We do not see the world pixelated...
Is film dead?
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Ultimately, it is of course all in the results. Yes, a camera is just a tool. Side by side you can certainly tell a difference in the prints. You appear to be mixing up facts and sentiment. As for cameras being plastic junk, that began long before the digital age. Late era film SLRs and DSLRs are indistinguishable structurally, with only a rear door and a sensor between them. Point and shoot cameras have been semi-disposable since the Bakerlite period. This site has always discouraged rational discussion of the benefits/disadvantages of the two mediums, which allows myths to flourish and Ethics and Philosophy to be click bait provocation or the place for a good rant.
As no one on the thread appears to be abusing film as a creative or recording medium, or promoting digital photography as a superior tool, the tribalism is all one way. I can only guess people have been bitten by spending a heap on a digital camera when they really were junk, and their opinions are stuck around the millennium, or the process and tools are the whole point.
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Neither do we perceive it as silver fragments suspended in animal by products. Both are 2-D simulacra technologies.
Yes, I think there would.
Is it? Do you honestly believe that?
If so, then I presume you would also argue that a Kindle is the same as a book, because they display the same words? Or travelling to the coast in a Ford SUV is the same as the journey in a 1964 Porsche 911, because you end up in the same place? Or a carefully home cooked meal is the same as a Mcdonalds burger and fries, because you're full after eating them both?
They are only the same thing if you place no value on the process, have no appreciation of the tools used, or think that the easy, modern things in life are better (it's usually the opposite in my experience).
In a sense we do. If you go to fine enough scale the world IS pixelated. First at the molecular level, then atomic, then subatomic, and ultimately quantum. Our vision and other experience smooths it at more macro scales. Film is just as "pixelated" as digital. Black and white has film grains, chromogenic color (all of today's color films) have images made of discrete dye clouds that replaced in processing the silver grains that were originally there and appear as "grain." Pixels are really no different. They have just appeared different because until recently they were not nearly so small and fine scaled so they were more apparent.
When people say this I think they are confusing the person that took the photo and the person viewing it. To the viewer or consumer, yes, they are doing nothing but viewing the image. They have no concept of the process or equipment involved and it hardly matters as long as the end result is the same. But it matters enormously to the photographer. Suggesting otherwise is nonsense.
A camera has one use, to take photographs. On a shelf it's an ornament, like a vase, of aesthetic interest only. If your argument is some cameras are more enjoyable to use, it's difficult to disagree, but that pleasure does not translate to the output others can see. A horrible plastic camera can take brilliant pictures in the right hands, and a Leica can create boring dross. Film has a specific look, which is why I continue to use it. Not everyone desires that look.
As I said yesterday, I went to a Martin Parr exhibition recently, and there were framed black and white film images, and large film and digital prints pinned to the wall. The colour film ones were mostly taken on a medium format Plaubel Makina (if memory from the 1990s serves) and I suspect the prints were from scans. The huge ones were almost certainly taken on a full frame digital camera. There was no pixilation evident in either. Each variety, monochrome film 7 x 5", medium format, digital, had their own aesthetics, but none were objectively "better" than the others, and the ones that were more aesthetically pleasing had nothing to do with the medium they were taken on.
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I agree with this in general but sometimes the easy things ARE better. It just depends on where one places value. I have two cars both with manual transmissions for example and I went out of my way to get them that way. The newer one I bought new in December 2010 and the local dealer had to get me one from Florida to get what I wanted with the manual gear box. I just enjoy driving them a lot more so for me, they are better.
But I know plenty of people for whom the very idea of enjoying driving is odd. They don't enjoy driving at all, ever, and only do it because they need to in order to get somewhere. It still may not be the same to them in different cars because some are more comfortable, have a better stereo, get better mileage and thus cost less to drive, whatever, but the idea of any car being "fun to drive" is foreign to them. For those people an automatic transmission really IS better (and thus their overwhelming market share nowadays.)
