what's considered a digital looking image?

back alley

back alley

IMAGES
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i get confused sometimes...

too smooth?
grainless?
higher contrast?
crisper blacks & whites?

can we be specific and not wander off into the moral netherland please?
 
I'm not sure, Joe. With high quality digital cameras and lenses competing against similar quality film cameras, the best indicator I can find of which is which in normal light is whether there is grain in the image.

G
 
Over smoothed and very linear mid tones with sharp roll off leaving excessively blown highlights. Pixellated to a degree either over done processing HDR etc.

Difficult to define easy to spot, once seem never forgot...
 
I've been thinking about this too from time to time. Well not what a digital image looks like but why I prefer film images: digital or black and white.

I think digital images tend to not be subtle and this is also dependent and the post-processing and equipment. With the advant of HDR, fast primes, and strobes....everyone wants their images to "pop". Film shooters, in my opinion, tend to have a different aesthetic taste.

I don't have much experience with digital but the images I get out of my M43 tend to be too clean.
 
Clean vs. Grainy (though film can be clean)

Blown highlights generally look worse in digital.
 
Photo_Smith said:
Over smoothed and very linear mid tones with sharp roll off leaving excessively blown highlights. Pixellated to a degree either over done processing HDR etc.

Difficult to define easy to spot, once seem never forgot...
Click to expand...

Only the bad jobs of post-processing are easy to spot. Others not. And blown highlights? Film gave me that as well from time to time.
 
Sure Jamie, film can give blown highlights, but then burning them in during printing gives a very different look than blown digital highlights. What I see is a very sudden saturation and bang 255,255,255.
Film tends to roll off more gradually, not always and has limits, but mostly is better so it's not the blown highlights it's the way the two different mediums treat that situation.
 
i don't accept 'plastic' as no one ever describes what that means.

too sharp? like medium/large format?

overdone processing...a silver print can be over cooked too, no?

sounds like when the haters talk about digital they are talking about 'bad digital'...just like there is 'bad silver'...
 
I think people have hit on most of the main issues and, as mentioned, it can depend greatly on the quality of the post-processing (and the actual picture taking/exposure settings), of course. To me, tell-tale signs of a (bad) digitial photo are the blown highlights, odd/over-saturated colors (sometimes related to WB) and especially overly saturated/blown-out reds, which digital sensors can be overly sensitive to.

EDIT: Noise pattern, when present, is also another tell-tale sign of a digital photo and, with particularly strong AA filters, the lack of fine detail at high magnifications.

Also, I second that a good number of these are signs of "bad" digital photos not all digital photos. I have nothing against digital photography and often go back and forth between film and digital.
 
back alley said:
i don't accept 'plastic' as no one ever describes what that means.
Click to expand...

How bout this:

Film has a substrate i.e. grain that is part of the image. It actually creates the image.

Digital has no image substrate. It is the pure image. This is what I describe as "Plastic."

Having grown up in the film age, I prefer the look of film. See Robert Frank's LONDON/WALES for the perfect example of the film look I love and can't be duplicated with digital. That doesnt mean its "better," it just means its the sort of difference I don't like.
 
I like images with little or no grain, and cannot actually tell whether an image began as Analog or Digital. When I raise this issue as a way of asking for actual images to try and understand the difference, I never get very convincing answers. Some people seem to imply that everyone "knows" the difference. I suspect this their way of avoiding the question.
 
L Collins said:
How bout this:

Film has a substrate i.e. grain that is part of the image. It actually creates the image.

Digital has no image substrate. It is the pure image. This is what I describe as "Plastic."

Having grown up in the film age, I prefer the look of film. See Robert Frank's LONDON/WALES for the perfect example of the film look I love and can't be duplicated with digital. That doesnt mean its "better," it just means its the sort of difference I don't like.
Click to expand...

it is the pure image...i like that!
and i agree...there is a difference but one is not better than the other...just what we might prefer.
it's a funny world...i started out in film in the early 70's and from day one most folks were trying for a grainless image from 35mm film...'upgrading' to medium format to get sharper less grainy images. ( not counting the folks who were pushing tri-x)
i love digital for many reasons, not the least of which is the clean looking images...
 
In the worst case tonally poor, reduced dynamic range, odd or exaggerated colours, flat or burned out highlights, lacking in texture, bodiless, sometimes muddy on the micro-level, over-processed, chroma noise, smooth and clean in an unpleasant way.

But don't get me wrong, digital images can also look great and not all film based images look good automagically.
 
Photo_Smith said:
Jamie Pillers:

Only the bad jobs of post-processing are easy to spot. Others not. And blown highlights? Film gave me that as well from time to time.
Click to expand...

Sure Jamie, film can give blown highlights, but then burning them in during printing gives a very different look than blown digital highlights. What I see is a very sudden saturation and bang 255,255,255.
Film tends to roll off more gradually, not always and has limits, but mostly is better so it's not the blown highlights it's the way the two different mediums treat that situation.
Click to expand...

I agree with Jamie. The look of badly captured/rendered digital is different from the look of badly captured/rendered film, for sure. Neither is a particularly good looking photograph, although you may like one more than the other.

But to suggest that the look of a badly captured/rendered digital image is what is considered to be the look of all digital images ... this is a mistake.

There are some truly excellent digital images out there, just as there are truly excellent film images out there. When you are no longer looking to see fault in one or the other, you begin to see the photographs for themselves. And then the differences between what a digital image and a film image look like becomes a matter of nuance.

Nuances are important ... there is a reason I like the looks of Minox, 35mm, and 6x6 film formats as well as FourThirds, APS-C, and "full frame" digital formats. They are all different. But the differences are hard to categorize when it comes to the good stuff. Film's rigidity is matched by digital's malleability; both depend on proper exposure for the scene and the intent at hand, and skilled rendering to look their best.

G
 
Godfrey said:
I agree with Jamie. The look of badly captured/rendered digital is different from the look of badly captured/rendered film, for sure. Neither is a particularly good looking photograph, although you may like one more than the other.

But to suggest that the look of a badly captured/rendered digital image is what is considered to be the look of all digital images ... this is a mistake.
Click to expand...

I didn't say that did I? If so let me clarify. I prefer the way the shoulder of a film compresses the highlight in order to render several stops of information in that part of the curve.
If you put your specular (paper white) parts of those highlights on the white then the diffuse highlights (often 4-5 stops) can be recorded close.

That's not badly rendered just an honest difference between the two mediums.
 
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