I have seen this expression many times, "I just prefer the look of film"
Which leads me to this question....
If you shoot a scene using Medim Format Film and then use a good scanner like the Nikon Super Coolscan 9000 to scan the image into Photoshop for some editing - - - Do you still have the look of film? Or have you simply created another digital image?
It will look like film if you know how to edit the files, which isn't very straightforward. Or if you let the scanner software do it for you, but that's like shooting JPG with your digital camera. You lose important control over the results.
For B/W film, the trick is to apply a curve that gives high contrast where you want it.
If you shoot a scene using Medim Format Film and then use a good scanner like the Nikon Super Coolscan 9000 to scan the image into Photoshop for some editing - - - Do you still have the look of film? Or have you simply created another digital image?
"the look of film", unless ones prints traditionally directly from negatives, is something that most people havent even seen. Especially for colour. And for trannies I reckon you need a projector to fully do it justice. So for people nowadays who have never seen any of the above it is very questionable if they actually know what is the true "look of film".
However, having done all these things I reckon good scanners come very close. I'm not too familiar with the details of scanner technology, if its just another bayer sensor that intrapolates colours or whatever, but even tho its digital it is so finetuned specifically to scan film that it gets very close. Still, if you drag a single slider too much you do get all the digital crap straight away. For me what gives it away instantly is the digital noise in the shadows. So a good scanner is very close, but not 100%.
The biggest difference I have noticed with the whole film vs digital look has to do with the response curve of each medium to light. For instance, film traditionally has a curve where the shoulder (highlights) gradually roll off and the toe (shadows) block up a bit. Sort of like this: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3daWmT7PPCY/SrrdzGTJ08I/AAAAAAAAD6M/i9J6YFs4Zk4/s400/density.jpg
With digital, the response to light is exactly linear so the 'curve' is a straight line. Visually, this means that with digital, we can often get a very harsh look in the highlights and quickly see them blow out to pure white with the sort of manipulation one might try to mimic the film look. This is of course a fairly general observation and digital camera and software manufactures massage this straight line response to give us something that looks more natural but inherently this is what is going on with the actual capture. I do know that with a number of digital systems, if you want to have the headroom to manipulate the image to more closely resemble the film look, your best NOT to expose to the extreme right based on the histogram in the camera. This will vary system by system. My Sony a900, for instance, seems to not require this technique to the degree my older Canon 5D required and I think that's why some say the files have more of a film look about them.
Makten wrote:
It will look like film if you know how to edit the files, which isn't very straightforward.
I'd like to modify that. You can get something that looks similar to film, but getting something that looks exactly like a specific stock can be very difficult. I do acknowledge that getting something similar to film is good enough 99% of the time; getting an exact match is just academic.
Color film is more about not-so-perfect colors.
I've been saying that for a while. It might be a less accurate reproduction, but I find it a more *pleasing* one. I hate to use an analogy, but it's like tube amps for a guitar.
kidtexas wrote:
I'd like to modify that. You can get something that looks similar to film, but getting something that looks exactly like a specific stock can be very difficult. I do acknowledge that getting something similar to film is good enough 99% of the time; getting an exact match is just academic.
I've been saying that for a while. It might be a less accurate reproduction, but I find it a more *pleasing* one. I hate to use an analogy, but it's like tube amps for a guitar.
+1
Also, we often see a tinge of color in the highlights with film whereas digital is often cleaner so has a more clinical look. Add that to the rollloff in the highlights and and blocking up of the deepest shadows and I think that goes a long way to explaining the visual difference. Maybe add some 'micro' contrast in the midtones for a more film like look as well...and some grain of course.
+1
Also, we often see a tinge of color in the highlights with film whereas digital is often cleaner so has a more clinical look. Add that to the rollloff in the highlights and and blocking up of the deepest shadows and I think that goes a long way to explaining the visual difference. Maybe add some 'micro' contrast in the midtones for a more film like look as well...and some grain of course.
Great Stuff guys.
This is a good time to ask the question again and the reason why I am highlighting these two responses.....
Do these qualities become lost when the film is scanned to digital?
Wow. I would not have guessed that was Provia 100F. The contrast and colors seems much harsher than the Provia 100F I've used -- the contrast is even harsher than Velvia. Especially from a 6x7 slide. Are you sure it's Provia, or did you really mess around with the file?
I think that one of the main culprits with digital today is that not all people know what they are aiming for in in post pro, and even fewer know how to get there. This ends up with a lot of digital capture having an unpleasing artificial look to them. Or, "digital" look.
Sometimes the files themselves have good potential, sometimes they are horrible to work with, but all that could be said with film.
There are things that can be done with digital that couldn't be done to the same extent with film though I still find a well exposed medium format negative from say, Fuji Reala, a pleasure to work with and quite easy to steer towards a great natural looking print.
Unfortunately the ease of working with digital cameras have made my Hasselblad redundant, gathering dust on a shelf. I am not saying I much prefer working with digital, it is more a matter of cost and hassle versus convenience.
With my Superwide I most often ended up with a straight print, and it looked great with natural colors and contrast. Any additional post pro was a hassle though.
With digital I spend far more time working the files than I would have done with film - so for me digital is no time saver, not at all. Sometimes I overwork the files and end up scrapping them, going back to the RAW files and starting all over again.
The "pleasing" part of a good print from film is often that nothing sticks out where as with digital much too often sometimes sticks out as being "unnatural" either in color rendering or contrast.
Coming from film I think it makes it easier for me to gauge my work with digital, in a good way. Just some thoughts.
kidtexas wrote:
I'd like to modify that. You can get something that looks similar to film, but getting something that looks exactly like a specific stock can be very difficult. I do acknowledge that getting something similar to film is good enough 99% of the time; getting an exact match is just academic.
