My Film Images Are Better Looking Than Digital!

[Jamie Roberts]

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You mean this one? Twin Lens Life ~ Fine Art Film Photography: Digital vs. Film (The Real Deal) - Nikon D300 vs. Fuji GS645s

 

If you look close you may even catch my name referenced towards the end of the article...

 

Cheers,

 

Yeah, I already mentioned elsewhere it's a shame they couldn't spell it correctly

[Peter Natscher]

Yeah, I already mentioned elsewhere it's a shame they couldn't spell it correctly

 

Thanks for showing us the report!

 

I reviewed the report between film and digital -- between a 'cheap' amateur camera and lens using 120 color neg. film and a powerful semi-pro Nikon D300. The carefully conducted tests confirm what I have been saying throughout this topic -- that film still provides better color and realism than digital capture and will require less post processing to achieve the color retention than digital will. Film will even record some colors that are outside of digital's color gamut. I like shooting colorful flowers in my garden and my digital cameras miss the purple-blues in them completely! It's easily showing up in the film shots, though. I don't want to spent the rest of my precious time in front of a computer monitor post processing a digital file from a digital camera when my scanned film image requires less processing time to look as my eyes see the scene. The only thing the masses talk about with regards to digital cameras is it's mega pixel count ans resolution. Hey, the resolution is good enough at 12-24Mb pixel sensor size. To me, it's really about the color fidelity and dynamic range in the image that counts. Film still has the wider color gamut and dynamic range, more like what I see for with my eyes. Take a look at this report.

 

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Twin Lens Life ~ Fine Art Film Photography: Digital vs. Film (The Real Deal) - Nikon D300 vs. Fuji GS645s

 

report snip: Though the majority of professionals are shooting digital now that is no measurement of what is better. It's merely a sign of the times and of what is popular today. The best of the best and nearly all of the fine art world still use film! Those of us who do not want to compromise for the sake of the trends still shoot film. Only film gives you complete access to all the information captured from highlights to shadows and still retain snappy contrast and color to boot. Only film will stand the test of time, lasting centuries longer than any of the ever changing file formats and storage devices. Only film gives you the freedom to shoot and forget about buying a cushy desk chair or failing eyesight from staring at a computer monitor all day long. Only film can make me smile!

[Riccis]

Yeah, I already mentioned elsewhere it's a shame they couldn't spell it correctly

 

LOL! It happens all the time... Humbled to have my name mentioned, though...

 

Have you decided to come down for a visit yet?

[wildlightphoto]

Twin Lens Life ~ Fine Art Film Photography: Digital vs. Film (The Real Deal) - Nikon D300 vs. Fuji GS645s

 

This also a comparison of two particular (mismatched) systems. It's not film-vs-digital, there are too many uncontrolled variables to make definitive conculsions about the capture medium used in each system.

[Jamie Roberts]

{Snipped} Only film can make me smile!

 

And only an apples-to-oranges comparison like this, coupled with some complete and total untruths (like film is more archival than TIFF files!!), could reach this conclusion so blithely

 

PS--if you look back at my before and after correction in this thread, it was *your shot* and scan that's too yellow. Clouds aren't yellow, as you yourself said, but in your scan they measure very yellow indeed.

 

But once more, if you're happy, then great!

[Jamie Roberts]

LOL! It happens all the time... Humbled to have my name mentioned, though...

 

Have you decided to come down for a visit yet?

 

 

Man I'd love to, but had a family thing happen here. I'll send you a PM.

[KM-25]

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I bet National Geographic don't accept Kodachrome now. And, as to whether Kodachrome represents "true colour", that is a matter of opinion.

 

Mmm...I'll save you the financial trouble of losing a bet, they can and do accept Kodachrome slides, Alex Webb still shoots it and did a story on the Amazon for them on the film.

 

The images matter to them, not the medium.

[twittle]

I bet National Geographic don't accept Kodachrome now.

 

Out of curiosity, what would lead you to make that assumption?

[Peter Natscher]

PS--if you look back at my before and after correction in this thread, it was *your shot* and scan that's too yellow. Clouds aren't yellow, as you yourself said, but in your scan they measure very yellow indeed.

