Colour in Digital vs Film -- D90 vs S with Fuji Reala

I am in sympathy with Jon's approach. Try using Picasa as your editor. It has very quick and simple adjustments that give me the result I am looking for. It is especially capable with jpges, but the recent Version 3 beta seems to have wonderful support for raw as well. The only "in camera" adjustment I try to make to my image settings is to make sure I don't blow any highlights. You can fix that a bit in raw mode, but it's never fun and blown highlights are the ruination of more digital images than all other problems combined, at least in my experience.

/T
 
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Use RAW if you can. In camera settings adjustments don't affect RAW files. It also looks like the d90 photo may be very slightly misfocussed? That nikkor 24-70 f2.8 is a very very sharp lens.

I find that the new new nikon DSLRs with the cmos sensors produce JPEGS with too much brightness in them. if you're going to use JPEGS, turn the brightness down a tad in camera. Also turn noise reduction to OFF, unless you're shooting in the dark, in which case turn it to "low".
 
fdigital said:
...
I find that the new new nikon DSLRs with the cmos sensors produce JPEGS with too much brightness in them. if you're going to use JPEGS, turn the brightness down a tad in camera. ...
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No need, just set ~adaptive dynamic range (Active D-Lighting) to AUTO or Normal; this takes care of brightness
 
Semushkin said:
No need, just set ~adaptive dynamic range (Active D-Lighting) to AUTO or Normal; this takes care of brightness
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I think you may be mistaken. The Active D lighting applied after a photo has been taken raises the darker levels slightly to make darker areas less dark. If set before taking JPEGs, it actually adjusts the shutterspeed to usually slightly more than it would normally have had, preserving highlights slightly, as well as boosting darker areas slightly.

What I mean by saying that I have found new nikon DSLRs producing JPEGs with too much "brightness" is literally the brightness of the picture. I can't figure out a way for my (at the moment) tired brain to explain that any better, but basically go into lightroom or photoshop and raise the brightness of the picture - thats what I mean. I found by lowering brightness in camera, the JPEGs had more color tone depth to them, and it took away the slightly strange contrasty look with the strange grey mid-tones at higher ISOs.
 
I think, if one is serious enough about their photography, one should be willing to put in at least a small amount of time in a post-capture stage. Whether you shoot film or digital, expecting to get optimal results by just pushing a button and then letting someone/something else decide the outcome is either (no offense intended) lazy, naive, or negligent. [Sorry.] Unless you're trusting a qualified technician (darkroom or digital), i don't see the reasoning in buying 'good' equipment and then not dealing with all of the factors that eventually decide a photo's merit. If you shoot film and then just hand it off to a drugstore and 'settle' for the resulting 4x6 prints, you're missing something. And, your pictures will look just like your neighbor's, who shoots with a $20 instamatic. If you shoot digital and JPG only, using some sort of Picture Setting, and then just output the result, the same thing applies.

Is your 'vision' being completely realized? Does your creativity end when you trip the shutter? Are you really satisfied with the results, or have you 'capped' your potential by not expecting more?

I can completely understand that some people are less enamored of certain parts of 'the photographic process.' Some people love shooting, and don't like processing. Personally, i don't care so much for the act of shooting. I'd love to conceive an image, and then work on the files to get them where i want them, and skip all the BS in dealing with traveling, finding subject matter and then trying to manipulate people and situations into my ideas.... But, that's what is necessary. And, if i had skipped a part of it, i wouldn't be as satisfied with the results.

Whatever. Sorry for the rant. My answer is 'No.' You can't expect to get a film look straight out of a camera. But, you can make it easier on yourself. I spend all day on a computer, and yes, it can sometimes be daunting to have to then spend more time on the computer, working on photographs. But, you can set Actions, or macros, or configure filters or applications to do what you want in simple, discrete steps. You give up a bit of control that way, but it seems like control is not what you're after. Also, jusg because it's "digital," don't expect it to be "free." You have to spend money after buying the camera and memory card. You might want to spend a little bit of money to make your digital workstation more pleasant to use. I don't mind sitting at my computer for 18 hours because i have an Aeron chair, and fantastic speakers, and a small tv set up there. Get your iTunes or DVR rocking, and the time goes by pretty quickly.

