A film 'look' in the near future?

[250swb]

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16 minutes ago, Charles Morgan said:

2 years ago, I visited the Leica Park in Wetzlar. There was an exhibition of work by Dr Paul Worth and Alfred Tritschler from the 30s and 40s. Commercial photographers, they produced images of the Berlin Olympics, German Railways, the Hindenburg and numerous other works using mostly Leicas. The stress, time and time again, was upon how much they strove to reduce grain to as little as possible - commercial printing required as solid an image as possible. Expose long, develop short. What struck me time and again was that their negatives on display were close to perfect, and their prints ditto. In other words, they understood the medium of 35mm needed greater care than medium format to produce clear, sharp and low grain images, and they were masters of all stages of the process.

The grain I see too much of today (definitely including in my own images) results from scanner light scatter and also underexposed shadows. Add in the common dust spots from a negative and what I too often see is nostalgia for a past that would have absolutely hated such things. People could not afford to be so slapdash.

 

 

 

I'm not so sure the past hated grain per se, except as you point out in the commercial world of advertising and printing. Think of the Pictorialists in the 1890's to 1920's and even Ansel Adams was making grainy and 'atmospheric' photographs well after fine grain and a normal tonal scale was normal. It's interesting though that when he changed to fine grain landscape it was in part the need for clear reproduction in his work with the Sierra Club. But many photographers such as Bill Brandt, Ralph Gibson, and Trent Parke to name a few have used grain as an integral part of the image.

[pgk]

1 hour ago, 250swb said:

nostalgia - noun - a sentimental longing or wistful affection for a period in the past

This definition is incomplete. It needs a caveat which limits it to what are now perceived to be positive or bening aspects of the past. I suspect that few have genuine nostalgia for the negative aspects. I wonder how many photographers would consider using cyanide as a photographic fixative with nostalgia?

Grain, or noise, has a visual impact in an image. I'm not so sure that I would consider its use as nostalgic, as digital noise too can also be used to good effect. Tha said, it can be difficult to free oneself from the shackles of film days. On the other hand young photographer have film photography as an additional part of photographic image making and as such can explore its differences to digital.  In the past none of the well-known photographers mentioned in this thread had access to digital technology but I'm sure many would have embraced the opportunities it provides. Whether emulating filmic imagety would have been one of them is a question to which we will never know the answer.

[250swb]

16 minutes ago, pgk said:

Whether emulating filmic imagety would have been one of them is a question to which we will never know the answer.

When Sabastiao Salgado went from film to digital he added emulated grain to his photos, and made them B&W. Of course he was probably more interested in the look of the photograph rather than showing off how fantastically noise free his new camera was. The very fact that adding grain is even being discussed is the preeminent position of demonstrating the abilities a digital camera above photography.

[ianman]

8 minutes ago, Steven said:

I think that film, unlike digital, can turn something boring into something interesting.

If it's boring, it's boring. Using any gimmick to tart it up will result in a tarted up boring photo.

I often get the feeling that after discovering the gimmick using a shallow dof to highlight a subject, all sorts of filters applied to the image to make it even more trendy.

[pgk]

Actually when I stop to think about it, I cannot think of a single photograph which I have taken which would benefit from added grain. I can think of many which would benefit from reduced grain/noise possibly/maybe. I'm with ianman, in that a boring photo is a boring photo and no amount of messing around with it will turn it into something better. Its one of my concerns with manipulated/created/composite 'photographs' which is another 'in thing', which are only viable if they originate from a clear concept whilst too many seem cobbled together from a disparate set of mediocre images.

[pippy]

1 hour ago, analog-digital said:

A CCD sensor is very near to film.......

I tend to agree that an image produced with the CCD-sensor cameras - despite what sceptics may believe - can produce images which have a similar aesthetic to a film image. I'd add that it's more true, purely IMX, for the Monochrom than the M8 / M9 cameras but, then again, I have never tried to discern a 'filmic' look with any of my colour bodies - be they CCD or CMOS.

Stating the obvious without the randomness of any grain structure an exact match will be nigh-on impossible but, still, an image shot at medium ISO (for me that's around ISO 800) can, when printed-out on to quality paper, have much of the look of pushed Plus-X / FP4.

Philip.

EDIT : FWIW I've never been a fan of grainy film in the first place...

Edited May 28, 2021 by pippy

[ianman]

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2 hours ago, analog-digital said:

A CCD sensor is very near to film.......

Mine is...

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[ianman]

31 minutes ago, pippy said:

Stating the obvious without the randomness of any grain structure an exact match will be nigh-on impossible

See posts #4, 23, 28, 34 thru 38 and quite by chance.... 42 !!

[plasticman]

57 minutes ago, Steven said:

Last Sunday, I took a photo of my empty cup of coffee in sunlight spot on my table. On digital, boring. On film, "it filled a void and created a mood". 

I know exactly what you mean Steven. I think this is why I started using film.

