Digital for Color

W

wwkw

Guest
What's lacking in a color film or slide that you'll favor the results of a digital camera, but still prefer black and and white film over a digital conversion?
 
Who said I prefer digital for colour? There is nothing of a well exposed and projected slide that digital can touch. Certainly not of a MF slide. B&W is an aquired taste, just like vegemite.
 
I don't develop my own color film so digital gives me more control and saves me the time and cost of sending out.

Since I started using the M9 I get color that I actually like as much as or more than what I used to get with film without resorting to filters, extensive post processing etc.

I still prefer black and white film as I develop it myself and have gotten to the point that my process yields better results than I've been able to get digitally. However this probably points more to the years of shooting and developing film than to an inherent limitations of the digitial medium (though I suspect this is a factor as well).
 
nightfly said:
I don't develop my own color film so digital gives me more control...
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I don't develop my color film either. Do botched RAW files in Adobe CR or LR get you father than the same slide or negative stop for stop when trying to recover whatever it is you messed up during exposure?
 
For me its a lack of instant review when shooting technically challenging subjects like macro. Also where speed and high frame counts matter. For most other color shooting, I prefer the film look and wouldn't attempt these subjects with bw film.
 
I shot with many digital cameras, and nothing has come close to the look of Provia 100F, which is absolutely perfect for the photographs I make. The Leica M-E was close, but not quite.

Why would I shoot digital when Provia already gives me everything I need/want?
 
Aside from few rolls of 135 as a kid, I started off shooting digitally, went all black & white, and am now at point where I'm wondering if the preference I've made myself sure is exactly how I want, has more to do with me being able to compose and read a meter. Then I'll look at any image I've ever shot with digitally, even today, and they don't seem to come close to what I know is a good photograph. It makes me wonder if there's a crutch I don't even know that I'm hobbling on.
 
Convenience.

What's not to like about digital color? No more hours forever lost for me in the darkroom. No more mixing noxious chemistry to use a few times and then have to dispose off thoughtfully, which means extra expense. No more ordering boxes of paper and bottles and packs of other essentials at hideous cost, or buying the basic chems to mix my own. Or paying some lab too much to process my slide films.

A few downsides. The colors can be a bit skewed, which means time at my computer to make the necessary small adjustments in post-processing. My Fujis have color simulations but I find they aren't really that close to the original branded film colors, excepting Acros which produces gorgeous B&W. My Nikons give me the basic colors I want, but I'm a little fussy with my results, so I end up making yet more adjustments and letting the hours pass. And drinking too much good red wine when I'm doing all those fiddly bits.

Another plus is digital had allowed me to simplify my approach to photography. I use my Fujis mostly for street work and B&W, as they are small cameras with superb lenses and they excel at off-the-cuff photos. My Nikons are set to standard colors (never for B&W) and give me 95% good results straight from the cameras. All this has let me reclaim valuable time for other things, at my age I now count the days and try to schedule only the most important things to be done in my life.

For me digital has been a gift from the gods. Gosh, I could have said this in my first sentence, and saved all this typing...
 
wwkw said:
I hear some wine tastes great straight out of the box, too... .. . I'm not trying to squash the merits of anything, though.
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In Australia (where supposedly one of our wineries created the cask, in the 1960s) wine sold in plastic saline bags encased in paper coffin-like boxes with odd-looking spouts are called cask wine. Some know it as casket wine.

But then we have such an oversupply of very decent reds in storage with our wineries and pleading with us to buy and drink them. We consider it our duty as good Aussies to help reduce this glut to a gurgle.

Not exactly photographic, this. Other than to say a few darkroom workers I've known have used recycled wine bags from those aforementioned casks to preserve their developers from air deterioration. I've wondered if the developers came out reddish or yellowish or roseish - a glass of cab-sav Dektol, or Perceptol port, anyone? - but I have to say I've not put this odd notion to the taste test.
 
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