 

But once more, if you're happy, then great!

 

I don't think the clouds in my photo are 'very' yellow. Photography is a creative medium and it's all subjective. Your reaction is yours alone.

 

Maybe in your land clouds are never yellow but depending on the time of day or weather pattern we can have beautifully colored clouds out here on the West Coast, and that's great for photography! )

[Jamie Roberts]

I don't think the clouds in my photo are 'very' yellow. Photography is a creative medium and it's all subjective. Your reaction is yours alone.

 

Maybe in your land clouds are never yellow but depending on the time of day or weather pattern we can have beautifully colored clouds out here on the West Coast, and that's great for photography! )

 

LOL!!! You know, my reaction, that is mine alone, was also yours a few posts back (sounds like Monty Python)!

 

You wrote:

 

My goal is to replicate the images to as close as possible to what I saw with my eyes while being there on location taking the images. For example, in these two images, the fog and clouds over the Pacific and hugging the cliffs are a cool gray/white in appearance and should not to processed to a yellow cast. The sandy beach is a rich butter yellow...

 

(emphasis mine)...

 

So, as I keep saying, your neutral gray and white clouds are not neutral in the slightest. Having a neutral white point and black point is also not subjective, unless of course you want a cast (in this case yellow) for creative reasons.

 

More importantly, I don't "see" the excess yellow (though it's pretty obvious in your shot); I measure it in PS. Click a 5-by-5 average of the clouds at a neutral point and the numbers (the lack of blue in RGB) will tell you the clouds are, um, too yellow. Sorry--this is about workflow.

 

Having said that, that's it from me, because you're there and I'm not, and I can only go by what you say and show, not anything else. I think the neutral corrected shot looks better; and that you have a digital workflow, not a film workflow

 

But YMMV and I wish you good light!

[Peter Natscher]

LOL!!! You know, my reaction, that is mine alone, was also yours a few posts back (sounds like Monty Python)!

 

You wrote:

 

My goal is to replicate the images to as close as possible to what I saw with my eyes while being there on location taking the images. For example, in these two images, the fog and clouds over the Pacific and hugging the cliffs are a cool gray/white in appearance and should not to processed to a yellow cast. The sandy beach is a rich butter yellow...

 

(emphasis mine)...

 

So, as I keep saying, your neutral gray and white clouds are not neutral in the slightest. Having a neutral white point and black point is also not subjective, unless of course you want a cast (in this case yellow) for creative reasons.

 

More importantly, I don't "see" the excess yellow (though it's pretty obvious in your shot); I measure it in PS. Click a 5-by-5 average of the clouds at a neutral point and the numbers (the lack of blue in RGB) will tell you the clouds are, um, too yellow. Sorry--this is about workflow.

 

Having said that, that's it from me, because you're there and I'm not, and I can only go by what you say and show, not anything else. I think the neutral corrected shot looks better; and that you have a digital workflow, not a film workflow

 

But YMMV and I wish you good light!

 

You really shouldn't sit 8,000 miles away from me in front of your computer pixel peeping my images with PS and judging them about what's right or wrong. I can only be the final judge of them -- remember I'm the creator of the images and it's what I want to show. I was there on location immersed in the scene and not you with my images screened up in PS on your LCD monitor. Your too remote. Its still nighttime here 8 hours west of you -- so, Good Night and enjoy tomorrow's colorful and possibly yellow sunrise

[Doc Henry]

"You really shouldn't sit 8,000 miles away from me in front of your computer pixel peeping my images with PS and judging them about what's right or wrong. I can only be the final judge of them -- remember I'm the creator of the images and it's what I want to show. I was there on location immersed in the scene and not you with my images screened up in PS on your LCD monitor. Your too remote. Its still nighttime here 8 hours west of you -- so, Good Night and enjoy tomorrow's colorful and possibly yellow sunrise"

Peter Natscher

Agreed with you

and I will add :.....and it is what I saw or what I see

"Hi Fi" in the image as i said above

[scaryink]

And only an apples-to-oranges comparison like this, coupled with some complete and total untruths (like film is more archival than TIFF files!!), could reach this conclusion so blithely

 

PS--if you look back at my before and after correction in this thread, it was *your shot* and scan that's too yellow. Clouds aren't yellow, as you yourself said, but in your scan they measure very yellow indeed.