I've told the story many times before about how that happened - but just to re-cap, I took a newly bought M6 on vacation with me and my girlfriend to Denmark and probably used a couple of rolls of Portra. The images were just ordinary snapshots, and after the hassle of getting them developed at a not-very-helpful lab (which has since disappeared) and the expense of the prints (I had no scanner then), I decided film was not for me, and continued using digital as I always had, and sold the M6.

But those low-res scans the lab had done kept on drawing me back again and again. After a day's work on the laptop I'd open up that folder and click through the images over and over - and they drew me back to the vacation - they really immersed me in it - in a way that my digital images just didn't do (I still don't really know why). 

As I've said, I still use digital - I've gone through Leica M digital cameras, Fujis, a Leica T, and now I added an X1D. But nothing I've taken with any of them gives me the same feeling as my film photographs.

[pippy]

18 minutes ago, ianman said:

See posts #4, 23, 28, 34 thru 38 and quite by chance.... 42 !!

Ah! The Answer to the Great Question of Life, The Universe and Everything no less...

Apologies to you, Ian, and everyone else for not have waded through 7 pages of posts before I wrote what I already suspected to be a well-known self-evident truth.

Carry On!

Philip.

Edited May 28, 2021 by pippy

[ianman]

3 minutes ago, pippy said:

Apologies to you, Ian, and everyone else for not have waded through 7 pages of posts before I wrote what I already suspected to be a well-known self-evident truth.

Carry On!

Oh no need to apologise, despite some interesting later posts, the thread has become mostly as boring as the photos which need a bunch of digital filters to turn them into digitally filtered boring photos.

Actually, I can't think why, I'm reminded of the opening words of a Woody Allen film (Annie Hall):

"Two ladies are eating in a restaurant. One says 'The food is terrible here', to which the other replies 'Yes, and the portions are so small'".

[plasticman]

11 minutes ago, ianman said:

the thread has become mostly as boring...

I think the mods no longer enforce participation in all threads anymore - so you're good to go! 

[pedaes]

My take having used film for many years and printing in a darkroom.  I might be alone on this but a fail to see any difference in a scanned negative  and a digital photo on a monitor. I also fail to see any difference between a scanned negative and a digital photograph when printed on an inkjet printer. I can see a difference between a dark room print and a inkjet print. So I have the view there is no point using film unless you are skilled at darkroom printing. By all means use film if you enjoy the experience and like the reduced dynamic range etc. but I cannot see any of the talked up benefits in a monitor image - Silver Effex etc.will give you as much grain and degrading of the digital image as you could possibly want.

For the last few years, all my competition/exhibition prints have been inkjet, and I will not be sparking up the darkroom any day soon.

Edited May 28, 2021 by pedaes

[pgk]

18 minutes ago, pedaes said:

So I have the view there is no point using film unless you are skilled at darkroom printing.

Yes/no. You are absolutely right until that is it comes to medium/large format where current sensors are too small. I can see total logic in a large format > scan > inkjet print as a workflow but far less so for 35mm. Large format film gives access to a huge array of lenses which crop too tight to be used on digital cameras.

[pedaes]

25 minutes ago, pgk said:

Yes/no. You are absolutely right until that is it comes to medium/large format where current sensors are too small. I can see total logic in a large format > scan > inkjet print as a workflow but far less so for 35mm. Large format film gives access to a huge array of lenses which crop too tight to be used on digital cameras.

Agree, but I was talking about the world of Leica as in this M -system Forum.

[pedaes]

15 minutes ago, Steven said:

I can see a difference between film and digital when it's on a screen. 

I can understand that, especially with minimally processed images.

[wattsy]

I don't think there is any point in trying to convince people who hold a different preference but I have no personal doubts about which medium I prefer. Whether scanned negative, digital photo of a print or wet print, IMO there is usually a vast difference between a colour film photograph and a colour digital photograph. I honestly don't understand why some people can't see that but each to their own. Black and white is a little bit different but I still see significant differences.

I have three framed B&W portrait prints on the wall in front of me, all taken with Leica M using various combinations. Two wet prints (one from a scanned Tri-X neg, the other from Monochrom digital) and a not especially fancily printed inkjet print from a scanned BW400CN negative (B&W C41 Kodak film for those who don't remember it). I like them all but the wet print from scanned Tri-X sings the loudest. I imagine that I could have another go at that Monochrom file and make it closer to the Tri-X scanned file but, why bother? They are all what they are and, going forward, it's much easier just to use the medium I think I like best.

[Danner]

For my tastes, presentation of a silver-gelatin B&W print continues to reign supreme.

[Erato]

Massively interesting threads...

 

 

Edited May 28, 2021 by Erato
sharing a great song from a British band -- Oceanlab

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[Ouroboros]

2 minutes ago, wattsy said:

....going forward, it's much easier just to use the medium I think I like best.

 

Which led me to delete the reply I had composed in response to those who say they can't see a difference (probably just as well I didn't submit it, anyway).    This thread is being driven down a pointless film vs digital route over the past few pages and won't produce anything new or interesting. 

It's easier to agree with your comment and leave it at that whilst the paint dries.