R/F & Digital: Is integration possible?

[mike goldberg]

Hi All,
I hope that I'm not out of line in opening a new Thread on R/F & Digital...
So much has been written on this subject in various places, recently.

No, this is not a poll, yet I wonder how many of us in RFF shoot dSLR and/or digital
P & S as well? My intuition tells me that some admit it openly, and others prefer not to talk about it. And that's just fine. My father tried to teach his sons, "Degustibus non es disputandem." That's Latin for, "You cannot dispute taste."

The recently posted Tel Aviv sunset in the Link, was shot 2 years ago on Superior 100. Several trips to 2 labs were required to get a good looking large print; I didn't like the colors. "The colors look digital," I complained to the handsome young fellow in the lab. He looked at me and smiled; "We live in a digital age," he answered.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikegoldberg/568650355/

Remember: The technology of the computer plus A/D conversion, makes it possible for us to work with our film and/or digital images as we please, and to post them in RFF and other places. Thus, I ask, is integration of film and digital work possible? I shoot more digital these days, yet I have no intention of giving up on r/f, slr and film.

Let's hear... mike

 

[iml]

All my colour is digital. I like digital colour, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. It's possible to make very good digital photographs that print beautifully without spending either a lot of money or a lot of time in Photoshop, and have fun and be creative doing it. I think a lot of the more rabidly anti-digital photographers like to think digital photography is "soulless" or requires hours of work on a computer, but that's not my experience. Since selling my R-D1s I've acquired a Pentax K100D and a couple of old fully manual Pentax primes, and using the camera is an absolute pleasure, it has a pretty good viewfinder, the old Pentax glass is cheap and very good, it's small and light (only fractionally bigger than my M6), and the older lenses give a really nice, soft, low-saturation colour rendition. It has the same sensor as the R-D1s and cost me £299 with the kit lens, so it's not that expensive either. I've made mostly A4 prints and a couple of A3 prints with this setup and the results are great.

But mostly I shoot b&w and nowadays that's almost exclusively film, I don't think I've seen any digital b&w that I prefer to film b&w. Sure, I can do some Photoshop work to make a digital image look a bit more flim-like by adding noise and messing with levels, but b&w prints made from film (even inkjet prints made from scanned negatives) just look better to me.

Ian

 

[lZr]

I think b&w must pe printed at home using the enlarger to preserve its character. Colors are shifted anyway and anyhow, so if you like or dislike them it's perseptive matter and works exactly as your father said.

 

[pedro.m.reis]

Thats a theme i allways wanted to put here, since i dont realy know.
Since all the workflow on the labs are digital, when we shoot film they scan it and print
in digital printers. Before this, how was done? The final result is better or worse?
Is there any point on shooting fil since all is converted to digital?

You may not have liked the colors, or the way that the lab printed the negative, but it is still a film image. The response curve is "film", not the linear response of a CCD or CMOS sensor. Even if they use a digital printing system, the scanner used to digitize your negative will preserve the original's response curve. So what you had was a problem with the printer, they did not get the image the way you wanted it.

 

[bmattock]

Digital color has been a Godsend for me, since I am color-blind. When I scan a color negative, if the colors come out wonky, I can't fix them in the editor. Digital cameras are right on with the colors far more often, so no need to fix them.

I still prefer B&W film over digital that has been desaturated, although I have at times produced B&W that I found acceptable that way.

I use C41 film in my rangefinders when I first get 'em, to see if they work. If they do, then I use B&W thereafter.

I have some slide film I'm slowly using up. I'll never buy any more again.

 

[matt fury]

I shoot on film, and then scan it. I look at & share my photos primarily on computers, so that's what counts. I rarely print, and up until now, it's always been in the darkroom, but I'm considering printing some scans to see how they come out. If I like them, I imagine my friends will be deluged with prints.

To me, it's more about the camera than the film - digital or silver. If I could put a digital "roll" of film in my M4 tomorrow I'd probably do it. For whatever reason - the RF, prime lenses, whatever - my photography shines most when I do it with an RF. I shot dslrs with pro-glass every day for 30 days and I couldn't imagine having to shoot like that all the time. Maybe it's just because they're SLRs, or because I had big fancy zooms, or because they were autofocus...I dunno. Now, if I had my hands on an M8, I'd be able to tell you, but being that I won't be able to afford one till well after the M9 is out, I'm not worrying about it.

I have a digital P&S that I've really come to hate using. I've been considering a Ricoh GRD, but who knows. At this point, i'd just really like a meter in my M4.

 

[Nikon Bob]

You may not have liked the colors, or the way that the lab printed the negative, but it is still a film image. The response curve is "film", not the linear response of a CCD or CMOS sensor. Even if they use a digital printing system, the scanner used to digitize your negative will preserve the original's response curve. So what you had was a problem with the printer, they did not get the image the way you wanted it.

That is what I was thinking. In both analog and digital printing you can have the colours come out pretty much anyway you want. If you have someone else do it then their interpretation of what the colours should look like may not match your own. There are many excuses for a lab not giving you what you want in an enlargement and it seems that they have added digital to list of excuses.

Bob

 

[Jamie123]

The only digital camera I have is a little panasonic p&s which I rarely use. There are several reasons why I don't have a dSLR.
Firstly, I prefer to use manual cameras. I have a Canon Elan7ne camera which I bought thinking that I'd switch to digital someday but then found out that I don't like fully automatic cameras. They make me feel redundant.
The second reason why I prefer film is that I really like the look and tonality of color print film.
The third reason why I don't use a dSLR is the price. If I'd buy one it would have to be a 35mm equiv. full frame camera and at the moment they're still rather costly.

However, I'm not at all against digital per se or the use of Photoshop. Apart from capture and development my whole process is digital (scanning and then tweaking in ps) and I don't have a problem with it.

 

[iml]

I use my DSLR fully manually. And the lenses even have aperture rings, and only focus manually, just as they should 🙂.

I set the shutter speed on the body, the aperture on the lens, look through the viewfinder, focus and compose, or set aperture and shutter and zone focus using the distance markings on the lens. The actual mechanics of taking a picture are the same as with my M6, in other words.

The viewfinder isn't as good, the shutter is a touch noisier (although still pretty quiet), the camera isn't as nice an object, it isn't as solidly made, it has lots of plastic in its construction, it's battery dependent, etc, but the differences are not so major as to make the basics of shooting with it fundamentally different from shooting my M6. I still prefer RF photography for the viewfinder and the quality of the lenses, but I was pleasantly surprised by the K100D, it's the best designed DSLR I've used from the POV of someone who prefers manual photography, and the old Pentax glass is not bad at all.

Ian

 

[mike goldberg]

There's some really good thoughts above. I've gotten some good results on Superior 200. As for now, it's mostly dSLR for color. I know some great results can be achieved with B/W in digital plus editing. I keep my hand in r/f, slr & film work, because it feels like the real thing. When I take a Bessa R or Fed-2 in hand, it calls forth a different energy and set of associations... as compared with a dSLR. It's that feeling that I don't want to lose.