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Film vs. Digital


Aswald

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People have to find some way to justify their choices.

 

Personally, I've shot enough film to know that I capture much more detail in my digital images than I ever did with 35mm film. Add to that the issue of grain/noise (1600 asa film is brutal) and the many (MANY) conveniences of digital and I'm very happy with never shooting film again.

 

People can justify it with their lpm measurements all they want. The results are all that matter to me.

 

I'm sure that typewriters are capable of rendering type "better" (subjective) than a computer is. Doesn't make me want to use one though.

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My 6x6 Hasselblad can barely keep up with my X100T with slow speed film, and it's nowhere close at anything over iso 800...

 

I still shoot film, but for the process, the deliberate slowing down and the colours in films like Portra. That's about it. If I need to do serious work, I go for the digital gear...

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However, we still want to know what the resolution of film is in terms that we can relate to, such as mega pixels. Kenny Rockwell gives us a nice, simplified formula to do this which is quite helpful. Most films have an average resolution of 150 line pairs per millimeter and we’ll use this as an example even though different films may differ.

Now, 150 pairs mean 300 lines, or 300 pixels per millimeter in any one direction. When we consider the whole area of the film, we get 300x300 which is 90,000 pixels, or 0.09 megapixels per square millimeter.

Now, this will translate very differently for different sizes of film. When we look at 35 mm film, it has a surface of 35 x 24 = 864 sq mm. This means that a piece of 35 mm film has 0.09 x 864 megapixels, which is almost 78 megapixels. And this is not the digital camera pixel count which is really only half of that, this is film where each pixel would have full RGB rendition.

 

Taken from: http://istillshootfilm.org/post/114131916747/the-real-resolution-of-film-vs-digital

It seems like comparing line pairs of film resolution to two pixels linearly is not the right comparison.  I may be missing something though.

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Theoretical vs practical going on here - I guess they're basing their assumption on the fact that there are a known number of pixels at a known size on a sensor, whereas film has a potentially vastly greater numbers of much smaller unexposed silver halide grains randomly spread in an emulsion, therefore allowing them to completely and randomly cover every part of the sensitive material to a considerable depth, and not just the single layer of pixels (or three layers in the case of Foveon) as with digital.

 

Of course this changes during the exposure and processing procedure - digital loses nothing in number, order or arrangement of its pixels, whereas film increasingly exposes fewer and fewer halides in the shadow areas, and clumps more and more together in the highlight areas. The resulting film "grain" chops the image up, particularly in those areas, and if you are photographing highly complex fine and contrasty detail it will probably run into trouble well before digital does. The exposed halides are reduced to metallic silver grains which are "developed" to a size that gives the image visible density and can thus be printed. They are no longer so tiny as their silver halide origins, the unexposed and therefore undeveloped portion of which are dissolved away in the fixing process.

 

That said, well exposed, properly processed fine-grain film of subject matter that does not have too higher dynamic range and is largely comprised around tones of 18% grey will more than likely be able to stand much higher enlargement, if only for the fact that its grain is random and therefore does not form regular patterns such as in digital where "jaggies" effectively put a ceiling on enlargement capability as soon as they become apparent at normal viewing distance. The eye more readily accommodates the random grain of film, both because regular patterns like a sensor array are rare in the natural world, and there also is a much longer history of photographs produced with film than with sensors, so familiarity plays a role (although that is diminishing with time). Digital noise has, for most of its earlier development been jarring to look at.

 

Like comparing lenses of different focal lengths between different digital camera formats, comparing film with digital is every bit as pointless. Each does its own unique thing in use, and it's up to the user to choose that which best suits the purpose at hand.

 

If, for instance, you were to take a well exposed and processes 8x10" collodion plate photograph and compare it with a digital file from any sized commercial sensor and compare a 30x40 print from each, the digital file will fail miserably. In practical terms, collodion plates became redundant in the late 19th century for some exceedingly good reasons. Carrying a full darkroom around with you and having to coat the glass plate with fresh emulsion and expose and process it it while it was still wet did limit its practicality somewhat. :D

Edited by Alan7140
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The tables have definitely turned in favor of digital. Now we get to control the entire process from shooting right down to printing, unless of course if you do that on film too. Needless to say, shooting digital is not only fast, it is more convenient too.

