enlargements - digital vs film

[jjj]

Digital color in a properly color-managed workflow is far more accurate and true-to-life than is possible with film.
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And this is exactly why digital looks a bit rubbish at times. Because it is 'technically'  better. Van Gogh, Matisse, Turner, Duchamp took reality and improved on it, sometimes by showing less detail and fidelity. If I want to see the 'real' world I just look around. If I want to make record it in a more pleasant manner I use film or make digital look filmic.

Some people are  so concerned with images being technically perfect, they forget about the 'art' of photography.
I'm with Mark Tucker on this. Sometimes you need to worry less about pixel peeping and just go and take some images. Why not use a compact with no manual controls to take away the technical white noise. I prefer to use my girlfriend's Ixus to my 5D at times, as it's less effort and gives fantastic results. All I have to do is compose the image.

[Jonathan Wienke]

A big grainey enlargement can look fine. A big digital enlargement where you see the pixels/digital artifacting always looks yucky. To my mind.

Just because YOU don't know how to make a big decent-looking digital print without "digital" artifacts doesn't mean it can't be done.

If you must have a particular film's grain pattern to satisfy your aesthetic tastes, you can use film to shoot an OOF white card underexposed by a stop or so, scan the film at high resolution, convert it to B&W, and then place that as a layer over your upsized image in PS using luminance blending, opacity faded to achieve the desired amount of grain.

And not every image benefits from lots of grain.

[Jonathan Wienke]

And this is exactly why digital looks a bit rubbish at times. Because it is 'technically'  better. Van Gogh, Matisse, Turner, Duchamp took reality and improved on it, sometimes by showing less detail and fidelity. If I want to see the 'real' world I just look around. If I want to make record it in a more pleasant manner I use film or make digital look filmic.

Then why are you a practitioner of photography instead of a painter? And the judgment that film is more "pleasant" than digital is something personal to you, and far from universally shared. While you personally may find the color palette of Velvia or Portra pleasing, a product photographer charged with ensuring that the final print matched the colors of the original item as closely as possible will have a completely different perspective. There's a big difference between having the option of using an altered color palette for creative purposes and being forced to use such a thing by the limitations of the medium.

The same principle applies to grain and other distortions. Some images can benefit from the creative inclusion of grain, but not all. Some people have a personal preference for more grain than others. But that does not mean that more grain is always better, or that a medium that forces its inclusion into an image is morally or creatively superior to one that does not.

Most people prefer the subject fidelity (more detail, more accurate colors, and less grain/noise) of digital because starting with a high-fidelity capture does not preclude the use of blurring, an altered color palette, or noise/grain for creative purposes. In the majority of situations, the digital practitioner can choose which of these distortions to use for creative purposes, and control the type and degree of the creative effect to achieve whatever artistic goal is intended in ways not possible or practical with film.

Saying that you enjoy using a certain film as a shortcut to achieving a particular creative effect is one thing. Saying digital is generally inferior to film because it is "too realistic" is quite another, and indicates of a lack of knowledge on your part regarding how best to capitalize on the advantages of digital. Such attitudes poorly serve all of those who practice photography instead of painting specifically because of things like subject fidelity.

[Anthony R]

................

[Jonathan Wienke]

You are such a douchebag and highly opinionated for a hobbiest.

Prior to joining the Army, I made my living as a photographer; it was my primary source of income. Over the last 5 years or so, I've made about 130,000 digital captures in my professional and personal work. The majority of the posts I make, including the ones in this thread, are based on personal experience, not theoretical BS. I've been there and done that and have the T-shirt. Care to expound on your level of experience?

[jing q]

Then why are you a practitioner of photography instead of a painter? And the judgment that film is more "pleasant" than digital is something personal to you, and far from universally shared. While you personally may find the color palette of Velvia or Portra pleasing, a product photographer charged with ensuring that the final print matched the colors of the original item as closely as possible will have a completely different perspective. There's a big difference between having the option of using an altered color palette for creative purposes and being forced to use such a thing by the limitations of the medium.

