Any technical explanations as to how or why film sharpness looks different from digital sharpness ??

Sergey Ko said:

90% digital photos nowadays done with smartphone with its hidden enhancing logic. Just try to take a photo of the morning mist to understand. Using some extra enhancers make photos even more sharp.
It becomes a standard for the image, and even scanning we play according standards.
I often use in retouching "blur" not "sharp" tools, not to follow this trend. But I am already not a PRO for 25 years & I not looking for thousands of followers on Flickr & Insta...

Scan:

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I like this idea. More grain and then blur the image. I'll have to practice shaking the easel to test how much is enough.

I just saw this on photostackexchange about why film looks "softer"

Sensor cells accept light from the front only and are not affected by light striking adjacent cells. The crystals of silver bromide in film are sensitive to light striking them from any angle, so light bouncing around inside the emulsion causes film images to look a bit 'softer' due to this effect, called 'irradiation'. Film can actually capture more detail than digital sensors, but it looks 'softer', because the light diffuses within the film itself and affects adjacent crystals. That does not happen with sensors.

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chuckroast said:

I really agree with this. When I was a callow youth, I thought the tools mattered entirely and the right tools would make me good. I was wrong.

Then I thought the tools didn't matter all that much - I was making Aaaaaaaaaart (tm), and my "vision" was all that mattered. And I was wrong.

As I came into more artistic maturity, I came to understand that tools are important because they can free you, but they also influence how you work.

I shoot very differently with a 35mm Nikon, a digital Nikon, a Hasselblad, or a view camera. These tools enable various options to allow me to attempt to express my vision, but they also deny other options. It's a symbiotic relationship. Understanding that helps you pick the right tool when you need it.

So tools are NOT just tools, they are an integral part of the creative process. That said, it's also true that new buttons begged to get pressed, it's just human nature. We are currently in the digital button pressing stage. This too shall pass. (cf my prior post on how synthesizers didn't put Steinway out of business.)

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A good photographer will be able to max out a point and shoot with creative use, and/or just being able to compose and chose light much better than any random person off the street.

Same random person handed an SLR with a 135mm lens, would get terrible shots. Motion blur, get squeezed into corners, boring “looking up” shots, not understanding the possibilities of flatting perspective etc.

That’s what’s special about tools, they augment the senses and the limbs.
The tool and user merge.
Powerful tools always takes an effort to learn. No exception.

Weak tools like point and shoots or tricycles is easy to learn and understand. And in a masters hand they can reach heights they were not designed for.

But a really worthwhile tool like an SLR with a long, normal and short lens, or a real bike, needs a long period of getting to know your new limb or sense. As a reward they will allow you to do remarkable stuff.

Re: grain size and pixel size, pixel size for a 20mp sensor is 6.25 microns.
I calculated the average grain diameter from table 2.1 p4 here:
[this is for undeveloped grains and has to be multiplied by the square root of 2.6, see Mees & James 3rd ed p 74] giving for developed grains:
Microfilm = 0.077 microns
High Speed Roll Film = 1.7 microns.

Noting the grain size variation mentioned in post 63, this means that all the microfilm grains will be smaller than the sensor pixel size whilst a significant number of those from high speed roll film will be larger.
A sufficiently good scan of microfilm may be sharpened to give a resolution of fine detail equivalent to better than a 20 mp sensor.
The high speed roll film may show irregular edges on the fine detail.

Lucamancini said:

I just saw this on photostackexchange about why film looks "softer"

How can I achieve a soft but detailed film look digitally?

Wonderful photo of the streets of Athens I found. I'm an amateur photographer curious to learn how to make my digital photos (Canon Rebel T3i) look more like film. Like this photo here, it has that...

photo.stackexchange.com

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The single sense cells and pixels are affected by other adjacent cells both physically and algorithmically.
It’s just less complicated to pull up contrast with digital because of the predictability of the substrate.

