Quote of the decade about film vs. digital

[jaapv]

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Nor do I - and I never said so.

I have been maintaining all along that I think that the MM can take digital B&W in new directions, which will be interesting to explore. My opinion that a digital camera can -or should- never replace a fully analog workflow is unaltered. I will not try to do an aquarel in oil paint. (Actually neither, I am useless at painting )

However I choose to branch off and go the digital way.

Edited July 10, 2012 by jaapv

[giovanni]

If I were to buy an MM, I would leave the FX software in the box. I don't want a faux-film look from my digital shots - if I want a film look, I use film.

I do scan my film, and print on the desktop, as a darkroom is a luxury that I don't have.

 

I agree all the way, but what will you do if (when) film will not be available any more?

 

Also this is my doubt: are pictures from MM so different from M9 converted into BW?

(That probably would be clarified only when MANY comparison shot will be available)

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[jaapv]

That is the interesting question - I think so, but I will have to climb the learning curve first.

[jaapv]

If I were to buy an MM, I would leave the FX software in the box.

A good point . I think I will install it, but use it sparingly. As I do Exposure now on converted images - very rarely.

[j. borger]

...... but what will you do if (when) film will not be available any more?

 

You realy believe this will ever happen......?? We even have instant film back with the Impossible Project.

I am always amazed how people order anything from books, through DVDs and even shoes and clothes over the internet but drop film for digital because is is not longer available at the local drugstore. Availability of film is a non-argument for stopping to shoot film. Do not get me wrong there are a lot of valid arguments to go Digital. But availability of film is not.

[Jamie Roberts]

I've always wondered about that. A laser print is printed on paper that is chemically processed. I'd like to compare a negative that has been printed on a Lambda or Océ and one that is from a conventional enlarger. The papers are very close other than the emulsion that is used for the different light sources. I'm not so sure that one could really tell the difference, but maybe so.

 

The Lambda makes a huge difference

[aesop]

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You realy believe this will ever happen......?? We even have instant film back with the Impossible Project.

I am always amazed how people order anything from books, through DVDs and even shoes and clothes over the internet but drop film for digital because is is not longer available at the local drugstore. Availability of film is a non-argument for stopping to shoot film. Do not get me wrong there are a lot of valid arguments to go Digital. But availability of film is not.

 

...your "internet-purchase" argument falls when we factor in processing and printing, j. borger. Your average camera guy would happily opt for convenience and instant gratification over "suffering and waiting". Note that I speak as one who has home-developed for ~25 years. And no, I dont do digital.

[j. borger]

...your "internet-purchase" argument falls when we factor in processing and printing, j. borger. Your average camera guy would happily opt for convenience and instant gratification over "suffering and waiting". Note that I speak as one who has home-developed for ~25 years. And no, I dont do digital.

 

Why?? Processing and printing is also avalable via on-line services.The average camera guy that you refer too who opts for convenience and instant gratification has a perfect argument to shoot Digital indeed. But this has nothing to do with the availabilty of film argument!

[Jamie Roberts]

Not my point. I find it uninteresting to get digital to look like film.I don't even want the MM to look like film. It is a new look in digital B&W and will take that discipline a step further. My point was that scanned film is not the same as film processed chemically all the way through.

 

Jaap, I still think that's sort of hogwash--you really think digital shouldn't look like film? Then why don't you shoot JPEGs? Why bother with interpreting what the "medium" sees?

 

We'll see if you care about film tonality when you're fighting to get the right skin in good, but different coloured, light, and you didn't happen to have the right combination filter pack or gels along.

 

IMO, film sets a standard for colour and monochrome tonality (among other things, but detail might not be one of them). In any case, different films do this differently, but within a boundary of acceptable results.

 

Getting digital to look like film isn't about some kind of ersatz nostalgia--I really hate it when folks dismiss the whole issue as "kitsch." Apart from low-fi trends like Instagram and iPhone level apps, it's not that at all, any more than using extremely high-end digital professional audio gear is about making things sound "tubed" for the sake of it.

 

Like analogue audio, analogue photography has certain laudable and beautiful--and well-designed, historically speaking--attributes. So the point of making digital look like that is really about quality of results, and meeting or exceeding the standard with a different technology.

 

Most of digital post-processing technique is all about that goal.

 

So if you want to ignore that standard, then that's ok, but I suspect you don't want to, even if you tell yourself you really are

 

If you really did ignore it, you might have a system that's unnecessarily hard to work with and results that are very much harder to live with.

Edited July 10, 2012 by Jamie Roberts

[earleygallery]

Personally I do see the point in 'hybrid' processing. A scanned frame of film captures the tones/colours and grain, which is then printed on the inkjet. It still looks completely different from a digital file.

 

Of course traditional prints look different again, but it's another variation. It's wrong to think that there's no point in scanning film and printing digitally. If you doubt me, try it.

 

It would be interesting to see, lets say 10X12" prints of the same scene taken with an MM unaltered image, MM with Tri-X software applied, Tri-X film and printed digitally, and a wet print.

 

I wonder how much of the fine detail captured by the MM is going to be lost in the 'film' software conversions?

[Jamie Roberts]

{snipped}

 

I wonder how much of the fine detail captured by the MM is going to be lost in the 'film' software conversions?

 

It depends on the conversions, to be honest. If all you're talking about is loading a plugin and pushing a button, well, that's one way to convert.

 

But if you mean developing a BW workflow for digital that pays attention to the same things I would have in the darkroom, then the outputs are a heck of a lot closer.