The same principle applies to grain and other distortions. Some images can benefit from the creative inclusion of grain, but not all. Some people have a personal preference for more grain than others. But that does not mean that more grain is always better, or that a medium that forces its inclusion into an image is morally or creatively superior to one that does not.

Most people prefer the subject fidelity (more detail, more accurate colors, and less grain/noise) of digital because starting with a high-fidelity capture does not preclude the use of blurring, an altered color palette, or noise/grain for creative purposes. In the majority of situations, the digital practitioner can choose which of these distortions to use for creative purposes, and control the type and degree of the creative effect to achieve whatever artistic goal is intended in ways not possible or practical with film.

Saying that you enjoy using a certain film as a shortcut to achieving a particular creative effect is one thing. Saying digital is generally inferior to film because it is "too realistic" is quite another, and indicates of a lack of knowledge on your part regarding how best to capitalize on the advantages of digital. Such attitudes poorly serve all of those who practice photography instead of painting specifically because of things like subject fidelity.
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not everyone's a product photographer
and I actually know many product photographers who prefer film.
Film grain and digital grain ain't the same....was reminded of that once again as I worked on uprezzing some images this weekend. there's something really sexy about the texture that film grain gives to skin.Plus the way it softens the edges on objects.OOOO I love it.check out the attachment.
maybe it's just the way I see the world. my human friends tend not to have edges, they tend to have alot of curved volume, not sharp contrasty edges.
Maybe it's my not-perfect eyesight, maybe it's the gunk in my eyes that makes the world seem textural and uneven kind of like how grain feels sometimes

I wish I could recreate the subtlety of film grain in photoshop. I've tried. Can someone show me a similar look on skin using photoshop grain, and tell me how it's done?I'll give you a hundred kisses.
It's not just skin. that plastic cup on my table seems more alive with some texture to it. Maybe it's just that pixels are too even. 1 sq colour pixel next to another sq colour pixel that's similar in colour. Not like film where the next pixel may be lighter, and then the pixel next to it a darker tone. Doesn't make sense right, since in the real world colours don't work like this.

disclosure:90% of my work is done on digital. I still love people shot on film though.

p.s. I just got an orgasm looking at that texture up close...ahhhhh.

[Jonathan Wienke]

I wish I could recreate the subtlety of film grain in photoshop. I've tried. Can someone show me a similar look on skin using photoshop grain, and tell me how it's done?I'll give you a hundred kisses.

Shoot an out-of-focus white card underexposed a stop or two with your favorite film, and then scan the film. The scan will be nothing but film grain texture. Convert the scan to B&W, and do an auto levels on it to give it the full range of tonal values. Then paste this as a new layer over your digital image with blend mode set to luminosity. Fade the opacity of the layer to adjust the intensity of the grain effect. You can also photograph sand, concrete, rocks, etc. for other interesting texture/grain effects.

I'll pass on the kisses, thanks. I'm engaged to a wonderful but slightly jealous woman.

[jing q]

Shoot an out-of-focus white card underexposed a stop or two with your favorite film, and then scan the film. The scan will be nothing but film grain texture. Convert the scan to B&W, and do an auto levels on it to give it the full range of tonal values. Then paste this as a new layer over your digital image with blend mode set to luminosity. Fade the opacity of the layer to adjust the intensity of the grain effect. You can also photograph sand, concrete, rocks, etc. for other interesting texture/grain effects.

I'll pass on the kisses, thanks. I'm engaged to a wonderful but slightly jealous woman.
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would you consider showing me an example?I have no idea how to get it right.

[Jonathan Wienke]

would you consider showing me an example?I have no idea how to get it right.
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[attachment=3570:attachment]

Here's a quick example. Upper left is a texture. This would be your film shot of an underexposed, out-of-focus white card scanned at maximum optical resolution and converted to grayscale. Then run the high pass filter with radius set to about 10 pixels to eliminate the effects of any vignetting, uneven lighting, etc. Upper right is the texture with a level adjustment so that 0.01% of the highlights and shadows are clipped to white and black respectively. Bottom left is the image to texture. Bottom right is bottom left image with upper right pasted over it as a new layer, with blend mode set to luminosity, opacity 50%, fill 25%.

