Peter Klein
Well-known
Part of the "lifelessness" of digital is (at least in the case of Canon EOS) its lack of noise. This may seem counter-intuitive. But studies have shown that the brain detects a very faint audio signal better if there is a little noise on the channel than if the channel is totally quiet.
Similarly, I have observed that one of the reasons why film looks "better" and more "life-like" than digital is that film has grain, and the grain is what the image is made of. Up to a point, the grain gives the eye an impression of more sharpness, and more detail just beyond what you can actually see.
You can simulate a film look by adding some noise, and by converting to B&W using different proportions of RGB. From what I've read, about 10% blue, 60% green and 40% red works well. I use similar figures sometimes. It isn't exactly Tri-X, but it's a decent improvement over a straight conversion.
Since my DSLR is an Olympus E-1, I usually have no need to add noise. 🙄 It's visible at ISO 400 and up, and I'm usually trying to remove some of it with Neat Image, but not all of it. I find that if I remove all of the "digital-looking" color noise, but only 25% of the more film-like luminance noise, things look pretty good in real-life 5x7 and 8x10 prints (as opposed to pixel peeping at 200%).
I just shot a friend's wedding in B&W film, and a family gathering to celebrate my mother's 85th birthday with the E-1. Guess which pictures I like better? Film, film, film! On the other hand, with the birthday party I could edit and post over 200 pictures in a couple of days so that all my various aunts and uncles and cousins could see their relatives. No way would I scan that many myself. Sometimes convenience and cost matter. In each case everyone's happy.
Unfortunately, people sometimes believe that what is good is what they're told is good. A big selling point is that digital is "better" because it has no grain. So younger people with no film history start looking for grain, thinking it's bad and this "proves" digital is superior. Those of us with a film-look aesthetic are usually over 30 (...er, maybe 40...er, maybe 50), or diehards who have seen the light, or both. The average customer just wants it fast, cheap, and good enough. Yes, they spend more on the digicam than they'll ever spend on film, but they think the pictures are "free." Marketing: Fantasy and fiction in the service of commerce.
--Peter
Similarly, I have observed that one of the reasons why film looks "better" and more "life-like" than digital is that film has grain, and the grain is what the image is made of. Up to a point, the grain gives the eye an impression of more sharpness, and more detail just beyond what you can actually see.
You can simulate a film look by adding some noise, and by converting to B&W using different proportions of RGB. From what I've read, about 10% blue, 60% green and 40% red works well. I use similar figures sometimes. It isn't exactly Tri-X, but it's a decent improvement over a straight conversion.
Since my DSLR is an Olympus E-1, I usually have no need to add noise. 🙄 It's visible at ISO 400 and up, and I'm usually trying to remove some of it with Neat Image, but not all of it. I find that if I remove all of the "digital-looking" color noise, but only 25% of the more film-like luminance noise, things look pretty good in real-life 5x7 and 8x10 prints (as opposed to pixel peeping at 200%).
I just shot a friend's wedding in B&W film, and a family gathering to celebrate my mother's 85th birthday with the E-1. Guess which pictures I like better? Film, film, film! On the other hand, with the birthday party I could edit and post over 200 pictures in a couple of days so that all my various aunts and uncles and cousins could see their relatives. No way would I scan that many myself. Sometimes convenience and cost matter. In each case everyone's happy.
Unfortunately, people sometimes believe that what is good is what they're told is good. A big selling point is that digital is "better" because it has no grain. So younger people with no film history start looking for grain, thinking it's bad and this "proves" digital is superior. Those of us with a film-look aesthetic are usually over 30 (...er, maybe 40...er, maybe 50), or diehards who have seen the light, or both. The average customer just wants it fast, cheap, and good enough. Yes, they spend more on the digicam than they'll ever spend on film, but they think the pictures are "free." Marketing: Fantasy and fiction in the service of commerce.
--Peter