Alan Johnson said:

Re: grain size and pixel size, pixel size for a 20mp sensor is 6.25 microns.

https://www.ephotozine.com/article/camera-image-sensor-pixel-size-explained-29652#Full-frame

I calculated the average grain diameter from table 2.1 p4 here:

https://www.tmax100.com/photo/pdf/film.pdf

[this is for undeveloped grains and has to be multiplied by the square root of 2.6, see Mees & James 3rd ed p 74] giving for developed grains:
Microfilm = 0.077 microns
High Speed Roll Film = 1.7 microns.

Noting the grain size variation mentioned in post 63, this means that all the microfilm grains will be smaller than the sensor pixel size whilst a significant number of those from high speed roll film will be larger.
A sufficiently good scan of microfilm may be sharpened to give a resolution of fine detail equivalent to better than a 20 mp sensor.
The high speed roll film may show irregular edges on the fine detail.

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You are aware that halide grain is not binary?

Small/fine grain leans more towards binary, but are still absolutely not. Hence the ability to get great tones out of microfilm.

Large grain is almost all of them on the scale between two electrons and totally saturated.

Even extreme overexposure can have an image in the dark, seemingly impenetrable blob with enough back light.

And microfilm is absolutely a lot more than 20 MP “or more”. They were able to have page of legible text in a punctuation mark in the thirties FCOL.
That goes even for stuff like Tri-X or TMZ.

Yes, you may find a brief history of microfilm going back to 1839 in the link on post 63, including the siege of Paris.
My point was rather that they are capable of resolving fine detail straight lines as well as digital sensors whilst the high speed roll film introduces irregularities.

Alan Johnson said:

Yes, you may find a brief history of microfilm going back to 1839 in the link on post 63, including the siege of Paris.
My point was rather that they are capable of resolving fine detail straight lines as well as digital sensors whilst the high speed roll film introduces irregularities.

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Both lumince and colour precision is lessened with less light on digital too.

And if we are talking straight lines, you need at least three adjacent pixels to render an edge or line accurately.

That goes up further up when you consider that the sensors photo sites are not completely covered by the sense cell and that gets worse the higher the pitch.

Fast film has multibel overlapping crystals that are exposed differentially.
I’m not suggesting fast film is “better” than digital for fast shutter speeds in low light.
I am suggesting that film isn’t so much affected by ragged edges as of general loss of sharpness in situations of low flux.

And it’s for good reason. A super fast, rather fine film is absolutely possible, as has been discussed many times on here.
What’s holding it back, is not technology but rather the need to store the film in lukewarm photoshops for months.

Alan Johnson said:

Re: grain size and pixel size, pixel size for a 20mp sensor is 6.25 microns.
High Speed Roll Film = 1.7 microns.

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You need lots of silver grains to represent a medium gray value. This extremely high resolution posted for some low ISO films holds only in extremely high contrast scenes.

Rudeofus said:

You need lots of silver grains to represent a medium gray value. This extremely high resolution posted for some low ISO films holds only in extremely high contrast scenes.

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You need exactly one well exposed grain to represent middle gray.
Not through a microscope, where you see the filament structures, but through an enlarger or scanned.

CMOS and CCD sensors resolution also drops off with decrease in contrast.
Have you ever seen MTF plots for a sensor?
Of course they exist, but they aren’t published.

Films micro contrast drops with less contrast, but in a very predictable way. Even at low contrast ratios the resolution is more than respectable.
It’s hard to make a 1:1 compare with digital for a lot of reasons though. Many of them already mentioned in this thread.
It’s very good though, if you ever seen a big print from film.

And of course the problem with dispersion in the gelatine is lessened significantly with even the jump to 645 format.

Hi Helge. Well, I wasn't diminishing the importance of tools. When I was young I specialized in the study of Paleolithic tools, in conjunction with Pleistocene geomorphology. And those tools were really quite sophisticated in their own way, and superbly suited for those cultures in their own times. Then I ended my adult career managing the largest selection of high-end German tools in the entire western 2/3 of the US, along with the best selection of high-end Japanese power tools anywhere in North America. And even my own darkroom has a lot of special "tools" customized to my own needs. But they are still all just tools, and functionally meaningless without someone who knows how to intelligently use them. (Yeah, I know about "tool collectors" too, as well as "camera collectors"; but that's a different topic).

Alan Johnson said:

A sufficiently good scan of microfilm may be sharpened to give a resolution of fine detail equivalent to better than a 20 mp sensor.

