Hybrid equals Digital ?

M. Valdemar said:
...He can make ANYTHING look like anything.
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I often think, if I could get digital shots to look like my film shots, would I? (I've tried and I can't by the way). I always think it's something with how digital sensors "see" light as compared to film, but this could be complete rubbish or overcome with good photoshop skills. Obviously my scanner is seeing my film the way I want it to be seen. I have no issues with my scanned images.

I have no doubt that this guy can do what you say, I guess there is some mysticism going on for us film shooters, we kinda want what we shoot to look like film not like something else.

Often when I'm frustrated by the time I spend scanning, which is slow torture for me, I start poking around looking for a digital camera that might meet my needs and invariably end up poking around internet forums for hours and coming up with nothing that really does.

Not sure what I'm saying but there's an interesting issue of authenticity here and where we draw the line about what we want our images to look like. I mean life isn't seen and black and white and certainly doesn't look like Tri-X, so right there we are purposely introducing artifice, would taking a digital grab and making it look like Tri-X be any worse, less authentic? And no I dont' even know what authenticity means here. Just food for thought.
 
I'm with RayPA - I've really like scanning. It seems like magic to me. The whole hybrid workflow, from waiting on my lab to the joy of a suprise on the lightbox, to peering into the neg with the scanner - it's a joy. It does take time, though. And I've never worked in a traditional darkroom.
 
Start out by using Alien Skin's "Exposure II" in Photoshop.

nightfly, why don't you post a large image that you feel has the "film" look you like.

Then post a digital photo that doesn't have the "film" look.

I'll give them both to my artist and ask him to make the non-film-look image look like the film-look image, and repost.

Or I'll post some images and you can guess whether the image originated as "film" or "digital" capture.
 
Not to be pedantic but, consider that "analogue" film is ultimately digital medium anyway. Silver halide crystals are either On or Off, or 1 or 0. There is no in between. If you look at B&W film at a microscopic level, the grain looks a bit like pixels, though the grain crystals are less rank and file uniform, of course.

I agree with what RayPA and Sparrow have to say about the hybrid process. It can be fun. To those who abhor scanning; have you ever spent hours doing contact sheets in a darkroom, then working out exposures, printing, dodging, burning, washing, drying, spotting prints, not to mention mixing chemicals and cleaning up? Really, scanning is far less drudgery.
 
M. Valdemar said:
If you take a CD which was recorded digitally on a DAT, remixed on an analog console, and transferred the CD to a vinyl LP, which is the "real" one?
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none of them are real.this is not a pipe.😉

Which is better?
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It doesn't matter, as long as the process doesn't interrupt your enjoyment. Dancing to a skipping LP or CD is tough to do.Although, I find a skipping LP to be less annoying.🙂

What are you really listening to?
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sound waves 🙂

When does the digital or audio sampling rate become so great so as to be the same as an analog curve?
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as long as you can still hear John Bonham's bass drum pedal squeeking on 'Black Dog' it doesn't matter 🙂

Are there really human-perceived differences?
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Again, as long as you can still hear John Bonham's bass drum pedal squeeking on 'Black Dog' it doesn't matter 🙂

🙂





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df cardwell said:
being able to make palladium prints (via digital internegatives)
is an incredible thrill: it makes the image I've seen for 35+ years,
but could ever achieve with available means.
It has made picture taking brand new.
It also seems slightly naughty.
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I'm with you here, df. I gave up my darkroom 5 years ago. The change to digital output was exciting at first because of the challenge of the learning curve. I have been happy enough with the quality of what I can do with an inkjet now, but I miss chemical printing.

I have been learning the digital internegative process and building an exposure box for ziatype (POP) and standard Pd/Pt (DOP) processes. It is an interesting new learning curve, and doesn't need a darkroom. I only have a small percentage of my images that I think are worth the expense of processing this way, so I don't expect to break the bank.

M. Valdemar said:
If you take a CD which was recorded digitally on a DAT, remixed on an analog console, and transferred the CD to a vinyl LP, which is the "real" one?
Which is better? What are you really listening to?
When does the digital or audio sampling rate become so great so as to be the same as an analog curve? Are there really human-perceived differences?
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An interesting point. I believe the Cartesian answer is that the approach of digital sampling to analog is asymptotic - even at the 1000th decimal place a digital can only approximate an analog signal. The modern answer is that the two become indistinguishable when both approach the resolution where quantum effects become significant.

For me the real-world answer is that digital audio sounds more like analog the older I get - for one thing, analog recordings are much better today than they were back in the heyday of the LP, and then also as we age all of us lose high-frequency hearing.

Digital images are another matter. Magnify an analog image enough and eventually we should see crystals. Blow up a digital image on the monitor and even the best scans of the largest negatives turn into pixels at fairly low magnification.

