HU: B&W -- film vs. digital

How do you mean? What do I have to learn exactly?
You're not talking about histograms or anything wierd like that?
 
Perhaps there IS(are) a(few) difference(s) between digital and analogue media(s).
(As there are differences among different films!)
I'm not sure how it changes as both develop. (Both develop?)
In practice I see at least one advantage of digital to analogue - within a few seconds I can change one of the main important characteristics of the media. Sensitivity. And than back...
Ofcourse in some cases filters can help - but hey: it works in the two worlds both.

I think that in several great photograps dinamic range doesn't count.
In several other great photographs do. (You can change dinamic range to colour, resolution etc.)

The responsibility (and fortunately the possibiliry) of the photographer is to choose the appropriate tool for his/her project.

I do think: only the picture counts.

nemjo
 
Kevin said:
How do you mean? What do I have to learn exactly?
You're not talking about histograms or anything wierd like that?

Even weirder than that, bicubic interpolation, chanel mixer, color separation and so on.

I'm lucky, I know people working at a printer (digital and offset) who realy know their trade and they lend me equipment to calibrate my scanner, screen and printer as well as prints from minilabs with different papers, Fuji Crystal out of an Agfa minilab is different to Fuji Crystal out of a Fuji Frontier.

At the moment I'm testing out a lab working with Kodak Portra Metallic paper, if you get it right you are rewarded with fabulous prints.
 
Kevin said:
How do you mean? What do I have to learn exactly?
You're not talking about histograms or anything wierd like that?
Don't get me started - the Photoshop book alone is about 10.000 pages printed small .....
The Canon 10D manual took me a week to understand (well maybe that was the translation 😀 ) And it doesn't stop....
 
Socke said:
Even weirder than that, bicubic interpolation, chanel mixer, color separation and so on.

Feck!

Socke said:
I'm lucky, I know people working at a printer (digital and offset) who realy know their trade and they lend me equipment to calibrate my scanner, screen and printer as well as prints from minilabs with different papers, Fuji Crystal out of an Agfa minilab is different to Fuji Crystal out of a Fuji Frontier.

At the moment I'm testing out a lab working with Kodak Portra Metallic paper, if you get it right you are rewarded with fabulous prints.

But I can deal with all that after I take a picture, right?
 
jaapv said:
Don't get me started - the Photoshop book alone is about 10.000 pages printed small .....
The Canon 10D manual took me a week to understand (well maybe that was the translation 😀 ) And it doesn't stop....

Oh I have a big fat Photoshop 7 book already. But this is all post-process, something I have been doing with my scanned images already.
 
jaapv said:
Unfortunately: yes 🙁



Actually I find that scannng {slide film} at over 2700 DPI enhances the negative qualities of film, making my 5400 DPI scans worse than my 2700 DPI ones.....

Even 5MP digital will give you far cleaner colour shots than film, albeit at slightly reduced detail reproduction, which for most shots is utterly unimportant. Over 5 MP the quality of the lens is far more important than MP's and 8-10 MP's is all you'll ever need....

Can you tell me if these pictures are not 'cleaner' than any digital color shots? And there are a lot of films other than Fujifilm
http://aegis2000.com/temp/streetgirls100.jpg
http://aegis2000.com/temp/nyc_x.jpg
http://aegis2000.com/temp/portrait100_x.jpg <this is a big image>
These are pictures I saw in other forums. They are film scanned into digital. Even so, they are at least not worse than the digital digital shots! You just need to scan them right. And they are color! Don't even mention B/W. Even my flatbed with default settings gives me better B/W scan results than my 20D (not to mention I will have to add those fake grain for digital shots in PS so I say forget it)

Digital has a long way to go........

The post in Mike's website made one mistake I think. Grain cannot be compared to noise. equivalent to film grain, it's the ugly ordered pixel arrays on CCD or CMOS.

Digital can only simulate the world by its sampling nature. So I say forget it. Wait for a few more years to see if they improve (a vital core improvement other than just increasing the # of pixels) the technology to fool our eyes enough so we won't tell(like digital music does).
 
