Film or digital

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Mox Nix, like my father used to say.

The worst things about digital, other than the elephantine top models and the terrible viewfinders in the prosumers, and the mayfly-short product life of all of them, are the DOF issue the and lack of wide lenses.

DSLRs are way behind SLRs of the 60s, from a utilitarian point of view. The fast shooting and elaborate metering capabilities of modern SLRs/DSLRs is nothing but fluff for most photographers.

However, if I was still seriously professional, I'd certainly be using digital Canons or Nikons, or medium format digital.

The $1800 Nikon D200 sounds like a bigger winner than the $3000 Canon 5D, even.

Upcoming DSLR results from Sony/Konica/Minolta collaboration may change the APS game entirely, given Sony's chips, consumer confidence, and marketing smarts, and KM's image stabalization.
 
The important thing with the pictures in the gallery is that this isn't a film only site, therefore it doesn't matter if a picture is shot with film or is digital.

As Jorge has shown, once it's been through the mill for posting there's very little difference if any with colour 😉

May I also remind people that there are C41 processed B&W films that have no grain.
 
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So what is the official word about images in our galleries?

Obviously from film ok; digital images from digital rangefinders ok; and hopefully no digital images from other types of digital cameras?

Please, please, since there is plenty of other alternative digital forums .......
 
airds,

Your question is one that has beedn asked on many threads before with all sorts of answers. I just accept what is posted because its good to look at.
 
It's digital now. If it weren't, we wouldn't be able to see it on the webpage!

I don't care where it originated, as long as it originated from the action of a lens focusing light rays on a sensitized surface. (If we don't make that limitation, then our galleries are going to start being full of imaginary nudes modelled in Poser and matted into imaginary landscapes modelled in Vue d'Esprit. That's creative, and if it's done well it may even be art -- but it's a different art from the art of photography!)

In Jorge's challenge he has shown that it's possible to make a film image that's indistinguishable from a digital image. Here's an opposite challenge: Can you make a picture on film that could not be duplicated by manipulation of a digital image? I suspect it can be done -- film has certain "atmospheric" effects that can only be approximately simulated by Photoshop plug-ins -- but I'd be interested in seeing this hypothesis tested by experiment.
 
Agree with JLW, it's obviously digital NOW... and as far as I know, RFF is not a film-only forum, and does not specify the sensory method or the lens type or the processing or post-processing. Just the viewing/focusing method. I'd venture to say the point of ambiguity is whether, for our purposes, the term "rangefinder" is used loosely enough to include "direct view" cameras that don't actually have an RF mechanism and require guess/scale focus, or those like the Contax G and Fuji GA series that have AF.
 
Doug said:
Agree with JLW, it's obviously digital NOW... and as far as I know, RFF is not a film-only forum, and does not specify the sensory method or the lens type or the processing or post-processing. Just the viewing/focusing method. I'd venture to say the point of ambiguity is whether, for our purposes, the term "rangefinder" is used loosely enough to include "direct view" cameras that don't actually have an RF mechanism and require guess/scale focus, or those like the Contax G and Fuji GA series that have AF.


If it doesn't have rangefinder focussing, it isn't a rangefinder camera.
 
jlw said:
Here's an opposite challenge: Can you make a picture on film that could not be duplicated by manipulation of a digital image? I suspect it can be done -- film has certain "atmospheric" effects that can only be approximately simulated by Photoshop plug-ins -- but I'd be interested in seeing this hypothesis tested by experiment.

Call me a purist, but I confess to preferring an unmanipulated image to one ps'd to h*** and back.
(Just me, mind.) 🙂
(And I am not swayed by the old "dodging and burning is also manipulation" argument. There is a world of difference, to my mind.)
 
fgianni said:
On the other hand if you have a very nice picture taken with a P&S or an SLR, I don't think anyone will complain if you post it. 😉

Very true. But doesn't that defeat the object of the forum, if people begin posting anything from any camera, then it isn't really the RangeFinder Forum anymore is it?
Of course it is Jorge's forum and his call.
 
Yes digital on the digital world, this softness and color saturation can be achieved using a digital environment, studios has been doin it for a while now(using film and scanners)!
 
lynn said:
Call me a purist, but I confess to preferring an unmanipulated image to one ps'd to h*** and back.
(Just me, mind.) 🙂
(And I am not swayed by the old "dodging and burning is also manipulation" argument. There is a world of difference, to my mind.)

That's kind of the point of my challenge. Does the unmanipulated film image have any "signatures" that can't be duplicated by digital manipulation? E.g., grain, flare, halation, etc?

I've seen plug-ins that purport to replicate these effects, but I don't think they're very convincing. In my opinion (and I say this as someone who shoots mostly digital) one of the interesting advantages that film has over digital capture is that when you "push the envelope" of digital, the image usually just gets worse and uglier; when you do the same with film, the same usually happens -- but sometimes instead you get an image that's more interesting and aesthetically appealing.
 
I will answer the question at hand:

Film or digital?

...

YES!

There you go, now rest easy.
 
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lynn said:
Call me a purist, but I confess to preferring an unmanipulated image to one ps'd to h*** and back.
(Just me, mind.) 🙂
(And I am not swayed by the old "dodging and burning is also manipulation" argument. There is a world of difference, to my mind.)

Time to read up a bit more on the amount of manipulation/work that goes into a good B&W print. There's good work, and there's bad work... it's just that we see more bad work with ps. Good darkroom skills take a _long_ time to acquire.

Good time to also sit down and scan or wet print a few c-41 colour negs, especially of pictures you've never seen. You'll come to realize that "colour correction" is manipulation.

"Unmanipulated"? Sorry, but that doesn't exist.

I still shoot plenty of film and I also shoot digital. I simply find that it's more realistic to just understand the medium and stop getting all caught up in some sort of "bandwagon" for either side. Too many arguments just get exaggerated on both sides and often reflect a bias.
 
Jorge Torralba said:
Camera: Leica MP
Lens: 90mm 2.0 APO
Film: Velvia 100
Location: Home


Can I ask if you tweaked the image, Jorge? The name of the file "90APO7cleaned-after.jpeg" leads me to believe that you did something to the scan. 😀

R.J.
 
RJBender said:
Can I ask if you tweaked the image, Jorge? The name of the file "90APO7cleaned-after.jpeg" leads me to believe that you did something to the scan. 😀

R.J.


ALL scans need 'something' done to them afterward. It is just the nature of the workflow requirements in a digital working space.

It is relatively easy to produce a file from a film negative that looks as if it were produced by a digital camera. I do that myself if it is the 'look' I think best applies to the photo. I've fooled some people too. 🙂

I don't think the medium, film or digital at least, makes much difference. IMHO, people expend WAY too much time and effort talking about it rather than going out and actually shooting pictures.

Tom
 
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