The example texture is actually a rock surface, but you can use the technique for any scanned film grain or other texture you can imagine. And you can do all kinds of things to tweak the texturing by doing blur, sharpen, and other effects on the texture layer.

[djgarcia]

Jonathan, she doesn't look THAT jealous .

[jjj]

Just because YOU don't know how to make a big decent-looking digital print without "digital" artifacts doesn't mean it can't be done.

Why be rude and offensive. I'm not talking about my abilities here, I'm speaking generally and increasingly I'm seeing large images that are so obviously digital they are horrendous. I'm not talking about amateurs either or lack of money. I'm talking about one of the UK's biggest retailers having posters that loook like shit.

And not every image benefits from lots of grain.
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Anyone say that it did? I didn't.

But this obsession with technical perfection is usually done by those with no artistic ability. Yes their pictures may be correctly exposed, but there's often not much else to say about their work. Jeff Schewe is a nice exception.

[jjj]

Then why are you a practitioner of photography instead of a painter?

Why assume I want to paint, you are a bit literal aren't you? I was simply using painters who rejected fidelity and moved art on, rather than being literal and unimaginative.
 
 

And the judgment that film is more "pleasant" than digital is something personal to you, and far from universally shared.

It's a bit funny then,  how digital images or equipment are altered to cpature that filmic look that is so prized. The best digital images are those that do not look digital.

There's a big difference between having the option of using an altered color palette for creative purposes and being forced to use such a thing by the limitations of the medium.

Limitations are about the greatest aid to creativity out there.  Not being the creative type that will have passed you by.
 
 

The same principle applies to grain and other distortions. Some images can benefit from the creative inclusion of grain, but not all. Some people have a personal preference for more grain than others. But that does not mean that more grain is always better, or that a medium that forces its inclusion into an image is morally or creatively superior to one that does not.

Seeing as I shot in whatever style suits the subject and am anything but a one size fits all photography, I think I'm aware of that and probably why I didn't say all images should be grainey.
 
 

Most people prefer the subject fidelity (more detail, more accurate colors, and less grain/noise) of digital because starting with a high-fidelity capture does not preclude the use of blurring, an altered color palette, or noise/grain for creative purposes. In the majority of situations, the digital practitioner can choose which of these distortions to use for creative purposes, and control the type and degree of the creative effect to achieve whatever artistic goal is intended in ways not possible or practical with film.

But most don't use that potential or are inept at doing so. And even though I am pretty adept at PS and post processing, I often prefer to get the effect I want in camera, as it invariably looks better than simply using filters. And it saves me time too.
 
 

Saying that you enjoy using a certain film as a shortcut to achieving a particular creative effect is one thing. Saying digital is generally inferior to film because it is "too realistic" is quite another, and indicates of a lack of knowledge on your part regarding how best to capitalize on the advantages of digital. Such attitudes poorly serve all of those who practice photography instead of painting specifically because of things like subject fidelity.
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You are very literal and an boor to boot. Yes, you may know technical stuff, but not much else it seems. You assume a bit too much and if you'd paid attention you would have spotted my saying I shoot digitally. I've not used film for some years now in fact and gave up on the darkroom when I discovered Photoshop in 1994.

 I've not yet seen an image with digital noise or artifacts that looked anything but awful and I'll state it again, film's fantastic quality comes from in many ways, it's negatives [and I'm talking drawbacks here]. One negative was the initial inability to do colour, another was grain, but when used by talented photogrraphers, these become virtues and not drawbacks. And if the digital look is so great, then why there are so many people trying to make their images look not digital.

And boasting about how many images you take is not how to impress people with your photographic skills. Even a monkey can hold a shutter down long enough to capture the odd interesting shot.  

[Jonathan Wienke]

Why be rude and offensive. I'm not talking about my abilities here, I'm speaking generally and increasingly I'm seeing large images that are so obviously digital they are horrendous. I'm not talking about amateurs either or lack of money. I'm talking about one of the UK's biggest retailers having posters that loook like shit.

