what's the big knock against digital b&w?

While it's a bit off topic, I will say that from a consumer financial perspective, the digital b/w Leica M makes some sense. For ~ $5,000 one can buy an MP. The cost of the camera plus film, processing, scanning, etc. for a couple hundred rolls would equal the rumored cost of the monochrome Leica digital (all other things being equal). From that point on (i.e. after a few hundred rolls), it would be cheaper to own the digital.

Of course, all things are not equal. Some people will prefer the convenience of digital, other the look of film. At least we'll all have both options now (maybe).
 
There's a reason b/w films didn't disappear after color stocks were introduced. Anyone who denies that is simply failing to reason honestly about photography.

As for myself, I'll shoot color or b/w in 35mm, MF, LF, digital, whatever. There's no one camera for each job. If Leica brings another viable option to the table, I'll happily give it a chance.
 
Twenty years ago I participated in a sound test by a well known audiophile magazine. They did a number of tests around the nation. It basically put a bunch of sound nuts in a theatre with a pair of speakers on the stage. They gave us a check list and played various pieces of music. We had to indicate if it was a CD, tape or vinyl. The end result was that most, 95+ percentile, did no better than random. I converted to CD's (BTW I have a nice Krell setup).

My guess is if you do the same with prints you'll end up with a similar result. The bottom line in both of these cases (CD vs vinyl and film vs digital) are that measurements aren't relevant to what our ears or eyes perceive. It really has to do with a method of working. And that is a fine choice to make.

The other part of it has to do with "look." Each generation has a "look" that tends to predominate. Part of it is technological, part of it is technique. Daguerreotype, then calotype, etc, etc. Then there was the soft focus group, than the realists, the pictorialists, etc, etc. As film dies and by the looks of it, it will become an "alternative process," the new technology will predominate. It will be here long after we're dead.

As an aside the technical aspect about storage and media is moot. Silver gelatin prints have a finite life. Yes it is much longer than many ink jet processes still it is significantly less than 200 years. If you really prefer silver gelatin fiber printing then there are services that will print digital images this way (Digital Silver Imaging is just one). The only way to save your images is to make sure it is in the hands of someone or some institution invested in preserving them. And maybe that's where we should be throwing money and research - into a foundation that stores image files for future generations.

As for me B&W images digital or film, it's all good. It's about the image not how you got there.

--Rich
 
back alley said:
so it's not digital black & white images per se that you are against...it's the manipulation of said image to look like film...as in using nik fx?

so if i just process my images in pse to my liking then it's ok?

not being a smart ass here, seriously asking...
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Absolutely! Do exactly as you please with digital and/or film. Just don't tell me there's no difference.

btw - I'm no film expert. But gradually discovering how film really looks over the last couple years, and doing direct comparison shoots has taught me the shortcomings of digital.

As an extra aside - I really enjoy image post-processing, it's a lot of fun. For one job I did years ago I created a large collection of Indian Ink splashes and dots and ink-runs. These were scanned at 8000dpi (on a drum-scanner, I think) so that they could be used at pretty much any scale, and then we layered and blended and inverted these 'faults' over MF digital to look like 'distressed film' or polaroid contacts (for an adidas campaign, in fact). The result was awesome. I've used the dvd of those splash and scratch scans many times since - sometimes a single little 'chemical splash' is all an image needs to 'look analog'.

However, actually shooting film has taught me how far apart the media are. They are both good - I just prefer the look of film now. And it feels more real to me, and is much harder to do well than manipulating images in Photoshop, where I can make pretty much any image look good if I do enough work on it.

This even goes for iPhone images with Snapseed processing. I'm desperately trying to master square format with my Hasselblad - and the process is really challenging to make something good: simply visualizing how a scene transfers from what you think you're getting by looking at the ground glass, and how a photograph actually looks is much, much more difficult than I ever imagined.
But I can take a crap shot with my iPhone, pull it into Snapseed, crop it 1:1, run a couple of filters, and have a really stunning image in 15 seconds.

Some of you may think this is the important thing - the supposed end result - but for me those images have no 'staying power'. After a few days I'm bored of them. But my film images - even the failures - can have endless fascination because they are the result of real craft and real vision and real struggle and 'real light', however inadequate.
 
Quote:




"Originally Posted by mfogiel

"It is very simple, the digital B&W is plain ugly, and if you don't see that, then don't worry about it."

- Give that man a cigar..." - gdj

So, with my new cigar, let me try to elaborate...
The reason why "MOST" B&W digital photos, in my opinion are ugly, is the limited bit depth of a digital B&W image, particularly evident in the highlights. I am not an imaging engineer, and perhaps if there is one among us, he could verify my sensation: unless a digital B&W depicts a limited DR image, particularly not very rich in highlight gradation, the resulting image appears dull - I define it, as if somebody poured dirty water on top. Film somehow compresses the highlight gradations in a way which makes them appear similarly to how our eye perceives them naturally. Digital highlight recording, deprived of the "shoulder" naturally present both in silver halide and in our brain, simply goes from middle gray to pure white in too few steps, so unless scientists find a workaround for this, digital B&W will struggle to convince.
I have taken up photography after some 30 years of sabbatical, and I thought that digital was the new way to go. My first digicam has been Fuji S3 Pro, probably still one of the best digital cameras for DR recording. Yet, when I made comparisons of the same subjects, shot with the same lenses and in the same light - digital against silver film, there was no doubt for me which images looked better. There can be cases, when digital B&W is perfectly acceptable, but in my mind they are relegated to either very high contrast imagery, tipical of "pushed" film or high ISO digital, or to digital images shot with the best equipment, under a very carefully controlled light, and therefore not in need of any further curve adjustment in the highlights.
However, if your standard for a B&W image quality is somewhat les demanding, I see no problem with that, and I am willing to pass on my cigar...
 
mani said:
Some of you may think this is the important thing - the supposed end result - but for me those images have no 'staying power'. After a few days I'm bored of them. But my film images - even the failures - can have endless fascination because they are the result of real craft and real vision and real struggle and 'real light', however inadequate.
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Your argument iss irrelevant to the extent that it deals with the debate about the end result of the two processes and which is better. Nobody but you cares about "how" you got there. The only thing other eyes want to see is an arresting visual image.
 
