Film black and white vs digital black and white

[Josh66]

The fact that no one jumped out and said that photo by HCB was great means 2 things to me.

1 - They said it's not great, because they really think it's not and they weren't influenced by a house name
2- Standards change with the times. And that photo just isn't up to snuff with our current standards.

Me personally, I don't really think that it's a great photo either. Just because it's a photo by the revered HCB, doesn't mean I'm automatically going to think it's amazing.
I also think that he was a fraud, and a lot of his decisive moment photos were staged. But hey, that's just me.

Which post is this in response to?

Henri Cartier-Bresson's work never really blew me away or anything, not my style I guess.

Not that it really matters, but hell - he didn't even develop his own film. That was apparently the boring part to him and better left to people with nothing better to do.

 

[Derrel]

One thing I'll add that hasn't been said is that I feel at a certain point, images created and modified solely in digital format become less about photography and more about graphic art.... There's overlap for sure, and I'm not sure where the line in the sand is to be drawn.

Yes, I agree with that. Working with a camera and film is "photography", while working with a digital camera and computer is "digital imaging". The two activities are similar in many ways, but the fundamental difference is that analogue photography uses a permanent, fixed image, captured in an emulsion as the basic "source" of the images. There actually is a single, finite "image" that has ben captured and made permanent, and it can be held in the hand, and seen, and peered at. The digital image exists only when a computer can decode the binary data. Because of the way film captures, and the way digital images are captured, there are some differences in how the pictures are made, and also some differences in the way the cameras and lenses are best optimized.

I looked at the four sample photos and it was dead easy to spot the film/digital, then digital/film pairings. The dirty lens on the second photo was an odd thing, I thought. In the second pair of images, the way the film image literally jumped out at me was the way the highlights and the tones just below highlight are rendered; a lot of young people mighty not be familiar enough from actual experience, but the way to spot REAL film is often to look at the brightest highlights, and then to look for tones that are just a bit darker, and then darker still; in the film shot, you can see some grain, and some tonal variation, and in the brightest highlights, there might (or might not) be some minute variations in density between paper white (in digital "blown white", 255) and just-holding-detail whites.

In the sky and building tones near the brightest areas, the digital shot just suddenly has sky tones that are pure, detail-less, ugly white. THere is a very abrupt "clipping". In B&W film, the upper mid tones become lighter and lighter and lighter, and then fade into highlights; there are also medium bright highlights, bright highlights, the brightest highlights, and in some scenes, pure, specular white highlights that are "paper white".

In the second set of pictures, all I did was I to look straight for the rooftops and sky juncture area...the digital and film shots revealed themselves in about 1 second each. In the first set of pics, the lack of grain and higher overall look of sharpness makes the digital image stand out against a film image. Overall, small-format digital has mostly surpassed the "sharpness/detail" look of most small-format B&W films that I grew up with.

 

[limr28 1]

The fact that no one jumped out and said that photo by HCB was great means 2 things to me.

1 - They said it's not great, because they really think it's not and they weren't influenced by a house name
2- Standards change with the times. And that photo just isn't up to snuff with our current standards.

Me personally, I don't really think that it's a great photo either. Just because it's a photo by the revered HCB, doesn't mean I'm automatically going to think it's amazing.
I also think that he was a fraud, and a lot of his decisive moment photos were staged. But hey, that's just me.

Which post is this in response to?

Henri Cartier-Bresson's work never really blew me away or anything, not my style I guess.

Not that it really matters, but hell - he didn't even develop his own film. That was apparently the boring part to him and better left to people with nothing better to do.

I think it was in response to my link about the way HCB's photo was criticized for being amateurish. Regardless of why they criticized the picture, my point is that even though a picture is considered great by many and fetches a high price at auction doesn't mean everyone is going to agree, and not because the photo "isn't up to snuff with current standards" but because it's not up to snuff with a person's individual standards or style. Is there even any consensus about "current standard"?

 

[Ballistics]

The fact that no one jumped out and said that photo by HCB was great means 2 things to me.

1 - They said it's not great, because they really think it's not and they weren't influenced by a house name
2- Standards change with the times. And that photo just isn't up to snuff with our current standards.

Me personally, I don't really think that it's a great photo either. Just because it's a photo by the revered HCB, doesn't mean I'm automatically going to think it's amazing.
I also think that he was a fraud, and a lot of his decisive moment photos were staged. But hey, that's just me.

Which post is this in response to?

Henri Cartier-Bresson's work never really blew me away or anything, not my style I guess.

Not that it really matters, but hell - he didn't even develop his own film. That was apparently the boring part to him and better left to people with nothing better to do.

I think it was in response to my link about the way HCB's photo was criticized for being amateurish. Regardless of why they criticized the picture, my point is that even though a picture is considered great by many and fetches a high price at auction doesn't mean everyone is going to agree, and not because the photo "isn't up to snuff with current standards" but because it's not up to snuff with a person's individual standards or style. Is there even any consensus about "current standard"?

Yeah, there is, hence why no one thought it was a good photo.

 

[timor]

Henri Cartier-Bresson's work never really blew me away or anything, not my style I guess.
Not that it really matters, but hell - he didn't even develop his own film. That was apparently the boring part to him and better left to people with nothing better to do.

I share that opinion, AA said: art require from the artist utmost, skill in own processing to. Regarding AA, how many people can recognize more than 25 photographs by Adams ? Or Weston ?