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This seems an order of magnitude too low to me, considering entire books can be printed onto a 35mm frame sized piece of microfilm.

... and hopefully some of Drew's tools, whether paleolithic or German, lead to film or digital sharpness!

grain elevator said:

This seems an order of magnitude too low to me, considering entire books can be printed onto a 35mm frame sized piece of microfilm.

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Yes, see post 107.

My point was rather that they are capable of resolving fine detail straight lines as well as digital sensors whilst the high speed roll film introduces irregularities.

It's possible to sharpen up microfilm scans just like they came from digital cameras, this is not possible with the irregularities from "ordinary" film.

Well, in one sense, Brian, my German and Japanese tools did make a difference. Not only was my most specialized enlarger built that way, allowing me to precisely machine phenolic and other materials, but also precision punch and register gear supplemental to my Condit masking equipment, my slot washers, much of my lab furniture, etc. So YES - there was a direct relation to that tool distribution career and my moonlight work (minus the moon - it had to be in a real darkroom). It's something that gave me a distinct edge. Sitting down in person with the CEO of Festool one afternoon, his ears sure perked up when I explained what I do on the side and the level of precision I require. I was exactly the kind of person they wanted to spearhead their next phase of West Coast distribution by putting a set of their tools into my own hands, for my own use. Even my picture frame moulding machine was put together using their components - a unique quiet, nearly dustless version.

Where Paleolithic tools have been revived is with neurosurgeons. Obsidian "microliths" are sharper than any kind of steel. But nobody in current times, or even in the past 10,000 years, has been able to replicate some of the most sophisticated examples. I still can't figure out how some of them were made. You need a magnifying loupe just to see all the beautiful symmetry and pattern in some of them. It's analogous to the tiny wedding baskets once made by Pomo Indians here near the Coast, with patterns of hummingbird feathers and stitch designs so small that magnifying glasses are placed over them in museum display cases just to see that. I also knew a jeweler whose hobby was making 35mm contact prints; a gooseneck magnifying glass was attached to the top of each picture frame.

Apologies if what follows sends this thread spiralling out of control...moderators clip & prune as needed!

I'm not much of a gear/tech junkie, so don't follow all the newest/best/greatest developments...do bayer sensor array digital cameras still need anti-aliasing or low pass filters? Don't they effect sharpness?

I went with Fujifilm X series cameras because their APS-C sized X-Trans sensor doesn't need or use a low pass filter. That, and some of their X cameras have lens aperture rings as well as good old fashioned knurled shutter speed & ISO dials.

MurrayMinchin said:

Apologies if what follows sends this thread spiralling out of control...moderators clip & prune as needed!

I'm not much of a gear/tech junkie, so don't follow all the newest/best/greatest developments...do bayer sensor array digital cameras still need anti-aliasing or low pass filters? Don't they effect sharpness?

I went with Fujifilm X series cameras because their APS-C sized X-Trans sensor doesn't need or use a low pass filter. That, and some of them have lens aperture rings as well as good old fashioned knurled shutter speed & ISO dials.

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Murray,
It would be better if you would start a separate thread on this, in the Digital Cameras sub-forum.

Okay...prune away

DREW WILEY said:

Hi Helge. Well, I wasn't diminishing the importance of tools. When I was young I specialized in the study of Paleolithic tools, in conjunction with Pleistocene geomorphology. And those tools were really quite sophisticated in their own way, and superbly suited for those cultures in their own times. Then I ended my adult career managing the largest selection of high-end German tools in the entire western 2/3 of the US, along with the best selection of high-end Japanese power tools anywhere in North America. And even my own darkroom has a lot of special "tools" customized to my own needs. But they are still all just tools, and functionally meaningless without someone who knows how to intelligently use them. (Yeah, I know about "tool collectors" too, as well as "camera collectors"; but that's a different topic).

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I like designing my own darkroom tools:

https://gitbucket.tundraware.com/tundra/devtimer

A pure non technical opinion along the lines of 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder' may be the reason.
Resolution or sharpness with film is due to the lens, tripod and how sharp film ran resolve the image taking into consideration contrast and colour.

