Still photography

[flatwood]

....So if you don't mind losing clients to guys like me, then yes, save yourself $50 on film so I can make $200 next time they need shots done......

$200 bucks. You're pricing yourself way too low for that kind of quality!!! :o

[Patrick]

Unbelievable - this thread has turned into another one of these endless 'digital vs film' debates - I am so tired of these! They go on and on endlessly with both opponents refusing to quit.

I don't want to contribute to the debate, as I have had more than my fair share of these before, but I can't resist in chiming in with ths little nugget...just this once!

35mm still cameras do still offer a few advantages over digital, particularly the older cameras with mechanical shutters. A mechanical camera is indispensable if you do lots of time exposures. With these old workhorses, you could do time exposures for hours night after night and never have to worry about battery issues.

Of course, with a digital or modern film camera, you could have spare batteries but occasionally we do find in ourselves in situations where for whatever reason, we don't have our spare battery with us.

A few years ago on Kangaroo Island on a beach house at night, a lightning storm was starting to develop and I grabbed my tripod and cable release, ready to do some time exposures. At that time I had a Canon AE1 and a Canon A1 - both of these cameras having electronically controlled shutters. For some truly bizarre reason and the worst possible luck, the batteries in both cameras died at the same time, even before I was able to expose a single frame, so I was unable to photograph the lightning storm. Yet both cameras were working fine previously during the day. If only I had a camera with a mechanical shutter at that time however.

Only last year, there was a good lightning storm which occurred near my home and I set up on the front verandah photographing it with my Canon AE1. Usually, these sort of batteries last for months and this particular battery has been in my camera for months and it went flat during the time exposures. I did have a brand new replacement battery inside - so I went inside, switched to the new battery and then resumed shooting.

Though a few weeks later, there was another lightning storm around my home. This was an extremely long storm that went on for about six hours. I was doing long exposures with my Canon AE1 equipped with the new battery that I had inserted a few weeks previously during the last storm. However, doing time exposures over such a long time period was too much for this new battery and it died, and I didnt have a spare this time. I did have my newly aquired Canon FTb with mechanical shutter so I rewound the film and loaded it into the FTb. Now I could continue shooting with no worries about batteries. This was a risky maneouvre however because I had only just recently purchased the FTb and I had not fully tested it. Though I had no choice. I am happy to say that the results turned out fine.

Regarding long exposures in photography, I have heard that with digital cameras, the longer the exposure time, the more 'noise' is generated. Though I do know that software exists that can remove this 'noise'. However, I do not know how effective such software would be when coping with extremely long exposures with a digital camera (over several hours) where the resulting image has an insanely high level of 'noise.' Perhaps in such cases, the software might remove some fine detail in the image while trying to clean it up but I cannot say - I have no experience with this myself. Though what I like about doing time exposures on film is that I don't have to worry about such issues - the image is clean at the moment of exposure.

Having said all that, I must say that both film and digital cameras have their own strengths and weaknesses, and quality is not too much of an issue nowadays as I have seen some very impressive images from both mediums. So I hope that this film vs digital debate can be laid to rest and this thread can continue with positive discussions about photography in general.

[wado1942]

Both my 35mm cameras have mechanical shutters. The battery only controls the light meter in both. Though I have no autofocus, that's something I don't need.
As for digital cameras and noise, I was visiting my mother and she has a D50. She takes a lot of pictures but she often has a hard time getting them to look right. So we went on an outting and I used her camera the whole time using only manual controls to show her the value of taking charge of them. We came across some bats in a really dark area and there's no way the camera would have captured them in auto mode so I set the camera to expose for 1/2 second and pushed the camera up against a rock wall for stability. The pictures turned out nearly perfect except for some slight motion blur due to the bats movement and my own slight shifting of position during the exposure. Now granted this isn't a super long exposure like hours but the image was far better than it would have been if I had relied on the gain circuits to get the correct exposure. Noise wasn't much of a problem using the longer exposure. Now there ARE denoising filters but they do kill a lot of detail in process just like audio noise reduction does.

[Patrick]

Another thing I like about having photography as a hobby is that it can come in handy when you want to send a card to a friend or relative. If I need to send a greeting card or postcard to someone for whatever reason, I usually prefer to use one of my own photographs and make my own card, rather than buy a card from a shop. An image of a scenic landscape or wildlife, a sheet of card, some scissors and glue are all that's required to create something special. Of course, when I am overseas, I buy local postcards and send these to people I know - supporting the local artists and the economy.