If you knew what you were talking about, you'd not be taking the position you are. And I've seen some shitty film-based stuff, too, but I don't use that as a basis for a blanket indictment of film-based work. You can find incompetence everywhere; just because someone did some work for a big retail chain doesn't mean they know how to shoot and print something large. There's always the let's-save-a-few-shillings-by-hiring-my-nephew attitude even when said nephew barely know which end of the camera to point at the subject, let alone know what to do with a digital image once he's capured it. It may not be the photographer, either, but some junior intern in the graphic design department of the lowest-bidding ad agency who never figured out the distinction between the DPI tag in an image file and its actual resolution. There are an awful lot of graphics professionals out there who still don't know what "color management" means or how to implement it, but that doesn't mean that color management isn't useful.

I've done poster-sized enlargements with my 1Ds (24x36 inches) that while looking a bit soft on close inspection, certainly didn't have any obvious "digital" pixelization artifacts. It's all in the techniques you use to enlarge the file and prepare it for printing.

[Jonathan Wienke]

Jonathan, she doesn't look THAT jealous .

That isn't my fiancee...

[Lisa Nikodym]

It's a bit funny then, how digital images or equipment are altered to cpature that filmic look that is so prized. The best digital images are those that do not look digital.

This statement has me baffled.  In the photographic crowds I run in, noone has had this attitude since the very early days of digital photography, when people were experiencing a "knee-jerk" reaction against Change.  You have been making a great many statements like this as "fact" which are really personal opinions, many of them completely contradicting my own personal experience.  When I went from film to digital a couple of years ago, my photographs became considerably better in quality, not worse.

I'd recommend you reexamine your opinions on the subject, and try to see others' points of view.  There is a great deal of validity to them.

Lisa

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

I am totally in agreemant with Lisa.

I shot film for forty years before switching (very reluctantly) to digital. It has taken a while for me to get the hang of it, but there is absolutely nothing that film does better than digital in my not so humble opinion.

As for technical perfectionists who were also great artists, the names of Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and Minor White are just a few of the names that spring immediately to mind.

As a footnote, I find jjj's comments to be much more "rude and offensive" than Jonathan's.

[jjj]

This statement has me baffled.  In the photographic crowds I run in, noone has had this attitude since the very early days of digital photography, when people were experiencing a "knee-jerk" reaction against Change.  You have been making a great many statements like this as "fact" which are really personal opinions, many of them completely contradicting my own personal experience.  When I went from film to digital a couple of years ago, my photographs became considerably better in quality, not worse.

I'd recommend you reexamine your opinions on the subject, and try to see others' points of view.  There is a great deal of validity to them.
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Firstly - If I didn't think digital wasn't 'superior' to film, I wouldn't have [as stated for the third time now] stopped using film, would I?

I'll rephrase - my point is 'better quality' is not necessarily better photographs. Personally, I like the flaws of film. And the reason why video/video look is used to symbolise reality in films/on TV is because it is closer to reality than how film tends to render it. Film can make the world look 'better/more interesting' because of it's lack of fidelity. I shoot digitally, but often degrade the 'quality' as it looks nicer. And yes I do know that's personal taste. But as a photographer, one is usually employed for one's taste.



I would also say that the technical quality of images I see published, even in advertising on magazine covers, has gone down since digital has arrived. There's a much greater acceptance of poor quality images these days it seems. Camera phones + paparazzi images have become the normal standard for many people as regards image quality. Plasticy looking skin also seems  to be increasing and not though over PSing, but as a result of how some digital cameras render skin. There are a lot of video quality [albeit higher res] images around in UK publications.

In the film world, i.e. movies, where I spend some of my working time,  getting a filmic look is a big thing. A very big thing, even now. Looking like video, i.e. digital is rarely seen as a good thing. The look has to do with sensor size as well as image quality, which drags us back to the MFDB vs 35mm DSLR debate.  

[jjj]

I find jjj's comments to be much more "rude and offensive" than Janoathan's.
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Well seeing as Jonathan was rude and patronising for no good reason, whilst making innacurate assumptions about myself, I simply described him as the pompous boor he is at times on LL.
Maybe you'd have found him ruder, if he had been as partonising to you as he was to me.
Anyway this is way off topic.