 

However, there's always been a debate on how much pixel is enough. 3mpix was a lot until 6, 8, 12, 16, 18, 20, 24, 36, 42 and now 50 mpix came along. When is it too much translating into buying hype or marketing stint. I also saw a glimpse of Canon working on a 120mpix camera recently.

 

Having shot 24mpix for a while now, I smirked at Canon's newest 5D4 50.4mpix.....that is until I shot with it. I can't fully explain except that the new 50.4mpix is a great welcome indeed! My PC didn't freeze up processing the files and quite amazingly, it didn't slow down too.

 

So, it started me wondering, have we actually reached the digital sweet spot in megapixel yet? I will probably never buy the newly launched Fujifilm GFX 50s but admittedly, I'm very thrilled about it.

 

Here's an old like to juggle more "old muscle memory". :D

 

https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2014/12/36-megapixels-vs-6x7-velvia/

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Shooting film is still enjoyable and perfectly useable for a pro, if you so please. No need to "prove" anything, if it's your preference, just go shoot it.

 

Yup. Keeps my old Canon A1s in proper working order.....I have to say this though, it's pretty difficult to realize the full "resolution" of any 35mm film. Most of the time it looks like 3mpix. Must be my technique. :rolleyes:

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If, for instance, you were to take a well exposed and processes 8x10" collodion plate photograph and compare it with a digital file from any sized commercial sensor and compare a 30x40 print from each, the digital file will fail miserably. In practical terms, collodion plates became redundant in the late 19th century for some exceedingly good reasons. Carrying a full darkroom around with you and having to coat the glass plate with fresh emulsion and expose and process it it while it was still wet did limit its practicality somewhat. :D

 

I was just looking at the Deardoff. :D

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It seems like comparing line pairs of film resolution to two pixels linearly is not the right comparison.  I may be missing something though.

 

 

First of all, I still shoot a fair amount of film, both 35mm and medium format, and I've a refrigerator half full of black and white and cine color film, so I'm not exactly a "digital fundamentalist". 

 

But that article is pure BS. Not surprisingly there is not a single picture or citation to illustrate it.

 

99% of films have a native resolution between 40 (Ektachrome) and 80 (Velvia) lp/mm. A very few like Technical Pan and its clones go up to 140 lp/mm, but then you have to fight, IMO, with horrid tonalities. And getting nice tones should be one of the first reasons to shoot film to begin with, IMO.

 

And this is all just theoretical anyway, because with the exception of very few cameras (like the Contax RTS III with it's vacuum back) film flatness WILL lower the resolution a lot; to cite from the first of the documents linked below "Loss of image quality ranges from 23-90% of native MTF resolution". And all this, obviously, only using the very best lenses, sturdy tripods, remote releases etc.

 

These are an extremely interesting readings, from someone who actually knows what's talking about: 

 

Film Grain - Vitale Art Conservation and Digital Imaging

 

Digital Image File Formats - Conservation OnLine (talks a lot of film as well)

 

I can't find the document anymore, but even NASA and Hasselblad, when they decided to scan the shots taken on the moon and on the Apollo missions (and I guess the goal was to extract every minute detail), if I remember correctly put a "cap" of 24Mp, and then only on the pictures taken on black and white film. Don't quote me on this, though, I've read this article years ago and I might be mistaken.

 

Digital has much more contrast (even if it then cuts the MTF abruptly instead of gradually, but with the high resolution sensors this is really hard to see) and a sensor is perfectly flat. Maybe we should go all back to glass plates, and in a sense we actually did! :)

 

A few years back I did a set of 8.500ppi scans (actually even better, I did essentially micrographies) to illustrate this concept, you can see them here:

 

FEM: Film Equivalent Megapixels – redux

Edited by addicted2light
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First of all, I still shoot a fair amount of film, both 35mm and medium format, and I've a refrigerator half full of black and white and cine color film, so I'm not exactly a "digital fundamentalist". 

 

But that article is pure BS. Not surprisingly there is not a single picture or citation to illustrate it.

 

99% of films have a native resolution between 40 (Ektachrome) and 80 (Velvia) lp/mm. A very few like Technical Pan and its clones go up to 140 lp/mm, but then you have to fight, IMO, with horrid tonalities. And getting nice tones should be one of the first reasons to shoot film to begin with, IMO.