 

[Derrel]

The HCB comments were in response to this PetaPixel article: Why You Shouldn't Give Too Much Weight to Anonymous Online Critics

And yeah, based on 21st century small-format B&W standards,in other words the standards of TODAY, that picture has a very low standard of technical fitness. As-shown in a web-sized JPEG,we see high graininess, flat tones, low acutance, and subject motion blue--which many unstudied, self-taught digital-imaging newbies cannot "grok". I'm not sure, buty something makes me thin k that shot was made in 1936, but it could be earlier or later. I saw the contact sheet for the shot...shot after shot of awful crap. It was the best shot he could make. On old, high-grain, pre-WW II 35mm film with an uncoated lens. In its DAY and era, it was a good, candid-style, small-camera image, but even when it was NEW, it was vastly inferior, in technical quality, to a shot made on say a 4x5 inch hand camera like a Speed or Crown Graphic.

On most social networking sites today, where digital newbies gather in droves, technical quality is about all they know how to recognize. Flickr is the McDonald's of the restaurant world.

 

[timor]

I just looked at Life magazine photos of JFK and family. Brr... Who processed this pictures ?

 

[Josh66]

Flickr is the McDonald's of the restaurant world.

There is good and bad on Flickr... Really depends on which 'groups' you like. The 'award' groups, yeah - McD's.

 

[limr28 1]

"Yeah, there is, hence why no one thought it was a good photo."

There are many reasons that could account for why people didn't like the photo, and the fact these debates continue on this and other forums shows that there are still varying standards on what is "good" - not just what Flickr or Instagram or the 10b "Italian look" tells us is "technically good."

 

[o hey tyler]

I like how my B+W come out. Never shot film, but I couldn't tell the difference anyway. As for gsgary's example, that's such a misrepresentation of digital vs film. You could easily match that film b+w with a digital camera.

I guess you can.

I trolled everyone in this thread for that exact reason. I shot this digitally: http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/people-photography/328178-black-white-portrait.html

 

[Ballistics]

The HCB comments were in response to this PetaPixel article: Why You Shouldn't Give Too Much Weight to Anonymous Online Critics

And yeah, based on 21st century small-format B&W standards,in other words the standards of TODAY, that picture has a very low standard of technical fitness. As-shown in a web-sized JPEG,we see high graininess, flat tones, low acutance, and subject motion blue--which many unstudied, self-taught digital-imaging newbies cannot "grok". I'm not sure, buty something makes me thin k that shot was made in 1936, but it could be earlier or later. I saw the contact sheet for the shot...shot after shot of awful crap. It was the best shot he could make. On old, high-grain, pre-WW II 35mm film with an uncoated lens. In its DAY and era, it was a good, candid-style, small-camera image, but even when it was NEW, it was vastly inferior, in technical quality, to a shot made on say a 4x5 inch hand camera like a Speed or Crown Graphic.

On most social networking sites today, where digital newbies gather in droves, technical quality is about all they know how to recognize. Flickr is the McDonald's of the restaurant world.

That's because that is today's standard. Not to mention people mentioned that the composition was good, but the technical aspects were terrible. I wouldn't even go as far as saying the composition was all that great. And seeing it in person didn't change my mind about his work. I know people like to devalue opposing opinions with cliches like "Sure it looks bad on a screen, but you should see the 15 foot print! It's amazing!" Never the case. None of these revered photographers would survive in today's world in my opinion. I remember seeing a print by Cindy Sherman, where she was dressed like a male religious figure (pope or bishop). I looked at it, for a few minutes, as it was probably one of the largest photos in the exhibit at around 5 or 6 ft tall, and I just thought, "Why is this 'great'?" I brought it up to one of my professors at the time, and all she kept saying was how brilliant and amazing that photo was and going on and on. She asked my opinion about it, and I told her what I honestly felt. Nothing. There was nothing amazing about that photo to me. I was black listed for the rest of the semester, and wound up with my first B lol.

All this elitist talk of being trained to know what is good and what isn't, is retarded. HCB was the back bone of a few courses I took. 2 professors I had in particular were huge HCB fans and used most of his photos in lectures. I've been told for 2 years that his work is amazing and fantastic, and I just disagree.

 

[Josh66]

I trolled everyone in this thread for that exact reason. I shot this digitally: http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/people-photography/328178-black-white-portrait.html

Not sure if it counts as 'trolling' if like literally every single person just "bought the lie" without questioning it.

Not a very good 'prank' either, since you went out of our way to make it look like film. For all intents and purposes, you succeeded, lol. It does have a 'film look'. Not sure if I would have been able to tell - and you know better than most that I shoot mostly film.

So, congrats on pulling it off? lol

But if that's the look you want, I bet it's still easier to "do it in camera" by just shooting film to start with.

 

[Ballistics]

I trolled everyone in this thread for that exact reason. I shot this digitally: http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/people-photography/328178-black-white-portrait.html

Not sure if it counts as 'trolling' if like literally every single person just "bought the lie" without questioning it.

Not a very good 'prank' either, since you went out of our way to make it look like film. For all intents and purposes, you succeeded, lol. It does have a 'film look'. Not sure if I would have been able to tell - and you know better than most that I shoot mostly film.

So, congrats on pulling it off? lol

But if that's the look you want, I bet it's still easier to "do it in camera" by just shooting film to start with.

You think it's easier to shoot with film and then develop the film vs a lightroom adjustment?

Tyler, how long did that take you to process.

 

[Josh66]

You think it's easier to shoot with film and then develop the film vs a lightroom adjustment?

Yes.

 

[Ballistics]

You think it's easier to shoot with film and then develop the film vs a lightroom adjustment?

Yes.

Easier in what way?