This probably means little in the real world though. I've read that at sharpest focus in good light our eyes can resolve a 0.47mm line pair at one meter. It's not just about the optics of vision, as our brain interpolates, but IME a high-resolution black and white digital print is difficult to tell from a chemical print at a distance of 3 feet.
 
So what do all these people see who claim that they can see a big difference between a "digital" image and a "film" image?

When they see such a photo on their computer monitor, what is it that bothers them about the digital image?

Are they seeing residual artifacts, like the background scratches and dust on a 1920's black and white movie? This maybe makes them feel it's more "real"?
 
I think that Photography classes in modern schools should include "hands-on" experience with various obsolete imaging processes, from "sun cameras" all the way to shooting film and wet processing prints. As well as how to use manual cameras.

Any serious student of photography should be familiar and conversant with it's history and principles.


Pherdinand said:
i never tried to print in the "analog" way, i e i n a darkroom.
I hope i will, once.
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Analogue darkrooms are a lot of fun. There's a certain magic to watching a print appear in the developing tray. It's something you never forget and never get bored with. Of course a wet darkroom would be much more fun if you could have someone else do all the chemical mixing, set up and clean up.
 
M. Valdemar said:
So what do all these people see who claim that they can see a big difference between a "digital" image and a "film" image?

When they see such a photo on their computer monitor, what is it that bothers them about the digital image?
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I can only speak from my own experience with a variety of point and shoot digitals but some high end ones like the Ricoh GR-D and GX100 which are supposed to excel at black and white.

The images tend to have a lot less dynamic range and highlights are often blown out. There also doesn't appear to much in the grey areas, they tend to look kind of blah (sorry not a technical term). I can see this on screen as well as in prints.

To me a nice black and white photo, whether on the screen or in person, has some grit and bite to it, which has to do with the tones and the grain. I often find this lacking in most of the digital black and white images I've seen.

Digital black and white looks a lot like C-41 film black and white to me, very smooth, generally overly grey and lacking punch. Fiddling with my own digitally captured files in Photoshop, I've been unable to over come this even with judicious use of adjustment layers of curves and histograms, using the same techniques that I do with my scanned black and whites.

So for me, digital has been a non-starter despite some time, money and energy invested. This also discounts the fact that I'm frustrated by digital cameras.

But I'm sure others have found ways to overcome this, to me though the limitations are too great so I shoot film and scan. On the scale of tedium, I would say the darkroom is the most tedious, scanning second but exponentially less tedious and downloading straight from a camera into Photoshop for tweaking the least. In both the darkroom and photoshop, I don't tend to get too anal, not a lot of burning and dodging, mostly just get the tonality where I want it though exposure (darkroom) or curves and histogram (Photoshop).
 
M. Valdemar said:
I think that Photography classes in modern schools should include "hands-on" experience with various obsolete imaging processes, from "sun cameras" all the way to shooting film and wet processing prints. As well as how to use manual cameras.

Any serious student of photography should be familiar and conversant with it's history and principles.
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I'm familiar and somewhat conversant with it, but not on a practical level with the darkroom.
And i never had a photography class, not even a non-serious one.
Maybe in the future 😀

But i agree with what u say.
 
I use a hybrid approach and am mostly very happy with it.
I have also worked/played in a wet darkroom and miss that experience.
Can art's methods/techniques become obsolete?
Rob
 
In Ray Bradbury's Illustrated Man, the man says to the kid who asks him about his tatoos: "Them's not tatoos. Them's body illustrations!"

I'm not a hybrid. I'm a film-shooting Photoshop user 🙂

Good points throughout this thread. Like many of you, I used to do darkroom work and while I still appreciate it, and love the look of a darkroom print, I was more than happy to leave it behind. My Photoshop skills are way better than my darkroom skills ever were. As a consequence, I get better results by scanning my negs and editing them.

Gene
 
M. Valdemar said:
So what do all these people see who claim that they can see a big difference between a "digital" image and a "film" image?

When they see such a photo on their computer monitor, what is it that bothers them about the digital image?

Are they seeing residual artifacts, like the background scratches and dust on a 1920's black and white movie? This maybe makes them feel it's more "real"?
Click to expand...

Film and digital look different. Kodachrome looks different than Vevia. Suggesting that nobody could tell the difference between a digital photograph and a film shot is no different than suggesting nobody could tell the difference between Kodachrome and Velvia. Anyone who spends any time looking at photographs, even on the interenet, can tell you that Velvia and Kodachrome have their own looks that aren't easily confused. I'm not sure why some people insist that digital and film are indistinguishable in the face of all evidence to the contrary - evidence that is wildly plentiful.

