jimmy462
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 p.5 #3 · Anyone out there actually like "noisy" images. | |
David Baldwin wrote:
... I loved low light work and quickly encountered film grain, paticularly when I "pushed" Trix or faster film. Seemed to me that grain made photographs graphic, interesting, gritty, like a pointillist painting. I learned to love the "feel" heavy grain delivered.
Hi David,
Boy, does this topic hit home!
It was jarring to me, when I went digital, to lose the granularity of film emulsions in my images...truth be told, it still gnaws at me. I felt (and still often do feel) that something is missing from my overly-clean images. And I've given this subject a lot of thought over the past ten years or so...
When I first began gathering images with my 300D Digital Rebel it was immediately obvious to me that the change of medium from emulsion to electronic sensor was going to mean dealing with the loss of individual emulsion characteristics. Graininess, or granularity, were selective choices available to me when deciding how best to go about capturing my subject matter. Each type of film brought with it its own "feel" and it required of me a lot of experimentation to see what it could and could not do for me creatively.
And then there was a bit of "did my gamble/experiment pay off?" with a particular film...did my hopes for "fat" grain and high contrast work as I wished for that portrait series?...did my hopes for fine-grained, high-resolution, wide DR work out for that eclipse series?...did my hopes for high-ASA, filter adjusted daylight film work out better than my high-ASA Tungsten roll?...and on and on. The emulsion medium itself offered creative choices beyond subject, light, environment and exposure values for what I was trying to either convey or portray.
And I do miss it. So, I guess this is my long-winded way of saying, I concur. 
Here's a shoot-out I'd love to see...a series of identical scenes, like a high-contrast portrait setup, a twilight cityscape, a daytime landscape, etc. all shot with a variety of digital camera sensors versus, oh say, a dozen analog setups with different emulsions. And then presented, museum style, a comparison of the digital "negatives" (actually positives!) versus the emulsion negatives/positives. Then a comparison of processing/post-processing techniques available to both mediums. Then a comparison of presentations for final output...both print and projection (both slide and computer). A study, if you will, in the creative choices available to photographers through the employment of various medium.
Anyhoo, this topic reminds me that it's long past time for me to dust of my OM-1...or, maybe, hunt down a Canon film body for all this glass I've ended up with...!
Jimmy G
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