The comeback?

RPC · Oct 3, 2018

blockend said:
Neither does film. Fragments of silver darken in light, and dyes are released. Neither of those were in nature. Photography is inherently artificial, an abstraction. Look at Kodachrome sometime, reality never looked like that. It may be a compelling look, but authentic it is not: http://blog.iso50.com/26784/large-format-kodachromes/

It has been discusses here before that Kodachrome was not an accurate film. It had crossover and dye impurity problems. That is what gave it it's different look, oddly enough, liked by many. Technically, E-6 films eventually surpassed it in quality and started Kodachrome's demise. If you are going to compare digital with film in terms of authenticity, an obsolete film is a poor choice.

The highest film quality is achieved by color negatives. Of course they do not reproduce everything that is actually there, but they are very high quality to begin with and are ready for printing, scanning, etc., requiring no additional manipulation. Contrast that with a digital sensor which requires lots of algorithm processing to get to appear to be the quality of a negative. Therefore by default digital is less of a representation of reality than a negative.

To add insult to injury, a digital file is generally converted to a compressed format which cause some degree of degradation, further moving it away from what was actually there.

faberryman · Oct 3, 2018

RPC said:
Of course they do not reproduce everything that is actually there, but they are very high quality to begin with and are ready for printing, scanning, etc., requiring no additional manipulation. Contrast that with a digital sensor which requires lots of algorithm processing to get to appear to be the quality of a negative. Therefore by default digital is less of a representation of reality than a negative.

So film is a better representation of reality because it is a chemical process rather than an electrical process.

RPC · Oct 3, 2018

Helinophoto said:
However:
It may be my scanning-technique, but compared to my 5D mk III, taken with equivalent focal lengths at around f8-f10, my Canon 5D mk III with a 24-105 F4 L, has much more (fine) detail than shots taken with my Hasselblad and 80 f2.8, Rolleiflex 2.8F and my Mamiya RZ 67 Pro II with the 110 f2.8 and Fujipro 160ns.

In a typical head-to-toe shot, I can see skin-pores, lashes, stray-hairs, fabric-structure etc that will be blurred or lacking detail on film, taken with these excellent analog cameras.

I would be very interested to drum-scan some of my negatives to see if this is really the case, or if my scanner is near garbage (Epson v750).

You should certainly not compare the quality of digital to a scanned negative.

RPC · Oct 3, 2018

faberryman said:
So film is a better representation of reality because it is a chemical process rather than an electrical process.

Well, I think computer manipulation dependent.

faberryman · Oct 3, 2018

RPC said:
You should certainly not compare the quality of digital to a scanned negative.

Because the scanned negative will come up short?

RPC · Oct 3, 2018

faberryman said:
Because the scanned negative will come up short?

Well, certainly a scan is not perfect and cannot reproduce exactly what is in the negative, so how would it be a fair comparison?

faberryman · Oct 3, 2018

RPC said:
Well, certainly a scan is not perfect and cannot reproduce exactly what is in the negative, so how would it be a fair comparison?

So would you say scanned negatives are inferior to original digital images because of the technological deficiencies of the scanning process?

blockend · Oct 3, 2018

RPC said:
If you are going to compare digital with film in terms of authenticity, an obsolete film is a poor choice.

You're flirting with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

RPC · Oct 3, 2018

faberryman said:
So would you say scanned negatives are inferior to original digital images because of the technological deficiencies of the scanning process?

I am saying the quality of a scan of negative cannot be the same as the quality of the negative itself, so comparing a scan to digital is not a fair comparison.

faberryman · Oct 3, 2018

RPC said:
If you are going to compare digital with film in terms of authenticity, an obsolete film is a poor choice.

Authentic to what?

RPC · Oct 3, 2018

blockend said:
You're flirting with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

Maybe we should compare the quality of today's films with the digital technology of the 80s.

Sirius Glass · Oct 3, 2018

blockend said:
An article I read that described the physics and mechanics of digitising negatives said the following. The theoretical upper limit of a 35mm negatives is 50 megapixels +/-. That is to say a means of exhaustively resolving each individual halide into digital form. No such means exists. The practical upper limit is around 24 mp. A typical 35mm scan is around 5 megapixels.

A good flatbed scan with perfect negative alignment is good for approximately 6 mp. A drum scan will yield more, maybe 12 mp. Of course the film process only exhausts the potential in a perfectly exposed transparency shot with a lens resolving over 100 lines (50 is more typical), and that is at the mercy of intermediate technology like the projector lens. Print processes are more lossy (enlarging lens, paper alignment and silver content, chemistry). Which is why I hold the view that digital technology out-resolves film in all practical purposes on a similar full frame/35mm source. As few of us are medical, astronomical or surveillance photographers, dragging the last bit of detail from an image is irrelevant to us, creatively speaking, but it doesn't change the facts.

To ponder just how irrelevant resolution is for a visceral response to the photographic image, here's a shot from the sub-miniature group (not my photo!) A slither of 3200 ASA film: https://www.photrio.com/forum/groupphotos/photo?photo_id=1076
Beautiful!

Again, you are over you head. See my original posts ===> pixel clusters are not on the order of the size of grain molecules. Until such time all your arguments are specious.

RPC · Oct 3, 2018

faberryman said:
Authentic to what?

Why don't you ask blockend. He originally used that word. I took it to mean authentic in subject reproduction.

Helinophoto · Oct 3, 2018

RPC said:
I am saying the quality of a scan of negative cannot be the same as the quality of the negative itself, so comparing a scan to digital is not a fair comparison.

How to compare then? You have to produce something from the negative for it to be a useful item.
I would believe a high-resolution scan of a negative, would beat any print and the closest you get to the actual negative-quality.

