Digital versus Film - Picture ambience.

[MacotheIsles]

Anybody got any views on the strengths and weaknesses of the images captured on these respective mediums (ie - disregarding digital's obvious advantages like convenience, speed and economy and concentrating on the subjective quality of the rendering itself. You know; the Jenny Saqoui.). I love digital but I'm not happy with the way it handles transparency compared to slide film for example. Would love to hear other people's views on this.

ps - I Searched and couldn't find a discussion on this per se. If I have erred then clap me in irons and tramp my zoom flat.

[Apollo]

It's a fair question, although I'm also tempted to say the medium's still too young to have a worthwhile discussion, as is still in its nappies in terms of its development and potential.

Consider that film was still (and would still have been) developing new emulsions, substrates, and processes that were displacing the basic silver technology that has been founded some 100 years ago.

Previously, you could influence your work by choosing your film stock. Now, you don't have that option in the same way, and apart from the fundamental choice of CCD size (compact or dSLR) you have to buy a whole new camera if you want to exploit the virtues or vices of the megapixel number war.

Unlike film, you've little or no choice when it comes to the CCD, and even you could spend the time to trawl through the various manufacturer's specs (and I know someone who did) then select a camera that used it, you still can't change afterwards if you don't like it, unless you've got bottomless pockets.

Maybe the future will bring some surprises (interchangeable CCDs?) but for the time being, the digital image will be more dependent on the post-processing advantages than anything that has gone before, and less on the raw (should that be RAW?) image than it film-based predecessor.

Don't forget, even the jpeg that you get from your camera has already been massively compressed from the RAW data that the camera has captured from the CCD, and can be sharpened, softened and whatever before you've even seen it.

Many years to go before this reaches anything maturity.

The strength and weakness is probably that digital is wholly dependent on post-processing, while for most people, post-processing of film was only for the pros.

Don't know if it's a plus or minus point, but digital is responsible for making this a time of massive numbers in terms of pics being taken, AND of being uploaded onto the many internet based albums and galleries (these hosts can now each count their contents in the millions), giving us the opportunity to see places, peoples and things we would never have had a hope of seeing before.

I know, that didn't really address the orignal question, but I think the massive post-processing power we have now tends to negate the thought, unless we confined ourselves to non-processed material, then we're into hardware, then...

[MacotheIsles]

Apollo - thanks for such a considered reply. It's appreciated. I suppose that while digital encoding of images makes many new things possible it is also taking a step further away from reality. Because film is such a direct , innate process it is less artificial than a process that has to break reality down into measured parcels of information which then have to be reconstructed later. Maybe the subtlety of molecular grains compared with the limitations of all-too finite bytes loses that special ambience. Maybe the answer lies in building all the complexity of the process into new molecular CCDs and taking it away from the reconstructive post- processing?

[conn75]

Any technology, when it comes to digital versus analogue, you will always find that humans prefer analogue, whether it's records versus CDs or electronic instruments versus digital ones.

Personally I won't touch digital unless I really have to.

[Dexter St. Clair]

Any technology, when it comes to digital versus analogue, you will always find that humans prefer analogue, whether it's records versus CDs or electronic instruments versus digital ones.

Personally I won't touch digital unless I really have to.

There's a "some" missing from there and maybe a "sometimes" too says man with thousands of vinyl records, a thousand CD's and coming up to a 1000 MP3s.

[cybers]

Any technology, when it comes to digital versus analogue, you will always find that humans prefer analogue, whether it's records versus CDs or electronic instruments versus digital ones.

Personally I won't touch digital unless I really have to.

There's a "some" missing from there and maybe a "sometimes" too says man with thousands of vinyl records, a thousand CD's and coming up to a 1000 MP3s.

I have to agree with Dexter on this one.
Loads of analogue Items that should not be monkey'd with Drums,guitars, Woodwinds. Some items are crying out for change.
Vinyl sounds great lovely warm texture to it...takes up loads of room when you get to 1000 albums though.
(For those who live in a new build anyway)
Now converted to MP3 you have regained an entire wall of storage or in cd format half a wall.
(Though have to admit i prefer Lossless .OGG Format myself)

But Digital is the way forward. In some places now it is cheaper to buy a digital camera than a roll of film. Granted that the quality of pics from such a cheap digital item may not be the best But when you consider how many rolls of film are wasted down to inexperience It probably balances back up.

I think the problem really stems from digital is it is so throw away.
Before you took a bad snap you were stuck with it...now its photoshopped to the extreme and if that dont fix it its deleted.

Just my opinions is all ....
I Like both mediums personally as there is just something soothing about holding photo's as opposed to watching them.

[neilmc]

I still haven't seen a digital image to match the old Kodachrome 25 and 64 slide film.
Even my digital scans of these, using my Minolta Dimage dedicated 35mm film scanner, are far superior to my Canon Powershot G7, 10 megathingmy images (resolution, latitude, naturalness; everything!).