I usually capture RAW + jpg. However with film it’s a struggle to decide lately. I’ve got such little experience in c41, but doesn’t it generally have a larger dynamic range than most digital sensors? I’ve seen massive overexposure of films like ektar and portra and they still maintain highlight detail. With digital, I suppose one would work in the opposite way and expose for highlights and raise shadows in post....but is the resulting dynamic range the same?
I've measured the DR in all my modern APS-C and FF sensor cameras (cameras made post 2006). I can get 12-13 stops of useable dynamic range out of all of them at base ISO, and typically two less at the highest usable ISO setting.
I've never gotten more than 11 stops of usable DR out of any color negative film in C41 processing, and generally not more than 8 to 10 stops out of any E-6 transparency film. Transparency films have far less latitude (over exposure tolerance) than either color negative, B&W negative, or digital sensors.
The digital sensors have long since outstripped film with respect to usable sensitivity. It's no problem at all to shoot with ISO 3200 and 6400 even with a middle of the pack APS-C sensor camera, where very few 35mm films stand up to even ISO 1600 with clean results.
Exposure and rendering procedures for the two media are entirely different because their sensitivity curve and behavior at the highlight and black point limits are completely different, but you are correct in general: It's best to consider exposing digital capture much like you do with slide film, avoiding highlight saturation and letting the rest of the frame fall where it might. With digital capture and raw files, you can recover vast amounts of detail from the dark end but very little from saturated areas; digital capture is essentially linear prior to raw conversion, with the black point defined as "how much noise can you tolerate before you call it" and the saturation point has a hard edge beyond which there is no data at all. With any kind of film, the shoulder is rounder and slower at both ends of the limits, but the length of the linear portion of the exposure curve much shorter.
They're just so very different and the techniques to work around their inevitable limitations so different, that comparing them often descends to more religious dogma and beliefs than it does actual information. Since I use them side by side, often, I see precisely what I can and cannot get with both of them under the same circumstances. It's obvious to me that for my photography, digital capture is far more versatile and capable, but film invariably looks somewhat different—even with my own notions of rendering it post scanning!—and I still love how it looks in certain situations.
To me, they are both perfectly valid, expressive, and useful capture mediums. They see light differently and with their own unique characteristics. My job as a photographer is to understand what a particular camera and film/sensor sees, and then use that to make photographs that satisfy what I want to produce regardless of which I choose...
🙂
G
BTW, I measured the exposure variation in this original capture at just a hair over 13 stops ...
Leica CL + Voigtländer 10mm f/5.6
ISO 400 @ f/8 @ 1/50
A couple of bits were saturated but there wasn't any significant detail to be had in those bits anyway.
