Traditional Negatives VS Digital Negatives

Since I don't have previous experience with traditional film negatives, I am curious as to how they compare to the digital negatives many of us use now.

What are your opinions on this?

Regards,
Martin

menglert said:

Since I don't have previous experience with traditional film negatives, I am curious as to how they compare to the digital negatives many of us use now.

What are your opinions on this?

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If by digital negative you mean the Adobe DNG - it is OK - typically 12 bits per color allowing 4096 shades of gray or per color. 6-10 mega pixels is normal for most digital print outs (and 8 bits per color is a normal output file, the RAW giving you 4 bits to play with "post processing"). This is fine. Long term storage is an issue since CDR's suffer from "bit rot" and sometimes become unreadable in about 7-10 years (not archival despite conventional wisdom). Hard drives suffer from bad MTBF, flash RAM eventually discharges and goes bad as well. A lot of people who took pictures of their kids with earlier digital cameras have started to discover a lot of their pictures have been lost, and the dye sub prints have badly faded.

A film negative, especially B&W, *is* archival and survive 100+ years if properly cared for (Glass Plate negatives have survived for over 100 years as well from way back) - color film if stored right can last 50 years before color fades (normally blues and greens go first) - but there is a useable image even then. They have good dynamic range (better than digital) and a 35mm frame has about 22MP of information, though grain is present which prevents grain free big enlargements (digital cameras have a lot of noise reduction algorithms that smooth over noise, so one would have to something similar to film if scanned). Medium and large format negatives have proportionally more information on them, and scanned files can easily overpower a normal PC if the entire resolution of the film is captured in a scan.

I am biased, but I prefer physical film as the storage medium since it is somewhat archival, and has more resolution. Grain is a forgivable sin - though I am sure there are programs out there that will reduce the grain just like a digital capture sensor uses a similar noise reduciton as well.

I think the question is about how digitally enlarged negatives compare to traditionally enlarged negatives for silver or alt-process printing, from those who have used both approaches.

I'm interested in this question as well. I've seen some very impressive alt-process prints made from digital negs, but I've also seen some where it's looked like the negs were too thin, or where the dot pattern was too obvious, or where there seemed to be or digital artifacts (likely from oversharpening, so not an inherent problem with the medium). So for those who have used both traditionally enlarged negs and digitally enlarged negs, what do you see as the tradeoffs?

Personally, I've made some traditionally enlarged negs, but it's not something I've done very extensively. I haven't made any digitally enlarged negs myself. My general preference is just to use a big camera.

I have made enlarged 16x20 negatives traditionally with very good success.
My method was to make a contact dupe positive of the original, then place this into the enlarger and make the enlarged negative from this source.
My problem area with this methodology always was the fast negative exposure , * which did not allow me to to dodging and burning with the same amount of control that I can achive when silver printing. This aspect alone as well as the anal dust control proceedures required stopped me from persuing this as a printing process for others. For myself I have no problem rationalizing making a digital film negative from large roll exposed on my Lambda .
Now the problem for my purpose is the development of this film to precision detail. I would like to make 30 x40 inch prints and to this date the only stumbling block is how to process the film with very accurate repeatablity.
I do not think tray processing is an option.
Maybe others here have a suggestion. I do own Jobo 2300's but I have only seen 16x20 film drums for these machines.

I have done both. My digital negatives were both from image setter and pictorico OHP as well as in camera film. I see two advantages to the digital negative. One is the speed of creating a digital negative and the second is the ability to easily manipulate the image to get the "perfect negative." A perfect negative every time. I guess that makes three advantages.

There are those that will complain about the archival superiority of film over OHP negatives and the bits and bytes that are the precursor to the film output. That is true, but for all but a miniscule number of current photography, archival means to last longer than you do.

Joe Lipka said:

There are those that will complain about the archival superiority of film over OHP negatives and the bits and bytes that are the precursor to the film output. That is true, but for all but a miniscule number of current photography, archival means to last longer than you do.

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Oops, my bad about the DNG - sorry! (As Jane Curtain used to say on SNL --- "never mind!"

I suppose it depends upon how long you want the negative to last?

My wife worked at the Eastman House many years ago doing photographic and print archiving and resportation work. She is very particular about how long a medium is going to last - some film, certainly CD and magnetic media and a lot of dye based stuff isn't "archival" - and will start to fail in abot 10 years.

One of the contemporaries crises in the making, is that we probably have one of the most photographed and recorded eras in known history, and the vast majority of it will be impossible to access in future generations due to the lack of stability of the media!

Now, with a lot of alt processes, the print may be far more archival than the materials used to make it - which will be fine if that is the goal.

Oh well, like I said - SORRY!

David A. Goldfarb said:

I think the question is about how digitally enlarged negatives compare to traditionally enlarged negatives for silver or alt-process printing, from those who have used both approaches.

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OOPS. Sorry. My bad.

Bromo33333 said:

Oops, my bad about the DNG - sorry! (As Jane Curtain used to say on SNL --- "never mind!"

Snip

I

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Actually that was the late Gilda Radner playing Rosanne Rosanadano who would say never mind.

Rich

Thanks for the input. I still haven't got around to finishing all my testing for PDN. This weekend was another attempt. Hopefully soon I'll have fixed all the problems.

Regards,
Martin