Film and digital color

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Archive 2008 · Film and digital color

Tariq Gibran
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p.2 #1 · Film and digital color

Lotusm50 wrote:
Of course, the best thing about digital, color digital that is, is that for B&W you don't need to bring a half dozen red, orange yellow, green and blue filters with you, as well as assess filtration and constantly change them out to optimize a particular image before you capture it.

I think that is a very good point!

Dec 16, 2008 at 04:16 PM

mrladewig
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p.2 #2 · Film and digital color

My experience with digital lead me to the conclusion that I would get better results if I applied the correct filtration prior to capture. The resulting color were more "pure" than instances when I used ACR to adjust temperature.

From what I've read, ACR profiles were created for daylight and tungsten samples while other color temps are extrapolations from these color points.

In short, if I'm photographing in shade. I've gotten better results on the final file by using a warming filter and setting the camera on daylight in comparison to files corrected for color temp in post.

I'm not a B&W photographer, but based on this experience I think you would get a better final image if you used the correct B&W filter for your intention of the scene at capture and then applied the B&W conversion from this very distorted color file. I'll have to test this some time.

Dec 16, 2008 at 07:32 PM

edwardkaraa
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p.2 #3 · Film and digital color

Tariq Gibran wrote:
Lotusm50 wrote:
Of course, the best thing about digital, color digital that is, is that for B&W you don't need to bring a half dozen red, orange yellow, green and blue filters with you, as well as assess filtration and constantly change them out to optimize a particular image before you capture it.

I think that is a very good point!

Theoretically yes. In practice, you will need at least something like DPP monochrome with Orange filter to produce skin tones similar to B&W film without any filtration.

Dec 18, 2008 at 12:22 PM

Lotusm50
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p.2 #4 · Film and digital color

edwardkaraa wrote:
Theoretically yes. In practice, you will need at least something like DPP monochrome with Orange filter to produce skin tones similar to B&W film without any filtration.

Or the very nice B&W conversion tool in PS CS3/CS4 which give you virtually limitless control over filtration -- and shade of orange -- or any other color, or combination of colors -- you like.

Dec 18, 2008 at 12:26 PM

edwardkaraa
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p.2 #5 · Film and digital color

Lotusm50 wrote:
edwardkaraa wrote:
Theoretically yes. In practice, you will need at least something like DPP monochrome with Orange filter to produce skin tones similar to B&W film without any filtration.

Or the very nice B&W conversion tool in PS CS3/CS4 which give you virtually limitless control over filtration -- and shade of orange -- or any other color, or combination of colors -- you like.

Yes. I have used PS channel mixer extensively for B&W conversions, which I believe is similar to the tool you mention. I think that a straight conversion to B&W uses somethink like 25% R, 50% G and 25% B, while the normal response of a standard B&W film should be more like 70% R, 25% G and only around 5% B.

Dec 18, 2008 at 12:43 PM

Lotusm50
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p.2 #6 · Film and digital color

edwardkaraa wrote:
Yes. I have used PS channel mixer extensively for B&W conversions, which I believe is similar to the tool you mention. I think that a straight conversion to B&W uses somethink like 25% R, 50% G and 25% B, while the normal response of a standard B&W film should be more like 70% R, 25% G and only around 5% B.

The "Black and White" tool in CS3 and CS4 is a significant advance over using the "Channel Mixer" tool offering more functionality and control. You should try it.

Dec 18, 2008 at 01:27 PM

Tariq Gibran
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p.2 #7 · Film and digital color

The best B&W digital conversion tool I have used, even to this day, is the older Imaging Factory B&W Pro Photoshop Plugin which is unfortunately no longer being updated. Here is what it looks like:

This image is copyrighted by the owner

Dec 18, 2008 at 02:32 PM

skid00skid00
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p.2 #8 · Film and digital color

edwardkaraa wrote:
RGB channels in digital are somewhat overlapping, while scanned film tends to show more separate, or not as homogenous RGB channels. Scanned film gives deeper reds, blues and greens.

The reason I believe is that digital tries to keep all RGB channels within the limit of the color space, similar to a relative colorimetric rendition. (

The color filter array bandpass *is* wide in digital CFA's.

In my experience, though, the colors I get with my calibrated cam are *far* more accurate than any print/slide I've seen.

How much of your experience is due to years/decades of seeing film prints, and *expecting* to see those color interpretations? This would be similar to *perceiving* grain as sharpness...

Dec 19, 2008 at 01:30 AM

skid00skid00
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p.2 #9 · Film and digital color

I found the conditions at the time I took this pic to be awful for rendition of reds. Very bright noon sun, with high overcast.

