still see a difference with well done b/w film.</p>

[flavio_egoavil]

<p>If you have a scanner that is able to scan the film at an actual 4000dpi resolution, then yes, you would be extracting more or less all the information on the film. We're also assuming that the scanner is able to extract the full dynamic range contained in the film.</p>

<p>However, the typical scanners used today, like the Epson V750, only have an actual 2200-2400dpi of scanning resolution, and then these figures are of detail which is rather fuzzy, not crisp at all. So you're actually discarding a lot of detail when using such a scanner, and results using an enlarger would be better.</p>

<p>Finally, in such scanners, due to the effect of grain aliasing, grain will appear way bigger than it is when using films such as ISO 400 films. While the same print done optically will have much lower grain, and keeping all the detail.</p>

<p>As for DSLRs and comparison to films, the typical DSLR uses bayer mosaic sensors with an antialias filter. Thus a "24MP" camera doesn't really have 24 megapixels each one sensitive to all colors, but each pixel is sensitive to a different color. Thus there is an interpolation algorithm to "reconstruct" image detail. And the anti-alias filter needed to do such reconstruction without artifacts, is a filter that effectively blurs the image, discarding detail.</p>

<p>Of course, a sharpening algorithm applied afterwards restores sharpness, but not actual resolution. Thus, a 24MP typical DSLR has in reality about 12-18MP of actual pixel-sharp detail.</p>

<p>Now, for high resolution fine grained ISO 100 B/W film, like Fuji Acros 100 carefully processed, i'd guess 4000dpi of image capture would capture all detail there is. This would extract 22MP of actual resolution on a 35mm frame. In my experience you can typically get about 14MP of actual resolution of most 35mm films, and easily 6MP in the worst case. Thus we could say a 35mm frame has about 6 to 22MP of actual resolution, typically 14.<br>

<br />For a 6x7 negative there is exactly 4.53 times the area, so you can do the math: A 6x7 frame would have about 27 to 99MP of resolution, typically about 63MP. We're talking actual, pixel-sharp megapixels.</p>

<p> </p>