RAW processing takes only a few moments. Learn to tweak your Curves, and then hit the file with a bit of Alien Skin Exposure film grain. After you've done it a few times, it comes easily and quickly. And, i have a feeling that once you've seen the options, you'll experiment a bit and you'll find you can develop your own visual style, based on processing techniques. I'm not suggesting you become Dragan, but every photographer in my library makes images that i can recognize pretty much immediately, and none are done with 'special effects.'
 
I made the pictures bigger to compare better at a glance:
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RF camera with Reala (The Old Nikon made her smile?!)

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Nikon D90 with the latest fast Zoom ( Serious picture right here!)

Isn't it sad? unless you shoot RAW and do some post processing you won't get what you use to get, 50 years ago!!
For some of us, photography meant just that.Set speed, set aperture,focus, compose and shoot--->voila, you had a picture!
NOT THESE DAYS....

Kiu
 
i don't get it.
Reala is a colour negative. You are showing us positive images on a monitor.
Did you scan the prints? the negs?
Did you scan it in automatic mode?
You can mess up the colors on a negative scan pretty easily. A scan of the print depends on how the print was made first of all.
How can you compare the colors when the process is so different and dependent on a lot of details?
 
When I look at a picture I'm looking at a print or the on screen image. NIKON KIU's film image as depicted on my screen looks better to me. Better color, better contrast, better smile.
 
It's not quite true. In the old days someone made a print for you to look at from your negative. There was a lot of color interpretation going on in that print. My experience was that as often as not they got that print wrong. In this case, you are "printing" by scanning a negative (?) and rendering it on screen. You could adjust the "printing" to make it look very close to the printed negative. In both cases, the color information in the negative is being interpreted by different intermediaries.

/T
 
Your big issue here, I suspect, is auto white balance on the digi file and fixed white balance - that just happens to work in this light - on the film. Easy to address really.

Mike
 
So much of this is subjective

So much of this is subjective

I went out to our little lake with a Canon Sure Shot Classic 120 I just bought just to do some test shots I was also testing a CVS batch of film (I think it might be Fuji) ASA 200. As a reference five minutes apart I took a shot with the Lumix FS3 ASA set to 100. The film was developed at my local Walmart and put on a CD. Although the Lumix image is superior in every way, everyone that I poled like the Canon image better. Go figure The link below will take you to the Picasa slide page just hit play, every 3 seconds it will flip from one to the other.

http://picasaweb.google.com/NASAevents/DigitalPond#slideshow
 
One's so sharp and green, it looks digitized. The other one has such warn hues...
Let me guess, the warmer hues are the print film?

Kiu
 
I may be wrong but when you scan a neg or print and post it on the internet does it not become a digital picture with digital characteristics? I feel the only way to really see which is better is to see the original prints which can't actually be done online.
 
You are all correct

You are all correct

But the digital scan of the film has the structure of the film and it digitizes completely different. The Issue I have from the Walmart scan is they are not a high resolution being 1818 X 1228 roughly 1.3 MB My next rolls will be going to Dwayne's where their scans are 6 MB. Just like when I use to do all my own processing and printing, I find that to get results that the editors will use I need to fine tune it in post processing. Most output from digital cameras is perfectly usable for casual or personal use. Lets face it unless you are doing all your processing and printing it is all done by computers, including the final prints. Then you still have to digitize it for email or the web.
 
Seems like most of the younger posters here have learned Photography the wrong way!!
It used to be, Shutter speed, aperture, focus, compose and shoot.
That's it!!! Sometimes the order changed.
It's always those four variables.
Nowdays, the camera does the first three!! the youngling composes and shoots!!
BUT, that's not Photography!!
Processing the junk and making acceptable images is editing!!


Kiu
 
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NIKON KIU said:
Seems like most of the younger posters here have learned Photography the wrong way!!
It used to be, Shutter speed, aperture, focus, compose and shoot.
That's it!!! Sometimes the order changed.
It's always those four variables.
Nowdays, the camera does the first three!! the youngling composes and shoots!!
BUT, that's not Photography!!
Processing the junk and making acceptable images is editing!!


Kiu
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You forgot ISO. Before I went out with a film camera I thought about the film to choose. So ISO is a parameter to consider.

You say nowadays the camera does the first three parameters. Canon introduced AF in an SLR 1987. I think there were automatic cameras even before. The way you use "nowadays" and "youngling" makes me think, you must be very very old...or just very stubborn.

And I must correct you. Even when someone uses her camera in full automatic mode it's photography. Period
 
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