Digital vs Film

ksmattfish · Feb 11, 2004

With the right materials and storage some inkjet companies are claiming up to several hundred years.

Kodak guarantees their top-o-the-line color processing for 20 years, and Fuji says 70 years.

Properly washed, toned, and stored a BW silver gelatin print on fiber paper can last 300+ years.

There is a fella who is considered the expert on archival materials, and you can probably find his website with a Google search for "archival materials". I can't remeber his name; maybe someone else knows.

terri · Feb 11, 2004

Can someone comment on the life of a picture; digital prints (inkjet) vs a developed print from film? Might be something to take into consideration.

If archival properties are a consideration for you, right now nothing will beat the longevity of a silver gelatin print, as Matt stated before.

If you're looking to print a lot of your digital images, look for a printer than has pigment-based inks (as opposed to dye-based) and use the best quality archival inkjet paper out there. Lumijet has a special line of them, I believe they're called the "Preservation Series", in various sizes and surface-types. You'll have very good archival stability with this combination.

vonnagy · Feb 11, 2004

thanks matt and terri for the info on digiprints, i've always wondered about that

for matt:

I often hear mentioned that the speed of turn around of digital vs. film is sort of an illusion, because often the time spent in Adobe PS and getting an inkjet print just right can equal the time spent in the darkroom.

I guess it really how skilled you are in pshop and how great close the shot is too you want. If its a great shot, of course, you wouldn't need to pshop it! For most decent shots, i hardly spend 5-10 minutes in pshop but occasionally i'll spend up to one hour. If its anymore - its not worth it to me. Usually I can suss out by the download whether the photo is worth ps'ing or chucking right off the bat. But i've been using pshop regularly since '97 (version 3 or 4) so chalk it up to experience.

My guess is that in the dark room you have to wait a certain amount of time for the chemicals to develop the film. For something akin to a decent shot (minimum artistic development), how long do you take? I know for a good shot, time is irrelevent, but i am curious.

I am not trying to knock the darkroom here, believe me, when I get a house, i'll have my own darkroom set up and i'll visit your section of forum all the time. Quite honestly, there is a HUGE different from a virtual image and prints and its something I am dying to learn!

I was geek (still am) so i started learning in the digital darkroom before I even had a clue about film. I am actually wanting to learn film because I can see advantages, especially in large/medium format photography.

And on another note, thanks matt, i've probably learned more from your posts than i have from all photography books i've read!

Dew · Feb 11, 2004

i just developed 2 rolls of film and it took me 15 mins .. 3 extra mins for blow drying (on my table-top darkroom)

im scanning the negs now .. they look fabulous straight from the scanner (b&w film, ilford HP5 400) .. im resizing them down to 300 res and thats about it

i think if u move closer to getting what u want in the camera .. little editing will be necessary .. whether digital or film

vonnagy · Feb 11, 2004

just developed 2 rolls of film and it took me 15 mins .. 3 extra mins for blow drying (on my table-top darkroom)

wow thats pretty darn good! one disadvantage to my D10, is that 90% of the time the pics need the levels and saturation tweaked, they are never quite there immediately right of the camera, no matter what settings I use on it! It usuallly doesn't take long to fix though.

i think if u move closer to getting what u want in the camera .. little editing will be necessary .. whether digital or film

couldn't agree more

Dew · Feb 11, 2004

hmmmm :? ... i just inquired with the hubby on his 10D and he said mostly he likes to bump up the saturation ... but he's inquiring about the lens u use .. his quote, "maybe the sun is shining differently in New Zealand." :lol:

however, my Olympus E20 (digital) gives me nice accurrate colors (96% accuracy in RAW mode) :?

on the film thingy ... you dont have to have a huge set-up to develop film :lol:

... we live in New York, and the size of space here is like a cardboard box ... gotta make due with what u have ... im developing another roll in a minute

vonnagy · Feb 11, 2004

hehe, the sun DOES shine differently here in new zealand (what i've noticed and what all the travelers comment here as well), but i've also just bought a polarising filter, that may/may not help.

I have a tamron 28 to 300 lens (nice

). Its a long lens, someone once told me the pictures will tend to come out darker with a long lens :scratch:

on the film thingy ... you dont have to have a huge set-up to develop film

i have utilised all may space for nerd equipment (ie computerstuff), so i need another room (just have a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, tiny living area/office). I barely have enough space for my air hockey table!

motcon · Feb 11, 2004

vonnagy said:
I have a tamron 28 to 300 lens (nice ). Its a long lens, someone once told me the pictures will tend to come out darker with a long lens :scratch:

this is entirely incorrect. the physics of light and the relationship between aperture and focal length even out everything. shoot a 19mm just the same as you would a 500mm (given the same type of metering).

schussey · Feb 11, 2004

i have both.....but prefer film, digital is good for quick stuff though...

ksmattfish · Feb 11, 2004

I guess it really how skilled you are in pshop and how great close the shot is too you want. If its a great shot, of course, you wouldn't need to pshop it!