 

And this is all just theoretical anyway, because with the exception of very few cameras (like the Contax RTS III with it's vacuum back) film flatness WILL lower the resolution a lot; to cite from the first of the documents linked below "Loss of image quality ranges from 23-90% of native MTF resolution". And all this, obviously, only using the very best lenses, sturdy tripods, remote releases etc.

 

These are an extremely interesting readings, from someone who actually knows what's talking about: 

 

Film Grain - Vitale Art Conservation and Digital Imaging

 

Digital Image File Formats - Conservation OnLine (talks a lot of film as well)

 

I can't find the document anymore, but even NASA and Hasselblad, when they decided to scan the shots taken on the moon and on the Apollo missions (and I guess the goal was to extract every minute detail), if I remember correctly put a "cap" of 24Mp, and then only on the pictures taken on black and white film. Don't quote me on this, though, I've read this article years ago and I might be mistaken.

 

Digital has much more contrast (even if it then cuts the MTF abruptly instead of gradually, but with the high resolution sensors this is really hard to see) and a sensor is perfectly flat. Maybe we should go all back to glass plates, and in a sense we actually did! :)

 

A few years back I did a set of 8.500ppi scans (actually even better, I did essentially micrographies) to illustrate this concept, you can see them here:

 

FEM: Film Equivalent Megapixels – redux

 

Interesting links. Good read. Thank you. At least I don't feel so bad about my "low res" 35mm films now.... :P

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Yeah, I still get resolution-shock when I mistakenly look at my 35mm scans at 1:1 instead that at an A3-equivalent zoom ratio  :D

 

Haha....I daren't even try.

 

I read your analysis and is somewhat encouraged that in order to hit FEM of 500 for the 4x5, we'd need a 166 mpix sensor.....I take away that we have more advancements coming our way. Of course, it'll print 200 x 250cm! :o

 

Seriously, Canon is working on a 120mpix camera. Only question is whether it's FF or MF.

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Haha....I daren't even try.

 

I read your analysis and is somewhat encouraged that in order to hit FEM of 500 for the 4x5, we'd need a 166 mpix sensor.....I take away that we have more advancements coming our way. Of course, it'll print 200 x 250cm! :o

 

Seriously, Canon is working on a 120mpix camera. Only question is whether it's FF or MF.

 

 

My workflow for the best looking shots, or at least the ones that appear to potentially be among the best, is now to stitch (with the camera in portrait orientation, using a super small rail + the L bracket) anything from 3 to 5 pictures taken with the A7r.

 

This does two things: first I can potentially print them huge, or at more reasonable sizes but with excellent sharpness; secondly I can use not-so-exceptional lenses that I like nonetheless a lot for their rendering - like the 50/1.5 Jupiter 3 - and still get sharper pictures that if I'd used a Zeiss 55/1.8 single-shot at any given print size.

 

If instead Canon plans to let us capture this amount of detail in just one shot, so with an extremely small pixel pitch, they better come up first with both a global electronic shutter, otherwise the shutter shock will most likely be atrocious; a kick ass sensor or lens based stabilization for when you're shooting handheld, and a range of extremely good primes under 50mm, otherwise all those pixels will be massively wasted at anything but the dead center of the frame.

 

There is too much mushy stuff on flickr already :)

Edited by addicted2light
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My workflow for the best looking shots, or at least the ones that appear to potentially be among the best, is now to stitch (with the camera in portrait orientation, using a super small rail + the L bracket) anything from 3 to 5 pictures taken with the A7r.

 

This does two things: first I can potentially print them huge, or at more reasonable sizes but with excellent sharpness; secondly I can use not-so-exceptional lenses that I like nonetheless a lot for their rendering - like the 50/1.5 Jupiter 3 - and still get sharper pictures that if I'd used a Zeiss 55/1.8 single-shot at any given print size.

 

If instead Canon plans to let us capture this amount of detail in just one shot, so with an extremely small pixel pitch, they better come up first with both a global electronic shutter, otherwise the shutter shock will most likely be atrocious; a kick ass sensor or lens based stabilization for when you're shooting handheld, and a range of extremely good primes under 50mm, otherwise all those pixels will be massively wasted at anything but the dead center of the frame.

 

There is too much mushy stuff on flickr already :)

I see. I bet the results are good as it does sound like a lot of work.