I mean, grain in high ISO B&W film is not something that takes an expert to see. The smooth gradient of B&W is easy to spot, vs. the relatively narrow range of whites and blacks that digital can produce. Even in color, grain is obvious to pretty much everyone in higher ISO films. At low ISO's, the dead giveaway is the limited dynamic range - washed out whites, shadows that are pure black with no detail.

I don't care how good you think your graphic artist buddy is, he can't add range that isn't there. Sure, he can add grain to a digital shot, or take range away from a film shot, but trying to fool someone isn't the same as fooling someone with experience. I'd bet you could spot digital images from film in a heartbeat if you bothered to look for it.

My friend has a P&S digital that takes very good pictures in his hands (and has in mine). I gave it to him and have regretted giving it up ever since. But it's the lens and the eye, not the sensor. Digital and film photography can both be art, just as Kodachrome and Velvia are both arts. That hardly means they are indistinguishable. Yes, you can use photoshop to fool the casual observer, but what does that prove except that people are willing to take your word at face value?
 
I second the Epson 1280 printer using the black ink only. Too bad Epson discontinued this printer, but there seems to be many years supply pf good used ones on the market. I use the MIS Eboni black ink on matt paper (Velvet Fine Art is very nice) and shooting HP5 or Tri-X w/ a Nikon V ED scanner is to be recommended. I can make a 12x18 print that is 100% archival for around $3. Pretty amazing. There has been a lot of flack from digital shooters about this. People like to degenerate film and say that if you like film you like scratches (clean it up in PS) or an obsolete look. Bulls***. Film has something that digital doesn't have in B&W photography, and if someone is unable to see the huge difference between the two mediums, quite frankly they should be doing something else w/ their time. These juvenile comments usually come from people who do not have much photography experience, or lack a good eye. They are trying to justify their investment into digital.

Someone else mentioned the joy of using well made film cameras vs plastic digicams, and that is part of the experience that I also enjoy. One of these days I am going to send a neg out to a good custom lab and have them do a 12x18 custom print and compare it to my inkjet prints just to see the difference, but I am totally satisfied w/ my hybrid workflow and the images I get from digitally edited analog film.
 
HIGHLY recommended

HIGHLY recommended

Just as an info. I've just tested some printouts on my Epson 3800 with the new
Harman inkjet Matt FB Mp paper. WAAW WAAW WAAW !

HIGHLY recommended I'd say.
 
How much would you wanna bet I could fool YOU?

I'll make 3 sets of two photos each.

Each pair will have one "real" Kodachrome scan, and one "simulated" Kodachrome photo.

I'll give them to a third party to post, so that I can't fudge the results.

You have to pick the three "real" Kodachromes.

Let's put $100 via PayPal on it?

40oz said:
Film and digital look different. Kodachrome looks different than Vevia. Suggesting that nobody could tell the difference between a digital photograph and a film shot is no different than suggesting nobody could tell the difference between Kodachrome and Velvia. Anyone who spends any time looking at photographs, even on the interenet, can tell you that Velvia and Kodachrome have their own looks that aren't easily confused. I'm not sure why some people insist that digital and film are indistinguishable in the face of all evidence to the contrary - evidence that is wildly plentiful.

I mean, grain in high ISO B&W film is not something that takes an expert to see. The smooth gradient of B&W is easy to spot, vs. the relatively narrow range of whites and blacks that digital can produce. Even in color, grain is obvious to pretty much everyone in higher ISO films. At low ISO's, the dead giveaway is the limited dynamic range - washed out whites, shadows that are pure black with no detail.

I don't care how good you think your graphic artist buddy is, he can't add range that isn't there. Sure, he can add grain to a digital shot, or take range away from a film shot, but trying to fool someone isn't the same as fooling someone with experience. I'd bet you could spot digital images from film in a heartbeat if you bothered to look for it.

My friend has a P&S digital that takes very good pictures in his hands (and has in mine). I gave it to him and have regretted giving it up ever since. But it's the lens and the eye, not the sensor. Digital and film photography can both be art, just as Kodachrome and Velvia are both arts. That hardly means they are indistinguishable. Yes, you can use photoshop to fool the casual observer, but what does that prove except that people are willing to take your word at face value?
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40oz said:
My friend has a P&S digital that takes very good pictures in his hands (and has in mine). I gave it to him and have regretted giving it up ever since.
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Out of curiosity, which P&S was it. I'm interested in one for doing just what this thread is talking about, seeing how close I can get to simulating a decent black and white film look.

I find that I sometimes leave the Leica at home or want a snap shot vacation camera where I don't have to scan everything. Been pouring over reviews and nothing looks good to me.
 
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