Teuthida said:
Your argument iss irrelevant to the extent that it deals with the debate about the end result of the two processes and which is better. Nobody but you cares about "how" you got there. The only thing other eyes want to see is an arresting visual image.
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But the main point of my long and boring contribution to this 'debate' is really that a digital image can never look like real film. If you want to make an "arresting visual [digital] image" then by all means do it. But no amount of post-processing will make it look like real film. It'll always be a fake.
 
mani said:
But the main point of my long and boring contribution to this 'debate' is really that a digital image can never look like real film. If you want to make an "arresting visual [digital] image" then by all means do it. But no amount of post-processing will make it look like real film. It'll always be a fake.
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The concwpt of REAL and FAKE is where we disagree.

According to your logic, a child produced solely by artificial insemination would be a "fake" child.

There are no "fake" photographs. There are photographs.
 
intheviewfinder said:
Twenty years ago I participated in a sound test by a well known audiophile magazine. They did a number of tests around the nation. It basically put a bunch of sound nuts in a theatre with a pair of speakers on the stage. They gave us a check list and played various pieces of music. We had to indicate if it was a CD, tape or vinyl. The end result was that most, 95+ percentile, did no better than random. I converted to CD's (BTW I have a nice Krell setup).

My guess is if you do the same with prints you'll end up with a similar result. The bottom line in both of these cases (CD vs vinyl and film vs digital) are that measurements aren't relevant to what our ears or eyes perceive. It really has to do with a method of working. And that is a fine choice to make.

The other part of it has to do with "look." Each generation has a "look" that tends to predominate. Part of it is technological, part of it is technique. Daguerreotype, then calotype, etc, etc. Then there was the soft focus group, than the realists, the pictorialists, etc, etc. As film dies and by the looks of it, it will become an "alternative process," the new technology will predominate. It will be here long after we're dead.

As an aside the technical aspect about storage and media is moot. Silver gelatin prints have a finite life. Yes it is much longer than many ink jet processes still it is significantly less than 200 years. If you really prefer silver gelatin fiber printing then there are services that will print digital images this way (Digital Silver Imaging is just one). The only way to save your images is to make sure it is in the hands of someone or some institution invested in preserving them. And maybe that's where we should be throwing money and research - into a foundation that stores image files for future generations.

As for me B&W images digital or film, it's all good. It's about the image not how you got there.

--Rich
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IMHO, you've cut through all the nonsense.
 
Teuthida said:
According to your logic, a child produced solely by artificial insemination would be a "fake" child.
Click to expand...

This is a hilarious and totally mistaken analogy.

Anyway, as usual the debate has degenerated. I do recommend you read the blog article I linked to earlier in the thread, it's actually illuminating about the technical aspects why film cannot be adequately mimicked by a digital sensor output. Everything else is really just hot air, posturing, and the repetitive misconstruction of what other people have actually said.
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
I love encountering such bigotry in the real world. I show them stuff I've done with digital and they think its film. The looks on their faces are Priceless, like a Mastercard commercial, when they learn the truth. Its not about 'knowing the difference', its a divide between those with and those without the skill to do it right. It took my several years of practice to get that good at digital processing though. I'm too much a perfectionist to accept something that isn't as good as it should be.

There are some limitations, and some subjects don't convert well, but to say that no digital black and white looks good is silly.
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Chris, I didn't say digital B&W can't look "good" - because "good" is a point of view, and subjective. What I am asserting, is that analogue B&W can look unique, not replicable by digital B&W.

Of course, just to try and prove to you that my viewpoint is not bigotry, I believe that digital imagery can produce (many more varieties of) monochrome effects and "looks" that are equally unattainable with B&W film.

Just don't tell me that the two mediums can do exactly the same thing, always. That is bigotry.
 
A good photo is a good photo - whether taken on digital or film. There are differences, for sure, but I don't regard either as "right" or "wrong" - just different from one another.

As for preference, give me film. That said, I have a Nikon D700 and a Panasonic LX3 and both turn out very acceptable files which convert equally nicely (to my eye) in monochrme. Still, I prefer a roll of Tri-X or XP2 taken via my M6 or my Mamiya 7.
 
The thread title invited viewpoints. When these are supplied, the usual outcry follows (usually along the lines of "get out and take photographs instead" or "it's the image that matters" bla bla).

The OP asked a question and got a few answers. That's what a forum is for. If you want to take photographs, use a camera. If you want to talk photographs, use a forum. Don't mix the two up. Simple.
 
mani said:
The thread title - take another look: "what's the big knock against digital b&w?"

We're not (necessarily) talking about these supposed masterpieces that people are always preaching about on the forum (seem to be a whole lot of self-proclaimed HCB's on RFF, all of them creating GREAT ART with their digital cameras and heedless of the naysayers who tiresomely insist that moving a few sliders in Nik Efex really doesn't qualify).

If you want to start another thread with the subject you want to talk about then go ahead, knock yeself out.
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HCB never developed a roll of film in his life. He brought it to PICTO in Paris where they were developed and printed. I knew his master printer well. HCb couldnt hace cared less about the "technical" side of the craft. ironicLly, thoseHCB wannabes you denigrate because they've moved a few sliders probably did more processing work on their own photos than HCB ever did on his.
 
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