 

What I can say is that Canon is definitely on track with it's shutter. The 5D4 is significantly more refined than the 5D3. The whole shutter / mirror box is a completely new design. It was very different to shoot with. I've never felt a smoother shutter. In fact, I didn't feel a thing.

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I see. I bet the results are good as it does sound like a lot of work.

 

 

Not really, with my rig I don't have parallax error (or at least it's very minimal).

 

I take a picture of my finger pointing right before each set, and pointing left after; the actual shooting takes mere seconds, waaaaay less than it used to be the case with the large format setup.

 

Then in Lightroom I can just group the sets "bracketed by the fingers", so to speak, and stitch the panos in the background while I sip a much deserved cup of coffe!

 

The only downside it that using "perspective" projection the sides get a bit soft, but it's something you'll notice only in a very large print, and besides I usually shoot with the intention to crop to 1:1 or at maximum 4:3*, so they get cropped out more often than not.

 

When I have the time I have to give Autopano a go to see if it's better in this regard.

 

*I use a super small Olympus E-M10 as a viewfinder for this, leaving the A7r in the bag, because it has the ability to crop 1:1, 3:2, 4:3 and 16:9. So I can scan the scene and decide the crop before setting up the tripod. I really wish Sony implemented a few more crop factors in their cameras, just for compositional purposes!

Edited by addicted2light
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Seems like you've perfected your technique. I can't really tell which is which but the photos on your website looks remarkable. Very nice work. The detail and texture is amazing.

 

Hopefully, the day will come when we can have a singular camera able to give the resolution which we need to do what you can even without!

 

Keep us updated with the autopano. Looks like an interesting software. It'll be good if it has warp function like Adobe. The perspective correction looks pretty good.

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Seems like you've perfected your technique. I can't really tell which is which but the photos on your website looks remarkable. Very nice work. The detail and texture is amazing.

 

Hopefully, the day will come when we can have a singular camera able to give the resolution which we need to do what you can even without!

 

Keep us updated with the autopano. Looks like an interesting software. It'll be good if it has warp function like Adobe. The perspective correction looks pretty good.

 

 

Thanks, you're way too kind!

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Thanks! Kuh-TINE definitely carries a lot of weight on the matter.

 

4/3rd is unusual in the sense that viewing it on small and large print gives a totally different experience. Most interesting grain and texture on print. At least for the OMD-E M1.

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I haven't read all the replies so sorry if I am repeating anything. As an experienced film shooter I can tell you that very few films could manage 150 lines per millimetre. You would have to be shooting something like Pan F (50 iso). Medium speed black and white films are about 100 lines per millimetre, If I remember correctly, and colour film much less. However with film the grain (analogue noise) is seen in the midtones and severely affects the image at the limits of resolution. Then you have to take into account that the achievable resolution is affected by the lens as well as the film (or sensor in digital), so you are not actually going to get 100 lpmm from 100 lpmm film. Also film resolution takes a huge dive after around 400 iso. I think that at 24MP we are already far beyond what 35mm film used to give.

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I haven't read all the replies so sorry if I am repeating anything. As an experienced film shooter I can tell you that very few films could manage 150 lines per millimetre. You would have to be shooting something like Pan F (50 iso). Medium speed black and white films are about 100 lines per millimetre, If I remember correctly, and colour film much less. However with film the grain (analogue noise) is seen in the midtones and severely affects the image at the limits of resolution. Then you have to take into account that the achievable resolution is affected by the lens as well as the film (or sensor in digital), so you are not actually going to get 100 lpmm from 100 lpmm film. Also film resolution takes a huge dive after around 400 iso. I think that at 24MP we are already far beyond what 35mm film used to give.

 

Thanks for the input Bob. I think that most of us would be able to agree with you.

 

Perhaps it's the "look" or "soul" of film which is difficult to replicate? Resolution is just one of the attribute. Just like how analogue music (think LP) is now on the rise in popularity despite hi res being around for a good number of years now, perhaps film has something to offer that digital don't.

 

I love both formats and this is just for discussion sake.

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Yes, there is something about film that is not easily replicated in digital. The grain is one contributing factor. Digital noise is not the same at all. Fuji's attempt to replicate it in the X-T2 doesn't work very well. Digital isn't inferior to film though, just different.

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