The "real" factor

[PaulCowan]

I'm surprised there doesn't seem to have been any discussion of this article. What struck me first was that Harvey Stearn's eye and mine interpret things differently, almost all the images he posted seemed to me significantly unreal, particularly with what I would regard as oversaturation of the reds and excessive lightening of shadows.
I also take issue with his assertion that film can't come close to the reality depicted by the latest digital  cameras: in my opinion the colour, contrast and tone rendition from my latest roll of Ektar 100 (shot on a Nikon F2 with 1970s Nikkor lenses) is superior to the colour on any of the examples Mr Stearn provides. Finally (as regards criticism) I don't see how it's possible to be committed to creating images that look real and then to be impressed by the "hyper-realism" of an image that has captured everything to such a degree that it doesn't look real (or "goes beyond" real, if you prefer).
Now, I'm not sure if my view is a comment about the digital cameras or about Mr Stearn's visual preferences. The cameras capture the pixels faithfully, within whatever dynamic range they have, after which we have to process them to get the look we want. We adjust tone, WB, saturation, contrast .... just about everything. So what we see at the end - unless it is served up unedited from a camera preset - reflects the editing at least as much as it does the capability of the camera. With my roll of Ektar, I just decided on how to take the images and after that the processing and printing was in the hands of an expert lab, which developed according to a set formula and produced a set of machine generated contact prints. The blessing and the curse of digital is that we have to be our own post-processing experts which gives us plenty of ways to get things wrong (I produced total rubbish  for a month because I was stuck with working on an uncalibrated laptop in bad light) as well as the means of presenting a unique interpretation of our subjects.

[Rob C]

There's perhaps not been as much discussion as you might have expected because if people are remotely like myself, they reached a sensitivity block created of overload quite a long time ago.

The pictures in the article are very well done, but then they are of subjects that have been exploited to death. I would suggest that they just don't reveal anything new.

Anyone who doesn't believe me need only find some old Image Bank or FPG catalogues from the film days. (Schewe may have some around. :-) I do have a TIB one, but how can I show it here?.

Insofar as the matter about black/white and the "reality" that it reveals, of course it isn't real in any literal sense, but that's also its beauty and attraction: one can do things in black/white that are laughable when attempted in colour. So even comparing the two mediums in the same article seems pointless to me.

But yes, the piece is nicely penned, and perfectly suited to its targeted audience: the vast majority of LuLa readers.

Welcome to the forum.

Rob C

[michaelsh]

I'm surprised there doesn't seem to have been any discussion of this article. What struck me first was that Harvey Stearn's eye and mine interpret things differently, almost all the images he posted seemed to me significantly unreal, particularly with what I would regard as oversaturation of the reds and excessive lightening of shadows.

I must admit that I'm lost and don't understand some of the points Mr Stearn makes in his summary:

What are 'super-real high-fidelity images'?

'It [the Sony A7riii] is so good that it can also produce images which though striking, move beyond what is usually considered realism to an alternative hyper-realism.'?

Are 'alternative hyper-realism' images better than 'super-real high-fidelity images' - or is it the other way round?

I quite like the positive mentioning of Sigma Foveon cameras though 

 

[PaulCowan]

Just by the way, I meant to say it was the yellows that to my eye seem oversaturated, not the reds (and that, of course, affects greens, too).

(And why do I need a maths degree to work out security verification questions)

[Kevin Raber]

(And why do I need a maths degree to work out security verification questions)

Because this keeps the spam robots out.  You only need to do it two times befor it goes away.  This way we keep one of the cleanest forums from trlls and spam bots.  You'll come to apreciate it.

[Peter McLennan]

What struck me first was that Harvey Stearn's eye and mine interpret things differently, almost all the images he posted seemed to me significantly unreal,

Same here.  On my display, in the image "Amphitheater" the clouds show excess cyan. 
In my experience, that frequently results from assertive use of the Clarity slider in LR.

The Oregon seascape and the final image "Shadow and Light" show the same symptoms.

While the blue sky can show surprising levels of cyan, on those images the clouds appear to me unreal.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Who cares about "real"?

Kodak went bankrupt for arguing for nine years that his films are more "real" than Velvia (that, and the digital gamble).

[PaulCowan]

Who cares about "real"?

Well, the entire pitch of the article is "making images of nature with maximum 'realness' became my mission", so I guess the author does.

[Telecaster]

I didn't pay much attention to the article 'cuz the author's æsthetic doesn't interest me, but I do think he does a fine job of getting the look he's after.

-Dave-

[Rob C]

Who cares about "real"?

Kodak went bankrupt for arguing for nine years that his films are more "real" than Velvia (that, and the digital gamble).

Slobodan, depending on the circumstances, many people are very concerned about achieving as close as possible to reality.

