Film vs Digital
Film vs Digital
I was reading a piece the other day, written by a photographer
who offers both film and digital capture to his customers. I am
always interested to hear other professional photographer's
opinions on the subject. I was a film devotee for over 30 years,
and only made the switch to digital a little over three years
ago.
In the piece I mentioned, the photographer/author sited the fact
that film is more 'forgiving' than digital when it comes to
proper exposure. This is certainly true. Especially in the
highlights of the image. You can overexpose negative film by
more than two stops, and still get details in the highlights.
For those of you who aren't familiar with photo-geek speak, for
any given scene framed in the viewfinder of a camera, there is a
correct exposure to the light coming from the scene and onto the
film, or digital sensor. Over exposure by one "stop" means twice
as much light as should be getting to the film or sensor, is
getting to it. Two stops over is twice that much more, or four
times the amount of light as the correct exposure.
Do that to your digital capture and there's no recovering data
from the highlights. Sorry, it's gone! Actually, positive film,
or "slide" film also has a much lower tolerance to overexposure,
so not all film is that much more 'forgiving'. But the point
here is... ta DA..."Forgiving", (and may I finish the thought),
of bad exposure!
The author of the piece I refer to here also is a photographer
in Hawaii, as I am. He writes of how the light here changes so
quickly and frequently with the trade winds blowing the clouds
over the sun, then away from the sun, etc. And it is true that
on many days, especially in the earlier afternoons the
brightness and intensity of the sun can vary quite a bit.
Personally, my solution is, knowing that about the light and the
sun, clouds and trades, 1) be aware of it, and 2) know your
equipment so you can make rapid adjustments, and then, 3) make
the adjustments as needed!
Then there was the assertion that, "Prints made from negatives
have more 'depth' than prints made from digital files."
As I mentioned, I was a film devotee for over 30 years. And I
used medium format cameras using negatives over 3 times the size
of 35mm negs. Print quality was one of the main factors that
kept me from converting to digital earlier than I did. I
insisted on seeing my own images printed digitally, that matched
the quality of the prints I was used to from my film processing
labs.
The simple truth is that prints are two-dimensional. Prints have
no depth. What creates the illusion of depth in an image are the
contrasts in the image. Shadows and highlights, perspective, and
the human mind. It is up to the photographer to shape, frame and
capture the elements that create the illusion of depth. That's
why professional photographers create images, while others catch
snapshots.
The other evening at a meeting with some art directors, when I
was asked, "How do you feel about digital? Has the quality
caught up with film yet?" I unhesitatingly responded, "It has
caught and surpassed film!"
Of course I was speaking from the perspective of a professional
photographer. When you have a correctly exposed image, and you
use state of the art printers, you simply cannot beat digital
imaging. My big, medium format negative film prints would start
to get grainy at 30x40, but my 6 mega pixel digital images,
printed on Epson Stylus Pro printers look tack sharp at 40x55.
So, strictly on an image comparison, print to print, film and
digital, I would have to say there's virtually no difference up
to about 16x20, or maybe 20x24. Larger than that, digital is
superior.
All this being said, visual arts are very subjective, and this
is my opinion.