The orange tint on the front bumper is a reflection of a yellow fire hydrant.

This image is copyrighted by the owner

Dec 19, 2008 at 02:29 AM

Tariq Gibran
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p.2 #10 · Film and digital color

What is this photo suppose to demonstrate? An accurate red?

skid00skid00 wrote:
I found the conditions at the time I took this pic to be awful for rendition of reds. Very bright noon sun, with high overcast.

The orange tint on the front bumper is a reflection of a yellow fire hydrant.

This image is copyrighted by the owner

Dec 19, 2008 at 02:41 AM

mmurph
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p.2 #11 · Film and digital color

skid00skid00 wrote:

In my experience, though, the colors I get with my calibrated cam are *far* more accurate than any print/slide I've seen.

How much of your experience is due to years/decades of seeing film prints, and *expecting* to see those color interpretations? This would be similar to *perceiving* grain as sharpness...

Agreed!

I went to digital around 2002 when I looked at the 2MP digital images a friend took at my sons birthday party. The color was incrediibly pure, clear, clean, despite the very low res. They were far better than the scanned color files I was getting from my Mamiya 6x7 slides and negatives!

Afterr going digital, I could not believe how dirty and nosiy and impure my film scans were. Digital next to film looks makes it like you took a negative or slide and left it in the street for 5-6 weeks. Just ugly, ugly noise and artifacts (from the film scan.) I gave up 6x7 for my Canon D30 3MP images. Just couldn't go back to the crud I saw from film. That is why digital rezes up so much better.

Film is "dirty" - the grain and/or dyes are really noise. The substrate is really poor. We are fooled into thinking there is more detail beacuse of the random artefacts that hide real low-level detail. But blow it up and it looks like what it is - garbage.

Or, in another approach - take a digiital file and add noise, you can make the image look just like film!

The only film I still use if 4x5, because I can't justify a MFDB right now.

Also, FWIW: Lightroom allows great mixing of color for B&W images. Looks pretty similar to the tool displayed above.

Dec 21, 2008 at 08:37 PM

JonasY
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p.2 #12 · Film and digital color

I think it's depending whether you look at prints or at a computer screen. In print, noise/dirt etc is seldom visible and can actually make your pictures look sharper. This is very apparent when discussing digital noise, difference is night and day between print and screen - just take a few step back and watch a "noisy" picture at a normal viewing distance and you'll be surprised.

Too many people are judging pictures by 100 % crops on the screen. Poor them.

Dec 21, 2008 at 10:15 PM

edwardkaraa
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p.2 #13 · Film and digital color

Many don't realize that the noise they see in scans is not film grain but actually grain aliasing.

Dec 21, 2008 at 10:44 PM

Lotusm50
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p.2 #14 · Film and digital color

edwardkaraa wrote:
Many don't realize that the noise they see in scans is not film grain but actually grain aliasing.

You probably should define "grain aliasing" for the uninitiated. If you've got samples it would be helpful to show them to illustrate.

Further what you see isn't necessarily grain aliasing, as your comment suggests, it merely can be. It is far from a certainty and it really is not that common.

See the discussion here: http://www.normankoren.com/Tutorials/MTF8.html
Norm Korens summary comment on this is as follows: "Film images are composed of grain, and film (especially negative film) can have more grain than most people realize, especially if they haven't seen sharp prints. Film grain is often mistaken for scanner noise or grain aliasing (a real effect, but somewhat rare)."

I see actual grain (not merely aliasing) in my scans -- certainly with the 5400 dpi scans, but also, depending on the film with the 4000 dpi scans. Scan high enough to resolve the grain and you limit the potential for grain aliasing.

Dec 22, 2008 at 12:01 AM

chez
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p.2 #15 · Film and digital color

mmurph wrote:
skid00skid00 wrote:

In my experience, though, the colors I get with my calibrated cam are *far* more accurate than any print/slide I've seen.

How much of your experience is due to years/decades of seeing film prints, and *expecting* to see those color interpretations? This would be similar to *perceiving* grain as sharpness...

Agreed!

I went to digital around 2002 when I looked at the 2MP digital images a friend took at my sons birthday party. The color was incrediibly pure, clear, clean, despite the very low res. They were far better than the scanned color files I was getting from my Mamiya 6x7 slides and negatives!

The only film I still use if 4x5, because I can't justify a MFDB right now.

Also, FWIW: Lightroom allows great mixing of color for B&W images. Looks pretty similar to the tool displayed above.

