Film black and white vs digital black and white

[compur]

It's not the same tho'. It has something to do with how the information is initially captured. Something is lost when film image gets scanned, but there is still that film vibe to the scan. Just like listening to an old album from the vinyl Vs. that same recording but from the CD. IMO record sounds so much more pleasant but it's not that bad coming from the CD. There is still that analog tape sound.

Thank you for missing my point so eloquently.

 

[unpopular]

I have no doubt that if you scanned a negative using a PMT drum scanner, and printed it directly to b/w silver paper at 600ppi, you wouldn't see that much of a difference.

 

[Cruzingoose]

Back in my original post, I stated that digi on optical has a life of about 5 years. The CDs that are factory made using metal as the reflective element will likely last forever. However, the consumer cdr materials use dye that indeed does fade over time. Many of my archived files and early scanned images on CDR are unreadable due to CRC errors. This means the reflective surface of the disk has lost the ability to hold data and there are too many read errors to reconstruct the original files. And worse yet, every time the laser is played on the disk, a little bit more of the dye fade away as the drive increases the power to the laser to try and recover the data. It becomes an increasing downward spirial. I have some dard disk and a few 5" floppies that are still readable, but only on my old computer that knows what a floppy disk is. Virtually all of my original Sony VFD Mavica disks and their images are gone and unreadable. They won't even format anymore, yet Maxell and Sony states a "lifetime warranty".

I'm not addressing professional protographers and the like with Multiple Raid Servers and IT Pros. I'm addressing Joe and Jane Average Picturetaker. Tonight I'm watching a program The First World War on the Military Channel. The film is incredible, and I'm sure it came from many individual sources that stored it away and perhaps forgotten for years.

I have a job developing some 35mm film shot at the 1936? Olympics in Germany. Even though the film is almost 70 years old, the images are amazingly intact and beautiful. The film is Perutz Neo-Persenso Peromnia. I developed it using Edwal LPD for 2 minutes. I tried to post an image here but I guess I'm not doing something right.

If you think your Mac Quadra or Windoz 3.11 box still has important files on it, you may want to check again. My Mac won't even power up and I've got all kinds of images and animations on it, and the 40 mb hard drive in the Windoz box just makes dropped marbles noises. The only digital images I have left from the early 90s are printed on a primitive HP Paintjet XL300.

 

[murlis]

It's all about the grain man! But seriously I think the debater leads outside of the medium itself if you consider that older film cameras often have much better quality cheaper lenses that can produce stunning photos whereas the digital slr lenses are awful to a large amount, Unless you're willing to spend hundreds. But a £400 lens for a DSLR would cost like £40 for its FSLR equivalent

 

[The_Traveler]

especially when it comes to things that really matter in a photo, like tones and how they balance out.

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[Arpeggio9]

especially when it comes to things that really matter in a photo, like tones and how they balance out.

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I just think that tones on film look really well without much post processing. A half decent scanner will do the job. I don't know much about all analogue processing and darkroom yet, but if it's well scanned, I think tones look wonderful and lively. I do think that it's very important for a medium to represent tones of reality in a certain way so it's pleasing and accurate to the human eye. I just see that extra dimension on film that the other medium does not have, like it's more 3d or something. There are certain aspects in digital capture that 35 mm film can't mach, however, those are not as important to me as the way film looks and feels.

Now, I don't know what's important to you in a photo and I hope that digital does it for you, but to me it just isn't so appealing. I didn't mean to say that one thing is all that matters in a photo. I guess it's all about personal preference and what works best for an individual, but one should never fool themselves into thinking that digital is an evolution in photography. It's merely a revolution.They are two very different mediums and one should be able to see that in the final outcome which is a photo, printed, scanned, or what have you.

 

[unpopular]

What do you guys think - would this scene be possible in a single exposure with digital?

Kodak TMAX 100, N-2

(scanned on an mid-end Epson flatbed)

 

[unpopular]

I think that these were shot using that weird C41 b/w stuff. Even still, hilights are well retained:

(scanned on a Leafscan 35)

 

[unpopular]

There is a certain luminance from a silver print, that is hard to replicate:

(scanned from print on a low-end scanner)

 

[Arpeggio9]

This is Fuji Superia 400 desaturated. CVS scanner (about 1 meg file)

This is Ilford hp5+ 400 scanned at pro lab (originally 5 meg file).

 

[Josh66]

This is Fuji Superia 400 desaturated.

Not picking on (just) you (I see it ALL the time on Flickr) - but why convert color film to B&W? Why not just shoot B&W film?

Serious question. Is there some advantage I don't know about?

 

[unpopular]

There is merit to shooting color film in that you have more options in how the image is processed in post at the expense of limited latitude.

It's a tradeoff, though I am unsure it's appropriate in this particular case.

 

[unpopular]

If you think your Mac Quadra or Windoz 3.11 box still has important files on it, you may want to check again. My Mac won't even power up and I've got all kinds of images and animations on it

... pull the hard drive and install on another, functional machine?

 

[Derrel]

What do you guys think - would this scene be possible in a single exposure with digital?

Kodak TMAX 100, N-2

(scanned on an mid-end Epson flatbed)

Yes, based on my own mental image of the light that was present when that was shot, I think it would be possible to capture that scene in one exposure using a good, modern d-slr; especially one of the high-end ones that are testing out with the 13.9 EV dynamic range...a few years back, we had d-slrs that were at topping out at 10.9 EV at base ISO, rapidly dropping down to 9, then 8, then 7 EV at elevated ISO levels. It's hard to tell just how much of a contrast range was in that scene...is that sky the result of a filter over the lens (as it appears to be)? And what about the burned in sky at the top? The final image looks rather muddy to me...no offense intended, but the scene as-shown, on my monitor, over the WWW, is not much of a testament to B&W film...it just looks like the entire scene has been flattened and compressed. But then again, as compur pointed out, we're being shown an on-screen "digital image" whenever we look at images on the computer...so...

If you want to simulate -2 development, do you adjust your camera's Tone Curve setting to "low"? I know that is what I do. Also, the tonal response of "digital" varies quite a bit, across the entire spectrum of digital cameras. Some cameras have pretty amazing shadow recovery abilities...the Nikon D2x and Xs models for example, when they hit the market, were a huge step up in the amount of shadow detail that was recoverable and actually useful, compared with other cameras. Those two models made exposing to the right less-critical. The "new" Sony sensor in the D7000 and Pentax K-5...that sensor has amazing underexposure recovery potential...I do not know of any other sensor that can be shot with the in-camera ISO control menu set to ISO 200, and then an exposure made at an Exposure Index of 50,000, and then a BLACK raw file recovered to make a very good image...

I am mentioning these specific cameras because they span about a five year range in "advancements" in what a d-slr sensor can do...there is not clear set of capabilities associated with the word "digital".

And, with the B&W films, how do we describe the response and look of the DYE-based, chromogenic B&W films?

 

[Josh66]

And, with the B&W films, how do we describe the response and look of the DYE-based, chromogenic B&W films?

To me, it looks the same as converting color film to B&W in PP (same grain). I guess some people like that, but I prefer the grain of real B&W film...