I think a lot of the problem for digital b&w is no one's really got the workflow right yet. Ask how to to do a B&W wet print and you'll get pretty much the same answer from everybody ask how to convert a raw file to a b&w one and you'll get a myriad of different answers, In lots of ways the technology of the cameras is and advancing faster than the skills and techniques of digital workflow I've also felt that digital has changed the creative aspect of photography I've not really seen as much that excites me in photography since digital became pre-eminent. Oh just for the hell of it I've attached 2 of my b&w digital images from my 20D I think they're OK but I'm sure you'll all correct me 😀
 

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Socke said:
That's why I counter the "Velvia matches 24MPixel" argument with the "At ISO400?" counterargument 🙂

Velvia is neither known for latitude nor for accurate colors.

That is true. Leaving aside that we are talking about digital BW: Velvia wasn't engeneered neither for latitude not for "accurate colours", what ever this might be.

Velvia was made to project a 35mm slide on a screen 10X14ft and still have a saturated sharp presentation. It was invented to make MF obsolete for slide shows in some cases. I've seen travel report projections I could not believe, I had bet an arm or even a more important part of my body ( shiver !) that this was MF !!

So, who NEEDS Velvia at 400 ? Funny Schnickschnack ! There are some few cases where even I would think about taking digital but again, digital B&W looks simply Scheissndreggn , doesn't it ? :angel:

Regards,
Bertram
 
Toby said:
I think a lot of the problem for digital b&w is no one's really got the workflow right yet. Ask how to to do a B&W wet print and you'll get pretty much the same answer from everybody ask how to convert a raw file to a b&w one and you'll get a myriad of different answers, In lots of ways the technology of the cameras is and advancing faster than the skills and techniques of digital workflow I've also felt that digital has changed the creative aspect of photography I've not really seen as much that excites me in photography since digital became pre-eminent. Oh just for the hell of it I've attached 2 of my b&w digital images from my 20D I think they're OK but I'm sure you'll all correct me 😀

If it is a wet prints, I would add some pure green in the printing to bring out the detail in the white area. what are u going to do here?
 
DxPhoto said:
If it is a wet prints, I would add some pure green in the printing to bring out the detail in the white area. what are u going to do here?



I usually would split grade print - but more to the point there isn't even a standard way to convert colour digital files to B&W there are at least 3 different options in photoshop and each has their own acolytes. The process to get to your first B&W proof print is pretty much the same for everybody
 
Which one(s) are digital?

92353974_cdb0cebeba.jpg

63748637_c9e4148381.jpg

69969498_f37bd69657.jpg
 
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jaapv said:
It is not the dynamic range. If anything, digital offers a larger dynamic range, when really pulling out all the stops (pun 😀) RAW file can yield up to 16 stops. . The "dynamic" argument applies to the camera's of three generations ago.

Jaap,
I cannot agree at this point, a D70 ot 20d isn't three generations back in my understanding and a Minolta D7 (the worst one for me) either. I've seen these straight white highlights combined with black empty holes filled with absolutely nothing even at shots made with a new 5D in contrasty environments !
So what does that mean in your understanding of the dynamic range ? Do these folks simply not know how to activate the full range of their cameras ? Or where does that come from ? It cannot be a solely prob of bad postprocessing I'd say?

Regards,
bertram
 
ywenz said:
Which one(s) are digital?

92353974_cdb0cebeba.jpg

63748637_c9e4148381.jpg

69969498_f37bd69657.jpg

These are scans, hard to say. No prob to trim a scan on the digi look. At least they all look very digital and demonstrate perfectly what I do not like :angel:

Sorry 😱

Bertram
 
ywenz said:
Which one(s) are digital?

Who cares which ones are digital -the only question that matters is do you like them? There seems to be a current vogue here of people generally thinking that film images have in some way inherently more value than digital ones. Or that digital can't emulate HP5 or Tri X etc. I have film cameras to shoot Tri X so why do I need to emulate Tri X anyway? I like what digital has to offer and I like a new challenge. I feel all my photography has improved after buying my Eos 20d. Digital has given me a perspective that has helped me appreciate the different virtues of all my cameras. It has showed me a different way of working that has made me think about how I work with all my cameras and film choices.
 
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