If you were getting better images from your D30 than from you 6x7 Mamiya slides...then you must have been murdering your slides. I have shot Pentax 6x7 for many years and when I went to digital ( 5D ), the resulting images were no where close to what I can get from the 6x7 slides. I judge the results using 16x24 and 20x30 prints and there were huge differences in both resolution and true colours. Yes the digital images looked good at 100% on the screen, but when they needed to be uprezed to make the photos, they quickly turned to mush.

Only reason I moved to digital was convenience...not image quality.

Dec 22, 2008 at 01:03 AM

edwardkaraa
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p.2 #16 · Film and digital color

I don't think it is as rare as NK believes, it depends more on the scanner imho. I used to scan with a Nikon L5000 at 4000 DPI and the grain was much more obvious that with comparable pro scans done outside. Then I realized that the grain got more intense as I scanned at a lower resolution (to save time as I didn't always need 22mp files), which didn't make sense to me at all. I have optically printed color negative film at 70x100 cm a few times in the past and have never seen grain similar to what the scans show on screen even when I put my nose in the print (is that sufficient pixel peeping?)

Lotusm50 wrote:
edwardkaraa wrote:
Many don't realize that the noise they see in scans is not film grain but actually grain aliasing.

You probably should define "grain aliasing" for the uninitiated. If you've got samples it would be helpful to show them to illustrate.

Further what you see isn't necessarily grain aliasing, as your comment suggests, it merely can be. It is far from a certainty and it really is not that common.

See the discussion here: http://www.normankoren.com/Tutorials/MTF8.html
Norm Korens summary comment on this is as follows: "Film images are composed of grain, and film (especially negative film) can have more grain than most people realize, especially if they haven't seen sharp prints. Film grain is often mistaken for scanner noise or grain aliasing (a real effect, but somewhat rare)."

I see actual grain (not merely aliasing) in my scans -- certainly with the 5400 dpi scans, but also, depending on the film with the 4000 dpi scans. Scan high enough to resolve the grain and you limit the potential for grain aliasing.

Dec 22, 2008 at 07:50 AM

edwardkaraa
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p.2 #17 · Film and digital color

chez wrote:

Only reason I moved to digital was convenience...not image quality.

Amen to that.

Dec 22, 2008 at 07:52 AM

shirozina
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p.2 #18 · Film and digital color

Scanned film is a poor representation of what film is capable of when printed directly to paper.

Dec 22, 2008 at 01:59 PM

kidtexas
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p.2 #19 · Film and digital color

edwardkaraa wrote:
I don't think it is as rare as NK believes, it depends more on the scanner imho. I used to scan with a Nikon L5000 at 4000 DPI and the grain was much more obvious that with comparable pro scans done outside. Then I realized that the grain got more intense as I scanned at a lower resolution (to save time as I didn't always need 22mp files), which didn't make sense to me at all.

I've noticed the same thing. Grain looks to be about the same size at a 100% view whether I scan at 1000 dpi or 4000 dpi (on traditional B&W negs). I guess it makes sense to me - the silver grain is going to take up a whole pixel, so when those pixels represent a larger area (as in the 1000 dpi scan), the grain appears larger. There is a noticeable drop in grain if I scan at 4000 dpi and then downsize.

Dec 22, 2008 at 02:19 PM

mrladewig
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p.2 #20 · Film and digital color

shirozina wrote:
Scanned film is a poor representation of what film is capable of when printed directly to paper.

This is true, but in color printing digital has significantly increased the flexibility that photographers have to execute an image as they intend. In the past, this has only been possible through the use of very complex masks. In that regard, I think hybrid digital workflow has greatly helped photographers.

Dec 22, 2008 at 03:19 PM

shirozina
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p.2 #21 · Film and digital color

mrladewig wrote:
shirozina wrote:
Scanned film is a poor representation of what film is capable of when printed directly to paper.

This is true, but in color printing digital has significantly increased the flexibility that photographers have to execute an image as they intend. In the past, this has only been possible through the use of very complex masks. In that regard, I think hybrid digital workflow has greatly helped photographers. Certainly and I was using such a workflow for a good while before a viable totaly digital system came along. However when comparing the ultimate qualiteis of each system I think it's still a compromise - as grain is exagerated and subtle tonal quality is lost.

Dec 22, 2008 at 03:26 PM

JimBuchanan
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p.2 #22 · Film and digital color

Lotusm50 wrote:
Actually, if you really want good B&W, get a a CCD sensor without a RGB filter (a Foveon style filter is irrelevant for B&W, just like the Bayer filter, you don't need 3 different color sensitives at each photosite or alternating photosite to capture B&W). Monochrome versions of most bayer filters are made by sensor manufacturers.