[lord_rover]

...35mm still cameras do still offer a few advantages over digital, particularly the older cameras with mechanical shutters. A mechanical camera is indispensable if you do lots of time exposures. With these old workhorses, you could do time exposures for hours night after night and never have to worry about battery issues....

Right you are! And long time exposures are the reason I still use my Olympus OM arsenal.
These are the very best not only for long exposures but also for everything macro. Even today they have an advanced TTL flash system (apart from being non-wireless). They are unbelievably small, handy and robust, akin to a Leica M-series turnes into an SLR.

I have an unbelievably big choice of sharp, wide aperture lenses and the unsurpassed multi-spot light reading, which altough not as "fast" as fully automatic matrix or ESP reading at least gives me the choice over what I'm doing. Even with bracketing my Dynax7 is never able to render Kodachromes the same way my OM-4 does.

It's sad to see that Olympus dropped many of these features when turning digital with the E-series, although they are by no means "bad" cameras. Thinking about acquiring a used E500 right now...

Alex

[MovieStuff]

Well if quality doesn't matter, then fine, digital is the way to go.

Not really. How about "Well if quality doesn't matter, then fine, super 8 is the way to go." There are always people that don't understand a medium. Some could say the same bad things about 35mm reversal, if all they ever get is high contrast, burned out whites and plunging blacks due to incorrect application of the medium. I prefer to look at digital as just another, new emulsion and one that will replace film entirely so everyone better get used to it and understand it, even if you don't care for it at the present time. But there is nothing lacking in quality about digital, if shot correctly. It is just a different quality and one that looks just terrific when used properly. While it's true you can't shoot digital the same as negative, you also can't shoot reversal the same as negative. You have to know how to work with digital just as you have to know how to shoot reversal; they're all different, in terms of color, contrast, gamma, etc. I think your statement would be better rephrased "If you don't know how to shoot digital correctly, then film is the safer way to go". But a lack of quality in digital these days? Hardly. The internet is full of stunning digital stills that no one would ever know was not shot on film. It's all about the photographer, not the medium, and always has been.

Roger

[mattias]

digital is much sharper and cleaner, so you can print medium format quality posters from a small slr, that has to count for something? a 24x36 frame is slightly soft and very grainy at anything over a3 or so. that can look cool but most people don't want it. for good looking 10x15 copies i still prefer film because of the depth and texture. and if there's a lot of contrast, which digital can't handle, but then again neither can reversal. i'm with roger. they are just two different ways of taking pictures. surely just using either/both for whatever situation you're in must be the solution to the whole debate, right?

/matt

[wado1942]

digital is much sharper and cleaner

Really? Then why are so many bill boards printed from Kodachrome?

[mattias]

digital is much sharper and cleaner

Really?

yes. really.

Then why are so many bill boards printed from Kodachrome?

did you dream that up or what? many billboards are shot on digital, even small format digital, and those who are shot on film are shot on medium or large format, and never (well, there could be exceptions) kodachrome.

/matt

[mattias]

here's an experiment you can try: a billboard might be let's say 60x90 inches. printed at 50 dpi that's 3000x4500 pixels, or about 12 megapixels. now take your dslr and shoot a still at that res. then shoot a 24x36 still and scan it at 3000 dpi. then just zoom in and compare. you may think the film frame looks "better", and depending on the subject that's not unlikely at all, but it will look softer and certainy grainier.

/matt

[flatwood]

.... that's not unlikely at all, but it will look softer and certainy grainier....

The perceived sharpness of a good digital photo is what sells it. Im headed back south for more shooting in a burn patch next week. Ill toss my Nikon FM into my kit and shoot some slides if I get a chance and let my client decide which he likes better. The good news is, the forestry service has approved our new helicopter mount and is going to let us install it in one of their Hueys. If I had four arms Id take my Canon 1014E and finish the cart of K40 Ive got in it. Maybe if theres room in the Hummer Ill toss it in anyway. Might be cool for some BG shots since this is supposedly the last shoot for this project.

[MovieStuff]

digital is much sharper and cleaner

Really? Then why are so many bill boards printed from Kodachrome?