I once had to photograph two leather jackets for a client; one jacket was to the green end of cyan and the other the blue. I shot on Ektachrome, and the only way I could differentiate the two, when the film came back, was via the buttons: the jacket colours had become as one - identical. Metamerism, I guess.

Where you would shoot models with both Kodachrome and Ektachrome, Velvia would not have been a good idea. However, I eventually discovered that both the Kodaks and the Fuji made really nice conversions to black/white, but that was years after the event, of course.

:-)

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

I understand, Rob. For some applications, "real" is important. If you are shooting botanical specimen, for instance, you'd go for Kodachrome 25 (not 64, not Velvia).

I was more reacting to what Paul seemingly suggested: that shooting film is somehow more "real" simply because we do not get to interfere in the post-processing. What seems to be missing in that assumption is that each type of film came with its own inherent tonal and color bias.

At the same time, I was suggesting that "real" in itself is overrated (apart from specific applications), as the popularity of Velvia proved.

[PaulCowan]

I was more reacting to what Paul seemingly suggested: that shooting film is somehow more "real" simply because we do not get to interfere in the post-processing. What seems to be missing in that assumption is that each type of film came with its own inherent tonal and color bias.

I wasn't arguing that film is inherently more real, I meant that the opportunities for skewing reality - intentionally or not - are infinitely greater with digital files than with film because with film there are fixed constraints (assuming you stick to manufacturers recommended processing/printing instructions). To me, modern Ektar 100 looks pretty much a neutral balance for daylight - of course Velvia isn't - and correctly exposed and processed you know what you are going to get (and you also know with Velvia, albeit that what you will get may be nice but is not realistic).

The article I was commenting on stated that the author was in pursuit of reality and praised the new A7riii from Sony for its amazing dynamic range and noted comments peope had made such as  “the images look so real”, “the clarity is hard to believe”, and “the colors are so spot on and alive”. Then there is a series of shots from different digital cameras down the years to show the development of realism in the digital era, along with the comment While color film did improve, broad color fidelity remained a far-off goal. In the early 1990’s, the Photographic Industry took an “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” approach, and introduced super-saturated films like Velvia. For me, the images were fun and different but were even further from reality.
It's reasonable to assume, then, that the digital images presented will look realistic, particularly compared with a modern film, and that the latest Sony camera will be most real of all. But I don't see that,  instead I see images that look as if the saturation, "clarity" and "vibrance" have been heavily pushed to match the expectations of an audience that has been wowed by the decade-old obsession with "extended tonal range". This may be desirable, but it is at least (to my eye) as unreal as Velvia was and certainly less real than Ektar 100. Since the author of the article dismissed film as having failed to achieve reality, a comparison is surely relevant and it should be one that film loses hands down .... only it doesn't.
But then, what a digital camera records and what comes out of photoshop are two different things - which goes back to my point about processing.

[Rob C]

An incidental, but valuable property of film was that, used normally "as recommended" it did, at the very least, give one a fairly good idea of what the scene was at the time of exposure.

That is not something I would say rings true with digital. I keep pretty much everything that Nikon offers as a goodie switched off, and the resulting, flat raw file is not much like the thing I shot. I don't intend it to be: I want it to keep as much virgin information available as possible so that I can then go ahead and create my own ideas from within the parameters of the pile of information the file can offer.

In this case, as the work is solely for my own satisfaction and will almost invariably end up as black/white, reality becomes even more subjective, not that I am seeking any reality, of course.

FWIW, I suggest more stills shooters have a good, careful look at the title sequences of some tv or film dramas. The imagination displayed is often stronger than any part of the actual show. If proof were even needed, I think it shows again how much further developed the minds of many of the film (as in movie) people. Of course, one should never forget the punch of the added weapon of motion.

Frankly, some of those tv series make stills photographers seem a pretty dull bunch.

Rob

[Paulo Bizarro]

I think the author was very clear about what "real" means to him: the capability of preserving details (tones and colours) in both highlights and shadows. This was very difficult to do with Velvia slide film, for example; often we ended up with blocked shadows. This capability is something we take for granted, since our brain is capable of doing so.

Of course, the author's "real" is probably different from other people's "real", but what is new?

[Wayne Fox]

Who cares about "real"?

Kodak went bankrupt for arguing for nine years that his films are more "real" than Velvia (that, and the digital gamble).

maybe a little off topic, but I don’t think velvia had much if anything to do with Kodak’s demise. Velvia was introduced in 1990, and while it may have had some impact, the film division remained highly lucrative through the 90’s for Kodak, and reversal films represented only a small part of Kodak’s overall film production.

As far as the “digital gamble”, I think it was more about an illusion that since they basically created it, they could control it, and they underestimated how rapidly the technology would progress once it was in the hands of electronic giants.  Kodak really wasn’t able to admit they didn’t have the expertise in chip development, and once the razors (cameras) no longer need razor blades (film) they had nothing to offer.