Kodak produced a monochrome version of one of it's early DSLR's and it is, from what I've seen, spectacular and very sharp. Noticeably more resolution that the equivalent bayer-filtered version. Of course, you would have to go back to using color filters to control the tonalities of the image (because you are not capturing colors that you can select later). Of course, the best thing about digital, color digital that is, is that for B&W you don't need to bring a half dozen red, orange yellow, green and blue filters with you, as well as assess filtration and constantly change them out to optimize a particular image before you capture it.

Interesting discussion, and my only comment is the related in color, astrophotos made from B&W CCD chips. They use RGB fiilter wheels to capture the three colors and then use stacking software to get the color file. Granted these are long exposures, but it is well known the B&W chips used are typically more sensitive and higher resolution than the color chips. The process can get more complicated with luminance channels and Halpha channels, but point is 100% specificity of the selected wavelengths through filters.

Dec 22, 2008 at 03:29 PM

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p.2 #23 · Film and digital color

chez wrote:

In my experience, though, the colors I get with my calibrated cam are *far* more accurate than any print/slide I've seen.

....

If you were getting better images from your D30 than from you 6x7 Mamiya slides...then you must have been murdering your slides.

Yes, no question, the resolution is there in 6x7. But most prints that I see from film - including the "wonderful" Ansel Adam prints that I saw last year in Chicago - look like crap. We are just so used to overlooking the smudging, dirty, random noise that comes from grain.

I never uprez. The maximum I would print with my 1DsII was 18x27 at 180 dpi - mostly for portraits, etc. I consider that the largest native size for that camera, maybe push it to 20x30 for portraits. The D30 falls apart above 8.5x11

I still shoot 4x5 film when I need larger prints (I have 2 Epson 7600's and a 9600 - I like to print large.) No question that digital is limited in resolution, and limited in size if you can't afford a P45+ or 65+ (I can't right now, not working due to neck/back issues.)

But even my best 4x5 scans and prints have that damn grain/dye crud, especially in smooth areas liek the sky. And taht serves primarily to "dilute" the color clarity, because the gain artifacts are multi-hued little color blossums, or dull grey "additives", like mixing some grey paint into your saturated hues.

Now, going to something like an Astia slide, you are talking about much less noise than traditional Kodak films, or especially B&W. And a digital process flow can give much better prints than I ever got in the darkroom, no question.

I shot film for 20+ years. I went to all digital output in 1998, think I bought a Minolta Dimage Scan Multi then for my 6x7 and 645. I had long ago given up 35mm, just too noisy and grainy and crappy. Same for any medium format iamges above 100 iso.

The Dimage was not quite adequate for my 645. Went through a few more scanners. Started with digital capture in 2002. Never intended to stop shooting 6x7 film, it just got replaced in practical terms. As I said, I am stull shooting 4x5. That is the only place where the resoultion outweighs the noise for me today.

I just think we are so biased to tolerating film artifacts that we don't even see them, as mentioned above.

Dec 22, 2008 at 05:33 PM

edwardkaraa
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p.2 #24 · Film and digital color

Back to the original question, which raw converter produces in your opinion the best and purest reds that are similar to what one can get with color reversal film such as Fujichrome Velvia. As I mentioned earlier, portrait style in DPP seems to give good results in some cases. Also someone mentioned C1 and I do remember from memory having tried it long time ago that it did produce some nice pure reds. It seems to me that nice pure reds usually show high R values, and very low G and B values, while DPP neutral and standard seem to have all RGB values quite high which results in pinkish or washed out reds. Any recommendations?

Same question for blue.

Dec 22, 2008 at 11:16 PM

Tamerlin
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p.2 #25 · Film and digital color

mmurph wrote:
Film is "dirty" - the grain and/or dyes are really noise. The substrate is really poor. We are fooled into thinking there is more detail beacuse of the random artefacts that hide real low-level detail. But blow it up and it looks like what it is - garbage.

Your experience with film must be very out of date; the latest emulsions capture remarkable amounts of detail, and I'm only shooting on 4x5, not even 8x10... to match the detail in the first 40x50 print I got made, you'd need a 150 megapixel full-color sensor.

You can look at it from "normal" viewing distance as well as up close, and it holds up to both.

Edited on Dec 23, 2008 at 12:13 AM · View previous versions

Dec 22, 2008 at 11:49 PM


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