In fact, they aren't. Billboards are produced basically one of three ways. If not created completely in the comptuer, artwork is digitally drum scanned off of large neg or 8x10 Ektachrome trans and then printed via paint-jet to large sections of canvas (not really canvas but that's what they call it), either as a whole canvas or in 3-4 foot wide sections that are then mounted side by side on panels. This method is used for billboards needing continuous tone with faces and other photo-realistic imagery for wide release, say 50-100 billboards. The next method is bill boards are scanned and printed using silk screen, again either as a total canvas or in sections. Silk screening is used for limited release where photo-realism is not required, even though it is possible. The last method, which is still used widely, is simply hand painting. This is used for limited coverage or one-offs and I know of about 12 master billboard painters in Houston that stay busy doing photo-realistic billboard work. Kodachrome might be used for some source material if happens to exist but isn't required and digital is pretty much SOP in the billboard industry now.

Roger

[wado1942]

Mattias, I don't doubt a scanned slide will look softer than a 12MP photo. It's the nature of the beast. My tests show that CCDs resolve "perfectly" until the detail becomes greater than the nyquist limit of the sensors, then NOTHING! It's a weird look really but focus charts are like magic on video and digital cams because of that fact. Film on the other hand, looses resolving capability very gradually and the lines of resolution slowly start to fade into one another as the detail gets finer. For instance, my Canon GL1 resolves about 400 lines but my Canon 1014E with PlusX projecec through my Belle & Howell resolves around 500 lines. A scanned version of that will probably show the resolution closer to 600 lines because my projector lens isn't the greatest. Never-the-less, the GL1 appears sharper even with the artificial sharpening at 0. And now that I think about it, the artificial sharpening digital cameras do probably adds to people's perception that really expensive digital cameras are sharper. Perception is a funny thing. Last week, I went to watch some test footage shot on negative film @ 24fps with an optical print and was rather amazed that the full gate image resolved around 1000 lines which we measured using a micrometer. The projected image BTW was only about 90CM high. Man it was beautiful. Of course had THAT been scanned it would probably still look soft because as you probably know, any time you convert one form of media to another, you lose a lot of quality. You lose more quality going from the scanned image back to a print too. This is why I can instantly tell when a movie in the theater used a digital intermediary even if it was color-timed in the traditional fasion. When they add digital color-grading to the proces, I usually find the movie unwatchable.

[wado1942]

sorry MovieStuff, I started my previous post before you posted yours. I read an article a few weeks ago saying that a lot of bill board photographers used Kodachrome because it could be enlarged several meters while other films like Ektachrome and digital shots could only be enlarged to maybe 1/2 meter without the image falling apart. Perhaps it was wrong. I'll see if I can find the article and check the references.

[MovieStuff]

.... and if there's a lot of contrast, which digital can't handle, but then again neither can reversal. i'm with roger. they are just two different ways of taking pictures......

I have mentioned this before but I think it is important to consider. Kodak may rate a negative stock at 100 ASA but that really represents the maximum ASA you can rate it and still have it acceptable. But "acceptable" doesn't really = "best". Rating it at 50 ASA will usually make neg look better. Does that mean Kodak mis-rated the film stock? No but it does mean that you have to veer away from the "norm" to get the best results from that particular medium. Likewise, digital still cameras like the Canon Rebel look much better if go the other way and you under expose about 1 stop. This protects the whites and prevents burn out and there is still tons of information in the black areas that can be brought out later in Photoshop, especially if you shoot RAW. This means that you have to veer away from the factory presets on most digital cameras if you want the final result to look the best.

Now, some purists may say that you should not have to alter your exposure from the norm if digital had the proper latitude. But latitude is going to be different from one film stock to the next, as well, and the truth is that the average consumer shooting neg stills will under and over expose all the time, only they never know it because the lab will correct for that during the printing stage. So there is no crime in altering exposure from the norm to achieve the best results. But with so many consumers printing their own pictures directly from digital, for them to suddenly be an expert in Photoshop to finish the image properly in post is unreasonable, so the factory presets on digital still cameras makes the photos bright and snappy, usually at the sacrifice of the whites. This leads to the false assumption that digital can't handle contrast when, in reality, it is the user that doesn't know how to handle contrast when making the initial exposure. This same consumer shooting reversal like they shot negative would be in for a rude awakening after picking up their film from processing, I think. Digital is very much like reversal in many ways, in fact. But, in my opinion, digital is superior because you can't shoot reversal in the RAW mode and pull information from the black areas like you can with digital. Black on Kodachrome is freakin' black.

Roger