[pico]

And digital Tri-X will look like scanned real Tri-X anyway, not like the real thing.

 

Add to that the fact that Tri-X has changed over the years. It no longer looks the way it did in the Sixties, for example. I print using early Leitz condenser enlargers for up to 6x10cm negatives. Prints done from Tri-X long ago are so very different. More grain. Perhaps not better, but different.

 

The number of persons who have actually seen an all-the-way chemical print is declining rapidly.

 

Ain't that the truth! I've yet to try a Lamda print, and am looking forward to it. So not considering the Lamda and addressing only B&W, the first great difference between ink-jet and wet-prints is that wet prints can have an illusion of depth. The illusion is as if one were looking down into the print, as if the emulsion were under a clear layer. (It is not, of course.) In the Seventies I was really hung up on it and tried coating prints with a clear coat to enhance that quality on Agfa Brovira, graded. (Opening an old box of those prints I found that the coating destroyed the archival quality. Purples and browns - yuck.)

[Checkland]

Companies spend all this time and money on R&D to develop digital, surely they would be stupid to try and emulate a film look, when we all could have stuck with film in the first place.

[CalArts 99]

The Lambda makes a huge difference

 

That is my current workflow. Drum scanned film (Aztec Premier) and either the Lambda or the Océ on Fuji Crystal Archive (RA-4) or Ilford Galerie (for B+W.) Luckily I have access to a studio where I can experiment a bit.

 

I once was a fanatic analog darkroom printer and obsessive over paper and developer combinations: Agfa Portriga (the old stuff before they changed the emulsion); Agfa Brovira; Seagull; Medalist; Ethol LPD; Edwal Platinum II; Agfa Neutol WA; etc., etc.. But today, the obvious advantage of drum scanning film and printing back on chemical based papers means that I have incredible control over the 'negative' through post processing in Photoshop. That is an advantage we never had before.

 

Anyway, the appearance between an analog print and a hybrid chemical based print is extremely close and with color there is no difference whatsoever since RA-4 paper is RA-4 paper. The drum scan faithfully reproduces the film's characteristics (and grain pattern.) The same goes for printing B+W on Ilford's fiber digital paper (with emulsion designed for laser projection instead of white light.) And as we know, inkjet printing (including carbon based mono inksets) is something completely different, including the substrate used (fiber based paper but with different available coatings that will receive ink droplets in various ways.)

 

Today we're dealing with: 1) 100% analog (film and analog enlargers and wet processing) 2) digital capture with either chemical wet processing (via tri-colour laser printers) or inkjet output on paper 3) film capture with a digital scan and either wet process or inkjet.

 

Interestingly each process has used the 'wet darkroom' analog print as its 'standard' to attempt to follow. But that's understandable since that's the point where we started (i.e, wet collodion after the daguerreotype.) Yet things always evolve and change and we will have various processes to choose from (just as in the historical past of photography.) Neither is better or worse, but simply different. It comes down to personal preferences and the author's intent in respect to a viewing audience (how one wants the viewer to react to a particular image and subject matter.)

[earleygallery]

Companies spend all this time and money on R&D to develop digital, surely they would be stupid to try and emulate a film look, when we all could have stuck with film in the first place.

 

So why do they?

 

Leica are said to have 'tuned' the M8/9 sensor based on Kodachrome colours.

 

The new MM ships with software to allow the user to apply film effects to the digital files.

 

Many digital cameras include 'film' modes.

[jaapv]

Because we have been trained into the look of film for over a hundred years.

[giovanni]

You realy believe this will ever happen......?? We even have instant film back with the Impossible Project.

I am always amazed how people order anything from books, through DVDs and even shoes and clothes over the internet but drop film for digital because is is not longer available at the local drugstore. Availability of film is a non-argument for stopping to shoot film. Do not get me wrong there are a lot of valid arguments to go Digital. But availability of film is not.

 

I really don't know what to believe, I can only tell what I hope. As an amateur who only owns film cameras (except a small canon powershot and my new mobile) and who mainly shots slides and BW, I hope film survives myself, so that I wouldn't be annoyed by a time and money consuming change of system.

I hope I can go on shooting slides, but the catalogue reduces everyday. I hope BW film production will be healthy for decades, I hope you are right but I fear you are too optimistic.

[Frank Sellitto]

I have 3 film M cameras. I love to shoot all types of film through them. Kodak, Ilford, Fuji, B&W, color negative film...whatever I can get my hands on. I had 2 M8.2 cameras, sold one to get a M monochrome. All I care about is the challenge of making beautiful and suductive medium- format quality inkjet prints. It has nothing to do with wanting my work to appropriate the worn out notion of Tri-x to be at the pinnacle and the face of one's work.

 

~f

[almoore]

I have doubts about the hybrid workflow...scanning, photoshopping and inkjet printing introduces the drawbacks of both digital and analog into the process.

I think best results will be reached by sticking to the full workflows, be it silicon or silver based.

 

I think the reverse to this.

 

The great thing about a hybrid workflow is that you can harness the best of both worlds. Obviously you could seize the worst of both worlds, but why would you? And the "best" results I've seen up to now begin with film as the starting point and digital printing, of one form or another, as the end point.

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[jaapv]

I'm with Jamie - A Lambda print, whatever the origin, is amazing. I had a few done by a lab in Delft, and am very happy with the result

 

I'm quite interested in the dedicated printing service Leica and Whitewall will be offering with the MM.

Edited July 11, 2012 by jaapv