Tri X against Monochrom

Ho hum. All I have is a little laptop. What in the world would these samples tell me on that screen? But even if I had piles of money I'm just not interested in digital cameras. I'm not a professional earning a living with a camera. Certainly not any kind of an artist. At 65 I'll do what I've always done, tinker around with old beat up film cameras, mess about with pinhole and paper negatives, occasionally set up the bathroom to make some prints.

I still shoot film because it is what goes into the old mechanical cameras I love, not because it is superior or even equal to the latest wiz bang technology.
 
zuiko85 said:
Ho hum. All I have is a little laptop. What in the world would these samples tell me on that screen? But even if I had piles of money I'm just not interested in digital cameras. I'm not a professional earning a living with a camera. Certainly not any kind of an artist. At 65 I'll do what I've always done, tinker around with old beat up film cameras, mess about with pinhole and paper negatives, occasionally set up the bathroom to make some prints.

I still shoot film because it is what goes into the old mechanical cameras I love, not because it is superior or even equal to the latest wiz bang technology.
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I agree. This would be absolutely hilarious if this guy posts an apology in a couple weeks because he mislabeled the pictures. :)

I am wondering if you could claim just about anything about digital or film just by making some minor adjustments in PP to show a little of what someone would expect to see. Voila...TriX is obviously better because it is "gritty."
 
Noll said:
I disagree. At 4000 dpi you're still seeing grain aliases in your scans. I know for a fact that my 16 mp m4/3 camera does not outresolve a 35mm frame of tri-x. I posted about it here:http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=138560

I'm not saying Tri-x is leaps and bounds beyond 12 mp, but it still competes, albeit in a much grainier way. Comparing it to a small-sensor digi-cam is like comparing vegetable and fruit.

Anyway, I don't want to derail the thread, just point out misinformation. If Highway 61 and Corran want to start a thread about this in Film V Digital, I will be glad to contribute with more examples.
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I beg to differ. Even my entry-level-beginner-tourist D3100 delivers more resolution than 100 ISO 35mm film - at 18 mp, the Monochrom should do better.

Don't accept patently overblown statements about the entirely imaginary resolving power of Tri-X, or FP4. 35mm film is not as sharp as digital, hasn't been since a long time. And it cannot compete in dynamic range.

This said, my DSLR is now fixed to the rail of my enlarger (aligned on the reflection of the glass in the negative carrier), and only serves to scan my negatives. As a tool for making photographs, I hate the lumpy thing. Looks and feels like a cancerous growth. But it does deliver the best scans I've been able to acquire : I get around 4000 pixels on the long side, close to resolving the grain of the film.

It is a tedious job, fitting the negatives in the holder, adjusting exposure for each negative, then importing the negative DNGs into photoshop, manually setting white and black points, inverting, flipping (I scan the emulsion side). Is it worth it?

Of course, I have less resolution. Check, I have less dynamic range. And, I can only shoot at 400 ISO. (or 200, with the yellow filter).

It doesn't matter. What does matter, is being happy with the thing I use to take photos. That is what the M3 and the M2 do for me : lovely viewfinders, easy controls, reassuring mechanics, great optics, in a tight package. And I do like to take my fed 2 to places I wouldn't take my leica's.

If somebody threw 10,000 moneys in my lap, I think I would try a Monochrom. Not for the resolution, even though it wouldn't displease me.
Mostly for not having to hassle and work and sweat on getting my negatives scanned. Having some leeway in the ISO's would be a major bonus. But I dont have wads of money lying around, and I'm delighted to use the camera's I have the privilege to own.

There is one thing film does that digital cannot do easily. Film has one thing in common with all the ways of producing images that existed before photography : there is an inherent chaos in the medium. Wether it is the rubbing of mud with your fingers on a rock wall, or the soft grinding of a lead pencil on the grain of paper, the scratching of a pen, the flow of ink from a brush into the fibre of the paper, or exposing light to film, they all are encapsulated in the irregularities of the medium.

Digital, on the other hand, is a clinical report of the light incidence on a square grid of light receptors. The only chaos is in the light falling on the sensor. This is the only thing that could really keep me away from digital, but I'm not so sure about that.

