Originally Posted by
Jagboi
The weakness with all of those comparisons is that the film is scanned, and there is quite a bit of image degradation in the scanning process. I've done similar comparisons myself by comparing prints, and not come to the same conclusions. The Portaria's and Kodak's new Ektar 100 scan quite a bit better than other films.
once the scanner has enough resolution to resolve individual film grains (which high end scanners can easily do), there is no degradation from scanning. and even with not so high end scanners, the difference is negligible.
If you're a pixel peeper digital does do better, but I look at the overall image. Does any one discredit Robert Capa's Falling Soldier because its soft, grainy, has blocked up highlights and a bit of motion blur? Of course not, its still a moving image, and I think that counts for more than absolute image quality. Most of the memorable pictures from the Vietnam war are quite poor technically, but that doesn't lessen their impact. Grain can be good! Why else would photoshop have an add on to to make things look like they were shot on Tri-X? Call me crazy, but I think its easier to shoot it on Tri-X if you want the results to look like Tri-X.
grain is noise. whether it is 'good' or not is subjective and it can be added back if desired. it's much better to start with an accurate and noise-free representation of the subject and later add whatever effect one wants, whether it is grain or something else entirely. and unlike film, the level can be adjusted afterwards; with film, one can't redo the development to change the grain.
people are simply accustomed to the characteristics of film. it's a lot like people preferring vinyl records or tube amps because of the 'warm sound,' which is just another word for 'distortion.'
Obviously digital works for you, and that's great. I just trying (and probably not well) to point out that its not the only way to capture images, and the quality from film can be excellent. Given the crap that's on photo sharing sites like flickr and such, it seems that most people really don't care about quality, just convenience.
there are plenty of crappy film images cluttering up people's closets in the proverbial shoebox. just because it's easy to post lousy photos on flickr does not mean digital itself is a lousy medium.
and as you said above, quality is not what really matters; it's the subject and composition.
For me, one of my most important subjects has a particular shade of red that I've found Kodachrome is the only capture medium (film or digital) that can get it right.
i'm curious how you determined that, since digital can have a wider and more accurate colour gamut than film. and what about the rest of the spectrum, other than the one shade of red?
and while kodachrome was a great film, there's only one remaining lab in the world that processes it. even kodak no longer handles it. there will come a time when they decide it is no longer cost effective, probably when kodak ceases to manufacture the film itself.
That's part of the reason I stick with film, plus I'm not on a constant backup and data preservation treadmill.
film requires
more effort to preserve than digital, plus it is impossible to make a backup of film that is identical to the original.
I never have to worry about CD'd becoming unreadable or upgrading my computer and software, or changing formats. I've dealt with format migration of going from 8" floppys to 5.25" to 3.5" floppies to zip drives, jazz drives, and now CD's and DVD's and I'm tired of having to migrate all that data just to ensure that it will remain readable.
instead, you have to worry about fire, floods, mold, fungus, fading, tearing, scratches, etc. you have only
one original copy of film images and if they're destroyed or damaged in any way, you lose
everything.
I'm trying to simplify my life, so I just file my slides in archival steel boxes and my kids can look at them in 50 years by holding them to the light. I get a lot of pleasure in knowing that I don't need a piece of software to look at my images. Plus the impact of an 8"x10" transparancy on a light table isn't to be underestimated
8x10 format film is certainly nice but that's hardly a fair comparison with a 35mm format slr, film or digital. and in 50 years, there will be noticeable degradation of the film images, whereas there will be
none with digital.
the fact remains that any modern dslr made in the last five or so years produces images that are better than from any 35mm film camera (significantly so in some cases), in addition to having more features, such as more sophisticated autofocus, live view, etc.