 

But once more, if you're happy, then great!

 

I refrained from the color comments before but thought I might chime in now. Adjusting white balance is only critical in certain forms of reproduction. White balance is not "accurate in the context of where the shot was made. In fluorescent light, white may in fact be yellow or greenish yellow. The ambient color temperature of our world is constantly shifting through every second of the day and night.

 

I also strongly disagree that clouds are always white - not yellow. Clouds are often an explosion of changing colors - many times without any color balanced white in them.

 

This idea of white balancing every shot to a perfect 5500K light is an affectation of photographers and does not exist in the real world. Just look at the many realist painters from the renaissance forward for examples of what light is reflected as. Again this is only an issue for reproduction and this must also have a caveat. If the work is produced under for example 3200 degree lighting and meant to be viewed as such. You must adjust your white balance to 3200 degrees.

 

Why do think that so many motion pictures are filmed at the golden hours? Its for the low color temperature. This is why so many of the Leica shooters - especial the digital M people have the exact same color. The arent allowing the unique quality of light to be reproduced in their images.

 

Keep the color with the yellow in it. Its beautiful and unique.

 

Respectfully

 

George

[Jamie Roberts]

{snipped}

Keep the color with the yellow in it. Its beautiful and unique.

 

Respectfully

 

George

 

George--I completely agree with your post. White balancing a sunset is an idiotic thing to do unless you know you want to do that.

 

But--again in the context of the original post--the OP was complaining about the "too yellow" digital Oly shot, so I'm assuming the WB is off based on his comments. "Too yellow" is a classic WB problem in capture.

 

Similarly, he called the clouds neutral (white and gray) and they're also the most interesting white point of the shot.

 

Since I'm "8,000" miles away (um, don't think so) I have to make assumptions about the colour. I said that.

 

But--and you guys can take this or leave this--the fact that there is no neutral in his shot--which I assume isn't a place heavily polluted OR taken at sunset--means it has a yellow cast.

 

If film folks don't want to learn about colour correction or printing, that's cool with me But I'll repeat that the OP should get a better lab, or pay more for his scans once in awhile, just to see what they should look like

[ewelch]

Hi Leica Forum!

 

I've been having a great time getting out on location shooting landscapes with my new M7 using various color neg. films. I have scanned a few chosen images of them with my Nikon 5000 Coolscan scanner set at 4000 dpi/16 bit; imported them into PS for a little post processing creating 300dpi jpgs for 11x14 prints to frame up and hang on my wall. My past experience has been with shooting landscapes using my 12MB digital P&S and DSLR cameras. Comparing the two kinds of images (scanned film vs. straight from digital cameras) in Lightroom side by side, my scanned film images win hands down with regards to color fidelity, naturalness of appearance, dynamic range. My wife agrees that the color neg. image looks more natural and realistic versus the same scene shot with a digital camera. The digital images taken with 12MB cameras do appear as sharp as the 35mm color neg. scanned image but overall lack the realistic appearance. There's something about film that digital just doesn't have. Is it that a image from a digital camera looks too clean - clinical? What do you think?

 

Peter

 

The problem is you're comparing a point and shoot to film. That simply is not a realistic test, other than you're choosing the worst digital you can find. Not only that, but a point and shoot at 12 megapixels is going to be terribly bad compared to film shot at less than ISO 3200.

 

I was a big fan of film for years, but now that I shoot with Canon 1Ds Mark II and the 5D Mark II, I can say I'm convinced digital wins over film in almost every way. Lack of grain, color accuracy, dynamic range, it all goes in favor of digital.

 

I've been around the world twice in recent years shooting on assignment. From factories in India to 1900 meters underground in emerald mines in Colombia to the streets of Zanzibar, I've put digital to the test. I was a photojournalist at newspapers for 15 years, shooting in all kinds of light. And once I discovered the benefits of digital (at first color accuracy was key, then smoothness of tonality, etc.) I dropped film for those reasons and for expense and impact on the environment.