Salgado and others have found a way around digital's lack of chaos by printing their files on 4X5 film and printing on paper from these, reintroducing the chaos at a higher resolution.

If I ever got rich enough to get a Monochrom, I don't think I would mind very much 'degrading' my images with a little noise, if that would make them look better. Or printing them through 4x5 internegatives, if I had the lolly.

In the mean time, Tri-X does a wonderful job.
 
About the test itself, in my opinion it wasn't even accomplished: Tri-X was designed for wet printing, so a screen is not the way to compare both mediums, in any way at all.
About what I can see on screen, I like the look of Tri-X a lot more, and I use digital too.
About resolution and grain: photography has nothing to do with that absurd debate; it has to do with content and light and tone... The beauty of film, its superiority, lays in its tone, and it's present in LF, MF and in 35mm too, as even small screens show... The convenience of digital, lays in speed, although it's a disguised convenience that makes us slaves because of power, post, etc.
About tone: the day a digital sensor looks better than film, I'll prefer a digital sensor without any shame.
About convenience: the day working digitally gives me more comfort, I'll stop using film.
Maybe it will happen in the future... Who knows? By now both mediums are far away from the point of view of what I enjoy while shooting. That's the moment I love.
Cheers,
Juan
 
Juan Valdenebro said:
About the test itself, in my opinion it wasn't even accomplished: Tri-X was designed for wet printing, so a screen is not the way to compare both mediums, in any way at all.
About what I can see on screen, I like the look of Tri-X a lot more, and I use digital too.
About resolution and grain: photography has nothing to do with that absurd debate; it has to do with content and light and tone... The beauty of film, its superiority, lays in its tone, and it's present in LF, MF and in 35mm too, as even small screens show... The convenience of digital, lays in speed, although it's a disguised convenience that makes us slaves because of power, post, etc.
About tone: the day a digital sensor looks better than film, I'll prefer a digital sensor without any shame.
About convenience: the day working digitally gives me more comfort, I'll stop using film.
Maybe it will happen in the future... Who knows? By now both mediums are far away from the point of view of what I enjoy while shooting. That's the moment I love.
Cheers,
Juan
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Three cheers for Juan!

I just wonder whether digital will ever become a medium in its own right, rather than a medium judged on how it does what film does only better ("resolution") and more conveniently. Right now--at least considering cameras like the the Monochrome--digital is a technology, not a medium. Film was once similar: a technology designed to replace painting; film became a medium later through use and adaptation to the particular qualities of that technology, not by imitating what painters did.
 
Juan Valdenebro said:
The beauty of film, its superiority, lays in its tone, and it's present in LF, MF and in 35mm too, as even small screens show... The convenience of digital, lays in speed, although it's a disguised convenience that makes us slaves because of power, post, etc.
About tone: the day a digital sensor looks better than film, I'll prefer a digital sensor without any shame.
About convenience: the day working digitally gives me more comfort, I'll stop using film.
Click to expand...

It's very easy to get the same (and even richer) tones from digital than from film already. Problem : you have to spend much time in front of your computer at individually post-processing your DNG files to achieve that. Most folks don't want to do this.

Using film today means that you just like (love) using mechanical cameras, loading them with film, develop your films, archive them, scan them and/or print your best photos in your darkroom. It means that you like (love) all the tactile aspects of film photography, from hand winding a refined 100% mechanical camera to preparing the chemicals and handling them.

It's a matter of pleasure only, but this is a major one for us who do continue to use film and don't expect something else from our photography, and, thus, don't feel the need to go digital.

As for performances, comfort and convenience : working digitally has obviously proved to outperform film in all those three aspects for about a decade already... :rolleyes:
 
As I see it, pictures of naked GF made using camera costing several thousands is devastation of budget when same can be done with $30 film SLR and $5 roll of film.

If one has photo business and clients are paying for pictures delivered same day, that is another story.
 
Ansel said:
Why do these discussions always come down to resolution?