Resolution or sharpness with digital sensor is down to the lens, tripod and the quality of the sensor and any in- camera sharpening done by the camera or by 3rd party software.

The main problem being a lot of images from a digi are over-sharpened. (My opinion)

BMbikerider said:

The main problem being a lot of images from a digi are over-sharpened. (My opinion)

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If we are talking only about what's published online (because what else can we see in large numbers?), sharpening is rarely a problem. What we see are mostly downsampled images, where downsampling was done after sharpening, so the artifacts are simply not visible as much in relatively tiny online photos. What I see is the opposite: excessive sharpening of film scans! In fact, film is allergic to sharpening for reasons I won't go, but the artifacts of film scan sharpening are visible even in downsampled JPEGs published online, including this forum.

IMO, the overuse of sharpening is the chief reason why so many people think that Rodinal "increases grain", for example.

DREW WILEY said:

Hi Helge. Well, I wasn't diminishing the importance of tools. When I was young I specialized in the study of Paleolithic tools, in conjunction with Pleistocene geomorphology. And those tools were really quite sophisticated in their own way, and superbly suited for those cultures in their own times. Then I ended my adult career managing the largest selection of high-end German tools in the entire western 2/3 of the US, along with the best selection of high-end Japanese power tools anywhere in North America. And even my own darkroom has a lot of special "tools" customized to my own needs. But they are still all just tools, and functionally meaningless without someone who knows how to intelligently use them. (Yeah, I know about "tool collectors" too, as well as "camera collectors"; but that's a different topic).

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It wasn’t a dig at you personally Drew, it was the idiom that seems meaningless to me.
It seems like one of those ingrown ones that pop up occasionally and hang around a few decades, where everyone thinks they are eternal.
Like for example “just be yourself” or “if you work hard you can achieve anything” both of which has lost much of their popularity as the hollowness of them began to ring a bit loud.
I was mainly curious where it originated.

We are animals at best without tools.
Inept unspecialized animals to be specific. The second we pick up a stick or a stone we become super dangerous.
When we learn from our parents about specialized tool making and tool use, we rule the world.
And language itself is indeed the most powerful tool and medium of all.

Helge said:

We are animals at best without tools.
Inept unspecialized animals to be specific...

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Animals yes, but with some advantageous adaptations.

Bipedal, no body hair, can sweat through our bare skin, can breath independently of gait cycle, can run long distances under the African sun such that prey animals essentially end up dead on their feet from heat exhaustion.

No tools needed.

Toss in big brains, vocal chords (speech/language) and opposable thumbs...I think we are *very* specialized animals.

MurrayMinchin said:

Animals yes, but with some advantageous adaptations.

Bipedal, no body hair, can sweat through our bare skin, can breath independently of gait cycle, can run long distances under the African sun such that prey animals essentially end up dead on their feet from heat exhaustion.

No tools needed.

Toss in big brains, vocal chords (speech/language) and opposable thumbs...I think we are very specialized animals.

Dehydration and persistence hunting in Homo erectus

Persistence hunting has been suggested to be a key strategy for meat acquisition in Homo erectus. However, prolonged locomotion in hot conditions is a…

www.sciencedirect.com

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It’s not the time or forum to delve deep into this, but if you read the paper it’s an idea that has gone up and down in popularity and empirical plausibility through the last many decades.
There is a lot of problems with it taken to an extreme.
First being that there are extremely few modern examples of any humans practicing persistence hunting in the open like a savanna or prairie.
Its works in woodland, but there weapons are crucial.

Under any circumstance, leaps in brain size and general culture, coincide almost to the second with the widespread adoption of tools like bifacial Oldowan cutters and fire.

Our neocortex is what allows us to be brilliant generalists, but not without tools or culture.

Helge said:

You need exactly one well exposed grain to represent middle gray.
Not through a microscope, where you see the filament structures, but through an enlarger or scanned.

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You can tell your enlarger to render the film section with that one grain "medium gray", but then you'd need a large area with many grains to create another area which is just 1% brighter. This is where film resolution completely falls apart. If you want to render two patches with an 1% translucency difference, you need at least 100 grains in each patch.