 

That's not to say film doesn't have qualities that commend it. It certainly does. Especially printed with a Leica V35 on high quality paper. But if you're going to scan it with a $1,000 Nikon scanner, or equivalent, then you are going digital in the end and lose a lot of the character of analog shooting.

[ewelch]

I refrained from the color comments before but thought I might chime in now. Adjusting white balance is only critical in certain forms of reproduction. White balance is not "accurate in the context of where the shot was made. In fluorescent light, white may in fact be yellow or greenish yellow. The ambient color temperature of our world is constantly shifting through every second of the day and night.

 

I also strongly disagree that clouds are always white - not yellow. Clouds are often an explosion of changing colors - many times without any color balanced white in them.

 

...

 

Keep the color with the yellow in it. Its beautiful and unique.

 

Respectfully

 

George

 

Sorry George, but you're not understanding the benefit, or even the meaning, of white balance. It's not making all clouds white. It's matching the camera to the ambient light when it is distorted by the quality of the light. If you white balance correctly, your yellow clouds will remain yellow.

[scaryink]

Sorry George, but you're not understanding the benefit, or even the meaning, of white balance. It's not making all clouds white. It's matching the camera to the ambient light when it is distorted by the quality of the light. If you white balance correctly, your yellow clouds will remain yellow.

 

Wrong. Sorry. The purpose of white balance is to match colors to an ambient temperature of 5500K. Just look at the rgb values to demonstrate this.

[Peter Natscher]

Hi Leica Forum!

 

I've been having a great time getting out on location shooting landscapes with my new M7 using various color neg. films. I have scanned a few chosen images of them with my Nikon 5000 Coolscan scanner set at 4000 dpi/16 bit; imported them into PS for a little post processing creating 300dpi jpgs for 11x14 prints to frame up and hang on my wall. My past experience has been with shooting landscapes using my 12MB digital P&S and DSLR cameras. Comparing the two kinds of images (scanned film vs. straight from digital cameras) in Lightroom side by side, my scanned film images win hands down with regards to color fidelity, naturalness of appearance, dynamic range. My wife agrees that the color neg. image looks more natural and realistic versus the same scene shot with a digital camera. The digital images taken with 12MB cameras do appear as sharp as the 35mm color neg. scanned image but overall lack the realistic appearance. There's something about film that digital just doesn't have. Is it that a image from a digital camera looks too clean - clinical? What do you think?

------------------------

 

As the original poster of this topic, I feel we're getting a bit off track from my initial intention of this post. My main direction with this post is to express that I, and my non-photography savvy wife, like my film image better than my digital image because it looks more natural to us. Apart from all the technical aspects of these two images, we feel that the colors look more realistic, too. I know this is very subjective as we all see differently. I do read about this kind of reaction between film and digital capture from others posting on the internet these days. Maybe this raises the question of: "what does a natural-look image have to its viewer as compared to other images?"

[Jamie Roberts]

Wrong. Sorry. The purpose of white balance is to match colors to an ambient temperature of 5500K. Just look at the rgb values to demonstrate this.

 

Um, only a "daylight" white balances neutrals to 5500K. A tungsten white balance does not; a custom white balance ranges (in software and in cameras) from about 1100K to upwards of 14000K.

 

Under all of the above conditions, a neutral gray point in the shot should be neutral in RGB (in other words, have the same value from 000 to 255, 255, 255) or OA OB in LAB.

 

So George, as stated, you're only correct for "daylight" under "daylight film" conditions. Again, the OP's shot *had* no neutrals, which is a very strong indication of color cast.

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[Peter Natscher]

Um, only a "daylight" white balances neutrals to 5500K. A tungsten white balance does not; a custom white balance ranges (in software and in cameras) from about 1100K to upwards of 14000K.

 

Under all of the above conditions, a neutral gray point in the shot should be neutral in RGB (in other words, have the same value from 000 to 255, 255, 255) or OA OB in LAB.

 

So George, as stated, you're only correct for "daylight" under "daylight film" conditions. Again, the OP's shot *had* no neutrals, which is a very strong indication of color cast.

 

I think it's time for the Moderator to intervene asking the current discussion participants to create a new post about "White Balance". It's off tract from my original post.