Most consumer snapshooters fall into the "I don't want to mess with gears I just want a picture with minimum fuss" group and for them digital really is not only superior but vastly so. To be clear, I maintain there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Not everyone enjoys the same things or does things for the same reasons and that is ok.
It's true only when you are talking about resolution, not when you're describing colour or tonal ranges. Digital colours jump between steps defined by the bit depth of the image. The bit depth of modern images is so large that it appears continuous...until you make edits to the image which compresses them and the steps become more obvious (banding). Film on the other hand responds to wavelengths of light which are only limited by the Plank constant, which is so tiny as to be irrelevant. It's effectively a continuous scale and hence much higher quality.
That's true to an extent, I agree. But as you say the bit depth is sufficient that the "color resolution" - the differences between colors that can be shown - exceed our ability to distinguish them anyway. You can certainly get into problems with too much editing here, especially for those who edit in compressed formats like jpg and then save, then edit etc. Blech. There are always limitations unique to any given medium.
Cameras don't kill pictures, people do.
It was always the case that compromises had to be made with different formats. 15 x 10" was my limit for 35mm at normal distances before grain dominated, medium format about 3 ft square, depending on the lens, 4 x 5" if you wanted seamless tonality in landscapes and portraits. Digital is no different in normal use, each format has its limits before definition begins to break down, but most current digital cameras are not disadvantaged by print size compared to the body/lens size of a film camera. If you want to edit heavily, you've always needed to use a much bigger camera than necessary. Picture editors were still dismissing Leicas as toys thirty years after Cartier-Bresson proved otherwise, and insisted on medium format transparencies for publication till the nineties. It was pure prejudice, combined with a little laziness.
A Raw file is not a negative, it's an information embryo, and can develop likewise.
A Raw file is not a negative, it's an information embryo, and can develop likewise.
I think we are now talking at cross purposes, and I don't want to argue endlessly over these things. You're focussed completely on the end result and although that is of course relevant to me, the process is at least as important. The fact is, I couldn't care less whether a photographer's digital photos look as good or better than his film ones. In the same way as I couldn't care less whether a Ford Focus accelerates faster than my rusty old Porsche (they all do). It's completely irrelevant to me and misses the point entirely. A digi-cam could cost £5, have the sensor from the latest Hasselblad and make every shot look like it was taken by David Bailey, but I still wouldn't use it. Do you understand why?
It's not all about the end results, UNLESS everything is about a 3rd party consumer. If it is (i.e. if you're a professional) then fine. In that case you absolutely should be using a digi-cam, snap away at 24 fps and spend days poring over Photoshop. But 99.999% of photographers today are not pros and I think many of them would probably enjoy photography a lot more if they used film, slowed down, actually learned how to expose a shot and got a bit of fixer on their hands once in a while.
I agree completely. But in fairness that is a 'junk in, junk out' situation.
As I said much earlier in the thread, nearly every photograph ever taken is junk, aesthetically speaking. As for metering, I've never yet trusted what any camera meter told me until I had long familiarity with its quirks. It has to be said my Fuji's do have a handily placed compensation dial (better than most film cameras truth be told), and after a moment's chimping I turn off the screen entirely. Bad photos have never been the camera's fault.
I have no idea what that means, but I am sure it belongs on DPUG.
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sigh, not another one of these threads ...
who cares what other people do or think.
who cares what other people do or think.
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Or was it page 1? 
I guess that would be anyone who reads a magazine, blog, newspaper or book? Or watches TV, movies, documentaries...
I have never seen so many assumptions in the one post
I was describing my personal feelings toward digital photography. What assumptions did I make?
You drove a coach and horses through that rule when you said "Digital colours jump between steps defined by the bit depth of the image. The bit depth of modern images is so large that it appears continuous...until you make edits to the image which compresses them and the steps become more obvious (banding)".
You can't have it both ways, you have to choose between general slurs or objective facts.
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