The magic of film has nothing to do with resolution!
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And film has very little to do with magic ... it's a construct created by chemists, not sorcerers. :angel:
 
mfogiel said:
I've come across this post by chance today. It is in french, but the photos speak for themselves.

http://www.summilux.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=51356

The author admires the higher ISO capability and resolution of the MM, but laments the need to fiddle continuously with exposure on the MM in order to nail it precisely, and appreciates the greater simplicity of the M6.
To my eye, when the light is flat, it's so close, it starts to be difficult to tell which is which, at least on screen.
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The highlight says most of what needs to be said.

Cheers,

R.
 
The other day I ran into a similar comparison, only this time between HP5+ 400 and MM.

http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/2014/03/21/a-night-at-the-opera-with-the-leica-monochrom-m2/

The difference between formats is fairly distinct, although, obviously, that's also to do with the different lenses used for digital vs. film. (MM was used with Noctilux, M2 w/HP5 and Summilux 50 Asph.) In this case, I prefer the look of the MM, I think it gels better with the "Tippi Hedren in a B&W Hitchcock movie" aesthetic of the photoshoot. Of course, in the comment box below the thread, there are people who think otherwise. Oh, well.

.

.
 
Anyone notice that this article was written in June 2012? That is ancient history as far as M-Monochrom processing is concerned. Remember all the early example of M-Monochrom shots in which the early testers, like this one, seemed to be afraid to apply "film compression" to the "huge dynamic range" M-Monochrom files? This is what we're seeing here. In other words, the comparison in this article is not particualry useful. Tempest in a teacup.

MITCH ALLAND/Potomac, MD
Looking for Baudelaire
[WIP – some M-Monochorm Shots]
 
Highway 61 said:
It's very easy to get the same (and even richer) tones from digital than from film already. Problem : you have to spend much time in front of your computer at individually post-processing your DNG files to achieve that. Most folks don't want to do this.

Using film today means that you just like (love) using mechanical cameras, loading them with film, develop your films, archive them, scan them and/or print your best photos in your darkroom. It means that you like (love) all the tactile aspects of film photography, from hand winding a refined 100% mechanical camera to preparing the chemicals and handling them.

It's a matter of pleasure only, but this is a major one for us who do continue to use film and don't expect something else from our photography, and, thus, don't feel the need to go digital.

As for performances, comfort and convenience : working digitally has obviously proved to outperform film in all those three aspects for about a decade already... :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Apart from the joke, I kindly and publicly disagree. :)
As a user of both, I find it's a lot easier, a lot more comfortable, to use film cameras: I have no worries for power: I can shoot without thinking of wires, etc., and I get a physical original that can't be deleted.
So, for some of us, it has not been proven, and it is not obvious at all: we grab a film camera and we get what we want with more comfort. We don't find convenience in digital, but you might... And we see better performance talking about tone and how easy it is to get a great tone if film is used. And we have digital gear too: in my case I use it for the things I don't care too much about: things for others, and for others who don't see the difference...
I don't want to fall in that vs. thing: it's just that what you said that was proven a decade ago, has not been proven at all, not even today... People are selling their newest top digital cameras, both because of unconvenience and because of tone... No one should take this personally...
Cheers,
Juan
 
Juan, you say that you don't want to get into "this vs that," but it's exactly what you're doing. Incidentally, I can appreciate that you want to have a "physical original that can't be deleted." However, for me it didn't work that way: some years ago I lived in Uganda and had negatives from all over East Africa. They were shipped with some household goods and, ended up, because of strikes and other problems of the shipping company, staying in a large wooden container/crate in Mombasa for over six mionths, through a whole rainy season. By the time the (developed) negatives reached me, the emulsion side of most of the negatives had beene eaten off by insects. Had these images been digital, I would have taken them with me, duplicated on two small hard disks, or have uploaded them to "the cloud" — and they would not have been destroyed.

The point is, as with all these digital vs film arguments, people should do what they like — and what is best for one person may not be best for another one.

MITCH ALLAND/Potomac, MD
Download links for book project pdf files
Chiang Tung Days
Tristes Tropiques
Bangkok Hysteria
Paris au rythme de Basquiat and Other Poems
 
Hi Mitch,
If you want to consider digital images are in general a safer media than negatives, it's OK with me. If you don't, it's OK with me too.
Cheers,
Juan
 
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