deepbluejh wrote:
I think film handles hard contrast a little more gracefully than many digital cameras. I don\'t have any science to back this up, but that seems to be the perception.
The one thing that I think film can handle better than digital is overexposed highlights. With film (esp. negative film) the overexposure \"rolls off\" in a more pleasing way, while with digital it essentially \"clips\" at the point of highest luminosity value. In the end, this just requires a different approach to exposure in certain situations with digital so that the blown highlights are avoided. Not better. Not worse. Just different.
Beyond that, I\'m hard pressed to think of a way in which film is objectively \"better\" than digital capture. This is a different issue that those folks who say they like the quality of film better than that of digital. I happen to disagree, but that is a highly subjective matter.
A though experiment occurred to me recently. Imagine a world in which photography does not yet exist - there is no history of \"how things have been done\" in the medium. Suddenly two photographic technologies are invented. One is \"chemical\" (film) photography at the level of the AD 2011 state of the art. The other is digital at the 2011 AD state of the art.
It is hard going on impossible for me to imagine that any person would choose the film technology over the digital technology in such a case.
chez wrote:
Humans always like to take the path of least resistance. That is digital. Does not mean that path produces the best results...it\'s just the easiest.
That blanket statement is unsupportable. Humans sometimes take the path of least resistance, but sometimes they take other paths as well. Sometimes they take the path of greatest reward, or of highest quality, or of more power.
And those who really understand and use digital technologies to their full potential are not just taking the \"least resistance\" path at all. Most choose this approach because it gives them more control over the process and the results and because they/we believe that the results are exceptional.
deepbluejh wrote:
I think film handles hard contrast a little more gracefully than many digital cameras. I don\'t have any science to back this up, but that seems to be the perception.
The one thing that I think film can handle better than digital is overexposed highlights. With film (esp. negative film) the overexposure \"rolls off\" in a more pleasing way, while with digital it essentially \"clips\" at the point of highest luminosity value. In the end, this just requires a different approach to exposure in certain situations with digital so that the blown highlights are avoided. Not better. Not worse. Just different.
Beyond that, I\'m hard pressed to think of a way in which film is objectively \"better\" than digital capture. This is a different issue that those folks who say they like the quality of film better than that of digital. I happen to disagree, but that is a highly subjective matter.
A though experiment occurred to me recently. Imagine a world in which photographs does not yet exist - there is no history of \"how things have been done\" in the medium. Suddenly two photographic technologies are invented. One is \"chemical\" (film) photography at the level of the AD 2011 state of the art. The other is digital at the 2011 AD state of the art.
It is hard going on impossible for me to imagine that any person would choose the film technology over the digital technology in such a case.
chez wrote:
Humans always like to take the path of least resistance. That is digital. Does not mean that path produces the best results...it\'s just the easiest.
That blanket statement is unsupportable. Humans sometimes take the path of least resistance, but sometimes they take other paths as well. Sometimes they take the path of greatest reward, or of highest quality, or of more power.
And those who really understand and use digital technologies to their full potential are not just taking the \"least resistance\" path at all. Most choose this approach because it gives them more control over the process and the results and because they/we believe that the results are exceptional.
Dan
Jun 03, 2011 at 11:13 AM
Previous versions of gdanmitchell's message #9643854 « 5DC vs 5D2 colors? 5DC better? »