Well, my problem is that once I turn that great shot into a file, whether from a digital camera or a scanner, it seems to suffer from my expectations of film. Just like film, I feel that digital images need to be processed to get the most out of them.

I don't have a lot of experience with files from the fancier DSLR, mostly cheap PNS. But definately using a scanner to convert my beautiful BW fiber prints into digital files does all sorts of horrible things to the image. Darkening and reducing contrast is the first thing I notice. Sharpness decreases. I can't ever seem to get all the dust off the scanner glass. And since the scan is 80mb, I have to get it down to something that's web reasonable. Stuff that needs to be fixed if it's supposed to look like the print it came from.

I spend mostly about 15 min tweaking a scanned image, sometimes up to an hour. Some I never seem to get right; I'll try a different version of the print or borrow a better scanner.

Maybe I'm into tweaking because of the way I work in the darkroom, but this is actually a comment I see/hear all the time (about digital taking almost as much time).

When I first set up my darkroom I felt like I had to have major profects and a long list of things to accomplish each time I went in, so I wouldn't go in until I had the whole day off. But now that I'm used to it, always have chems ready, etc... I'll go in and work on a few prints for an hour or so, somedays I spend a lot more time in there. I find that 8x10 RC prints go really fast. If I did a good job with the neg I can go from blank paper to photograph in less than 10 min, with a 10 min wash at the end for the whole batch. Fiber takes a little longer and an hour wash. But fiber paper just looks good.

steve817 · Feb 12, 2004

I have a digital (not DSLR) that can take some pretty good pics. But I still mostly shoot with film.

I guess for me it's having hard copies of my negs for storage purposes. I know it won't be long before someone chimes in and tells me how cheap CD's are these days. But think about this.

While it is true, I have to ask myself at the same time how long will CD's be around. Anyone remember 10" floppy disk? What about 5 1/4 inch? Think CD's will be around forever...think again.

Who in here honestly is going to trasnsfer thousands of images from one form of media to another as the forms of media change? I know I'm not.

Steve

vonnagy · Feb 12, 2004

While it is true, I have to ask myself at the same time how long will CD's be around. Anyone remember 10" floppy disk? What about 5 1/4 inch? Think CD's will be around forever...think again

Who in here honestly is going to trasnsfer thousands of images from one form of media to another as the forms of media change? I know I'm not.

Hey steve!
good to get your input, but i would say I have to disagree with you here.

personally think that for every problem that technology introduces there is also an opportunity for better solutions.

Just think about this, is vinyl dead? No, alot of DJ's will swear its better than CDs. Yet its considered outdated technology. And yet there is crapload of technology that will turns your beloved vinyl into cds because there was a demand for it and it is really not that expensive nor hard to do!

And since photography is shared by more than one hobbyist, even if th hard drive solution isn't your bag, i can definately see streamlined solutions for photographers moving photos from one medium to the next.

Hard drives are getting insanely, cheaper, better and smaller. As photography gets archived, people will recognise that their will be a need for simple transfer of data from one medium to the next. Currently, to dump your cds on a spare harddrive is not hard to do and benefits outweigh the minutes its takes to do the transfer.

The only problem with technology, it opens a whole new set of problems. I see it as being 'information overload' because its so easy to archive your stuff you tend not be as discriminating with the stuff you save to the disk.

wwjoeld · Feb 13, 2004

I always pump the saturatiion in photo shop at least +10 on my 10D photos

steve817 · Feb 13, 2004

Hey steve!
good to get your input, but i would say I have to disagree with you here.

personally think that for every problem that technology introduces there is also an opportunity for better solutions.

Just think about this, is vinyl dead? No, alot of DJ's will swear its better than CDs. Yet its considered outdated technology. And yet there is crapload of technology that will turns your beloved vinyl into cds because there was a demand for it and it is really not that expensive nor hard to do!

I knew somebody would. I can't speak for your part of the world regarding vinyl, but around here it is for the most part dead. One would be hard pressed to find new releases on it and I don't know a single person who spent the time to transfer it over to CD's.

There is still a market for used LP's as a matter of fact there is a store around the corner from my house. I hardly ever see any cars in the parking lot other than those that belong to the employees.

The only people I have seen using them at all were the rappers that scratch the sh_t out of them while making what they call music. True you can't do that with CD's, so I guess in some ways vinyl is better :wink:

Back on the subject though. I'm not totally against digital as a matter of fact I embrace it. I will get a dslr when they make one that meets my requirements that cost less than 6 weeks of wages (ie EOS 1DS) or I hit the lottery. Until then I'll continue honing my craft with film wheather that's 10 months or 10 years from now.

Steve

voodoocat · Feb 13, 2004

Vinyl has a richer sound than CD's do. Bands still put out new albums on vinyl. They still make new record players. Not that many for the consumer side of things. But go to any high end audio store and you'll find turntables.

Don't forget that DVD players are backwards compatible with CD's. It's pretty much the same technology with more layers for data. So I doubt CD's will go extinct in your lifetime. Gives you plenty of time to transfer it to a new media.