M8 Detail,Dynamic Range and Color

[martinb]

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Guy

 

I agree that this forum is an innappropriate place to discuss the digital vs film thing ad nausum. Although I still shoot some film it is for purely tactile reasons. I have the luxury of having anough space for a full darkroom and once and a while it's fun to develop a couple rolls of film and make some fiber prints the old fashioned way. Frankly, if you are going analog in the capture media (film) I don't understand the rational for scanning the results to digital and contaminating the analog process. A wet print does have an emotional satisfaction that is different than what one gets in a purely digital mode but to say its better is a bit of a stretch. Anyway, if I was doing this for a living, I wouldn't consider film for an instant.

 

Rex

 

Why not? If you like the look of film and want to get the best results out of it with the best control over the final image, scanning is the way to go.

I shoot film because I like the look of it, the slow process and the feel of shooting it. But I hate the wet darkroom.

[carstenw]

To Jamie, Guy and everyone else I'd like to say I've intend no insult or disrespect with what I've been saying here.

 

Sorry I got a bit annoyed and posted as I did. I hope at least that my picture has convinced you that film isn't necessarily superior. Both have strengths and weaknesses, and they aren't as obvious as just "look". Anyway, this is a digital forum, so I will stop here.

[Jamie Roberts]

{snipped}But you were the ones claiming that some of the M8 images posted here look like film, and I'm simply responding to that claim and disagreeing. {snipped}

 

Kevin.

 

I don't think the original claim was that the M8 "is" somehow film. What the claim was, I believe (without going back through the whole thread), is that for the first time (for me anyway) with a portable digital camera the M8 has the dynamic range and exposure latitude of print film (not slide film).

 

In that sense, it is complelely "like" print film.

 

It does not have the contrast or colour characteristics of film--no RAW file would! You will never have a digital file from RAW sensor data that looks like film's multiple curves without processing.

 

(I suppose some day some wily camera maker will do the equivalent with JPEGs, but that defeats one of the purposes of digital: that you're not stuck with one film. )

 

You need to code the contrast and colour characteristics you feel are most film-like--and the M8 lets you do that. That was the point, or at least, my point.

[carstenw]

I always though that slide film had the least DR, followed by colour film, and then B&W film at the top of the film-heap?

[Jamie Roberts]

I always though that slide film had the least DR, followed by colour film, and then B&W film at the top of the film-heap?

 

Carsten--that's my understanding as well.

 

The DMR, to me, is a lot like slide film (in terms of DR / exposure latitude, well, and also saturation / colour depth...).

 

The M8 is getting there--getting us to colour print film in terms of exposure latitude and DR, to the point where multiple develops of the same RAW file (or using LightZone, especially in BW till they fix the colour) are often necessary to get what's in the RAW file into a print.

 

Certain BW films are still way ahead of everything else in terms of absolute exposure latitude; though modern colour print films are right up there too (not the way it was when I was learning film many years ago now)...