As for D, when people shoot raw, there is just data, light-gathering information. If people shoot straight to jpeg....you loose a lot of information, even with high-quality ones.

RPC · Oct 3, 2018

Helinophoto said:
How to compare then? You have to produce something from the negative for it to be a useful item.
I would believe a high-resolution scan of a negative, would beat any print and the closest you get to the actual negative-quality.

I am not saying I have any good way to compare them. But comparing a scan is unacceptable to me. Unfortunately, many use them for comparisons.

MattKing · Oct 3, 2018

If you are trying to evaluate maximum capacities for quality, scanned film file vs. digital file is not an appropriate comparison, because the digitization of the film reduces that capacity for the film.
A better comparison of maximum capacities for quality would be to compare either a high quality optical projection of a film transparency with the highest quality digital projection of a digital camera file - not fair to digital because of the limits of digital projection. Alternatively you could compare a high quality, large optical print of the negative with a high quality, large digital print of a digital camera file.
In real life, we rarely want or need the maximum capacities for quality. Issues of economy and practicality are often more important. In a world where the majority of tools for presentation and output involve a digital step, there are strong arguments for using digital capture.
But for those of us who still maintain the ability to work entirely within the optical and chemical processes, we can get really, really high quality out of what we do without a digital file. So we do so.

Svenedin · Oct 3, 2018

MattKing said:
If you are trying to evaluate maximum capacities for quality, scanned film file vs. digital file is not an appropriate comparison, because the digitization of the film reduces that capacity for the film.
A better comparison of maximum capacities for quality would be to compare either a high quality optical projection of a film transparency with the highest quality digital projection of a digital camera file - not fair to digital because of the limits of digital projection. Alternatively you could compare a high quality, large optical print of the negative with a high quality, large digital print of a digital camera file.
In real life, we rarely want or need the maximum capacities for quality. Issues of economy and practicality are often more important. In a world where the majority of tools for presentation and output involve a digital step, there are strong arguments for using digital capture.
But for those of us who still maintain the ability to work entirely within the optical and chemical processes, we can get really, really high quality out of what we do without a digital file. So we do so.

Very well put

blockend · Oct 3, 2018

Sirius Glass said:
Again, you are over you head. See my original posts ===> pixel clusters are not on the order of the size of grain molecules. Until such time all your arguments are specious.

All of them? What fun!

blockend · Oct 3, 2018

RPC said:
I am not saying I have any good way to compare them.

It's easy. Look at a large print, say 30 x 20", from a modern full frame digital camera and a 35mm film negative. I can guarantee the digital one will have greater resolution and fewer artefacts. I choose my words carefully.

RPC · Oct 3, 2018

blockend said:
It's easy. Look at a large print, say 30 x 20", from a modern full frame digital camera and a 35mm film negative. I can guarantee the digital one will have greater resolution and fewer artefacts. I choose my words carefully.

I have made such comparisons and I discussed this earlier. The digital looks sharper, but I see an artificial look to the sharpness. The film might not be as sharp looking but looks natural to me, not artificial. But I think it would be possible to scan a 35mm negative, apply a small amount of sharpening to it and look sharp with fewer artifacts and less artificial than digital. But we don't even have to do that, the larger film formats do that for us, superior sharpness with no artificial look.

But there is much more here to consider than just sharpness. Dynamic range, tonality, and color quality are also considerations and even 35 mm gives digital a run for its money in those parameters. With the larger formats I see no contest.

faberryman · Oct 3, 2018

RPC said:
But we don't even have to do that, the larger film formats do that for us, superior sharpness with no artificial look.

Take FP4 or HP5 for example. The emulsion, and therefore the inherent sharpness, is the same for 35mm and large format. The reason large format looks better is that it is not magnified as much for the same size print. I have some really beautiful 2x3 (2x) prints from 35mm, an 8x10 equivalent from 4x5.

Svenedin · Oct 3, 2018

faberryman said:
Take FP4 or HP5 for example. The emulsion, and therefore the inherent sharpness, is the same for 35mm and large format. The reason large format looks better is that it is not magnified as much for the same size print. I have some really beautiful 2x3 (2x) prints from 35mm, an 8x10 equivalent from 4x5.

Haven’t these conversations been done to absolute death? It surely is not about technical supremacy (which sooner or later electric sensors will in some way surpass film) but that we are compararing the incomparable? Film will always look like film because it just is.

Sirius Glass · Oct 3, 2018

Svenedin said:
Haven’t these conversations been done to absolute death? It surely is not about technical supremacy (which sooner or later electric sensors will in some way surpass film) but that we are compararing the incomparable? Film will always look like film because it just is.

+10

Nodda Duma · Oct 3, 2018

Another data point: I just received orders from retailers for 600+ dry plates to refill stock including my first (soon-to-be) retailer in Europe. This is after sending out about 400 plates two weeks ago. I estimate I’ve coated and shipped out over 7,500 dry plates in various sizes (mostly 4x5) since the beginning of the year. I think it’s awesome how much interest is out there for such a process. In the grand scheme of things it’s not much, but as a niche of a niche of a niche market it’s pretty cool.

It’s also roughly 200 hours in lost sleep.

- Jason

Svenedin · Oct 3, 2018

Nodda Duma said:
Another data point: I just received orders from retailers for 600+ dry plates to refill stock including my first (soon-to-be) retailer in Europe. This is after sending out about 400 plates two weeks ago. I estimate I’ve coated and shipped out over 7,500 dry plates in various sizes (mostly 4x5) since the beginning of the year.

- Jason

Well there we are. I’m sure everyone knows what was predicted when photography became popular and accessible. It would be the “death of art”. The Victorians catastrophised that nobody would paint anymore. That clearly didn’t happen. Neither will digital destroy film (or your plates). Absolute nonsense.

Stephen

The comeback?

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