Since I'm only workning with images for viewing on a computer screen, the "accuracy" is unimportant. If I had a print, I'd have to scan it anyway.
So, what is interesting to me is what I can get out of film, that I cannot from a digital camera file. I really don't care if it looks like it "should" for being film.
I've been saying that for a while. It might be a less accurate reproduction, but I find it a more *pleasing* one. I hate to use an analogy, but it's like tube amps for a guitar.
That's a good analogy. I happen to play guitar, and I agree that tube amps sound "better". Not actually better technically, but they are nicer to listen to, especially when slightly clipping.
Lotusm50 wrote:
Wow. I would not have guessed that was Provia 100F. The contrast and colors seems much harsher than the Provia 100F I've used -- the contrast is even harsher than Velvia. Especially from a 6x7 slide. Are you sure it's Provia, or did you really mess around with the file?
I "messed around" with the file to make the image look like the original positive, when viewed "as is", backlit. A bit overdone perhaps, but I like it. The light was quite harsh too, so it isn't too far from reality except for the saturation.
I could have gotten this result with a good digital camera, but I would have had to crank the contrast up very much, probably causing posterisation of colors and so on.
Bigger film produces a very satisfy negative (or transparency). The process is different and the feel of creating the transparency can be appealing. I don't see the appeal of smaller 35mm film.
Well shot and processed color prints can be hard to distinguish between film and digital. Likely the digital shooter will make more and better images for the same effort.
For some people it's about the image. For some people the process of getting to the image is important.
Hi res B&W film is different, and special. It's hard to argue that digital is as good for B&W.
Spyro P. wrote:
I'm not too familiar with the details of scanner technology, if its just another bayer sensor that intrapolates colours or whatever
No, scanner sensors definitely don't use a Bayer matrix. The scanner sensor has the same width as the (short side of the) scanner platen, but it only captures one line of the image at a time, sequentially in R, G, B. So it's a CCD with three very wide rows of pixels/sensels. As the scanner head travels across the object being scanned, the three colour channels are being captured in the same place but in sequence and not simultaneously like a still camera.
I believe that modern LED scanners alternate the lighting between R/G/B and only have a single row CCD, to save costs.
There may be some errors in my description above, but this is the general idea.
kosmoskatten wrote:
Sometimes I overwork the files and end up scrapping them, going back to the RAW files and starting all over again.
The "pleasing" part of a good print from film is often that nothing sticks out where as with digital much too often sometimes sticks out as being "unnatural" either in color rendering or contrast.
I don't have a lot of experience in processing digital images, but in the process of learning I also end up completely scrapping my processing sometimes to start over.
One of the things I'm often struggling with is that parts of an image look great with the initial RAW settings, but when I start processing it to treat the parts that look unnatural, the appeal of the original image is somewhat lost.
Digital looks great on screen, but doesn't do as well in print. It is very clean -- which translates to a beautiful photo on a computer monitor, but it looks rather sterile in print. The lack of a background texture (grain) allows you to see the true extent of the resolution, and any digital artifacts.
Film on the other hand doesn't look amazing on a computer monitor, but it does VERY well in print. Fine grain makes for a beautiful print, and gives the appearance of detail beyond what is actually there.
I have shot both film and digital, but I am currently using just film. I had a 1Ds III, which was a great camera, but I was never really satisfied with the *print* quality -- even at a small size like 12x18. I could tell the image was digital because it was too clean. Since I switched back to film (large format), I have seen an increase in my print quality. The prints seem to have so much more depth because of the grain. Also, the color and contrast is interpreted differently on film --- which gives some subjects a more 3D feel.
I now do very large prints at times on super high gloss -- not detail obscuring canvas. I love the look of film for the landscape photos that I'm shooting.
kosmoskatten wrote:
Coming from film I think it makes it easier for me to gauge my work with digital, in a good way. Just some thoughts.
+100
Since I teach a little, I have noticed that students who have a background in traditional photography - shooting film, processing and printing in a darkroom - have a much easier time learning Photoshop/ Digital.
kosmoskatten wrote:
I think that one of the main culprits with digital today is that not all people know what they are aiming for in in post pro, and even fewer know how to get there. This ends up with a lot of digital capture having an unpleasing artificial look to them. Or, "digital" look.
Totally agree. I think one nice thing about shooting film is it shows you how files can/should look. Shooting lots of Portra has really helped me get where I want to be when processing my digital files.
edit: poster above beat me to it. Totally agree.
Also; highlight shoulder, highlight shoulder, highlight shoulder. I love shooting way to the right with negative film and having it come out beautifully. I have to be more conservative with digital or I start blowing out highlights completely, or even just one channel. Ugly.
uintaangler wrote: Do these qualities become lost when the film is scanned to digital?
I think in general the answer is no, these qualities can be retained. And of course if you "break" the digital file in PP they can be lost as well.
But I think at this point you are really asking more about a printing technique now. If I'm scanning I'm likely going to be ink jet printing. If I'm not scanning then I must be using an enlarger and chemical process. So now we are talking more about the output medium than the input medium. And of course these two output mediums have their own set of differences and various people have their own passions with regards to them.
Bottom line is what you like best. I personally prefer film over digital but thats just me. I always said that film has a soul while digital is hollow and empty. Don't get me wrong. Digital rocks and eventually will be the only game in town. But for the tie being I cary my F6 and D3S in the same bag
here is one shot with Ektar 100 that looks just a little to clean for me
Kodal 160 NC starts pumping a little soul into it
Fuji Pro 160 S in B&W starts coming to life
Go to this page and select the film from the drop list and you will see images taken with that specific film