[jing q]

Firstly - If I didn't think digital wasn't 'superior' to film, I wouldn't have [as stated for the third time now] stopped using film, would I?

I'll rephrase - my point is 'better quality' is not necessarily better photographs. Personally, I like the flaws of film. And the reason why video/video look is used to symbolise reality in films/on TV is because it is closer to reality than how film tends to render it. Film can make the world look 'better/more interesting' because of it's lack of fidelity. I shoot digitally, but often degrade the 'quality' as it looks nicer. And yes I do know that's personal taste. But as a photographer, one is usually employed for one's taste.
I would also say that the technical quality of images I see published, even in advertising on magazine covers, has gone down since digital has arrived. There's a much greater acceptance of poor quality images these days it seems. Camera phones + paparazzi images have become the normal standard for many people as regards image quality. Plasticy looking skin also seems  to be increasing and not though over PSing, but as a result of how some digital cameras render skin. There are a lot of video quality [albeit higher res] images around in UK publications.

In the film world, i.e. movies, where I spend some of my working time,  getting a filmic look is a big thing. A very big thing, even now. Looking like video, i.e. digital is rarely seen as a good thing. The look has to do with sensor size as well as image quality, which drags us back to the MFDB vs 35mm DSLR debate. 
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A great many editorial photographers in New York still use film. There's no denying a certain look for film that translates well into print.

stylistically I believe that paolo roversi is still shooting film..
I also believe that alot of conde naste travel photographers are shoot film. And it's quite obvious from the pictures (reproduced to 3 inches sometimes, even at that size)

I look at magazine covers and sometimes the digital nature of the files are so obvious it's irritating. Digital in a flat way, not used to a positive effect. I was in Gallaghers in NY looking through tons of magazines and noticed that an optimal photo reproduction period was around the late 90s...

I agree with the skin rendering coming off plasticky.I would like to attribute that to a lack of texture due to the way digital renders skin.

I believe steven spielberg once talked about film in movies...about how it makes the scene more alive. I tend to agree. Let's compare digital video with film, there's a reason why alot of people still try to go for that feel.

the people who say they can't see a difference between a well printed film and digital image...well we must be from different planets.

I think ultimately both have different qualities and to answer the question of which renders better, it depends on how you approach the processing of the file and your stylistic approach towards the subject. If your work uses the colour purity, hard edged nature of digital, or if you're printing a picture of flat art,then I'm sure that will reproduce better as digital.
If your image is something more organic and gentle in rendering , then tonality and slight softness of film has great benefits


btw I love the digital look also which I use for my work, and have full admiration for people like Erwin Olaf and Jim Fiscus in their use of the digital look and pushing it.
However when it comes to personal stuff somehow I love shooting the people I love in film, there's something beautiful about the way it renders things

[Jonathan Wienke]

In the film world, i.e. movies, where I spend some of my working time,  getting a filmic look is a big thing. A very big thing, even now. Looking like video, i.e. digital is rarely seen as a good thing. The look has to do with sensor size as well as image quality, which drags us back to the MFDB vs 35mm DSLR debate.

And that world is a very small subset of working or creative still photography. The only reason film is still dominant in the world of motion pictures is because all but the very most expensive professional digital video cameras still have performance specs similar to today's P&S digicams; low DR, high noise, interlacing artifacts, etc. But that has little to do with still photography, where image quality in the professional cameras substantially exceeds that of film in the same format, and the majority of photographers and clients at all levels have gotten over the "only film is good" hangup. Since you claim to shoot digital, I'm surprised you haven't figured this out yet.

Just because you "like" the flaws of film doesn't mean that opinion is universally shared, or even shared by the majority of photographers or clients. And it's a bit arrogant to define your personal stylistic preference as the photographic nirvana that represents what all photography should aspire to. I doubt Ansel Adams would agree with you. It's especially ironic, given your sig, that you so strongly defend the look and limitations of a visual recording medium that is quickly going the way of the 8-track tape.