Digital or film look? Which one you prefer and why?

[Phrasikleia]

This is true, but to a point....

Art buyers, art directors, editors and curators are just like you and me, the like to be wowed and they like to see independent thinkers. In some ways, if you have to ask your customer what they want, then you are simply not what they are looking for in the first place. For example, some photographers sell work or get hired based on what they can do for the client and how they fit into the overall team driven perspective, I have two clients that I have had for over 10 years that are like that, we are a family, we know what needs to get done and no one is a prima-donna about it.

But then there are photographers who's work sells or they get commissioned simply because of who they are as an artist, they have staying power, they have a distinct identity that is beholden to no one....they are often one of the most if not the most successful in their genre.

I could not have expressed that view any better myself. In short: the cream rises to the top.

The perceptions you cite about market demand and trends are perhaps the number one reason I am getting out of commercial work and doing strictly fine art...I don't want to show people what they want to see, I want to show them what they have never seen before.

You've undermined your first point somewhat with this last part, which suggests that success in commercial photography requires that you play the conformity game. As you stated so well, it's the independent thinkers who reap the greatest rewards. Moreover, it's important to keep in mind that fine art photography works the same way. There are fine art photographers who kowtow to market demand and trends, and then there are those who are setting those trends. The latter group is of course most likely to enjoy the greatest success.

 

[Macshroomer]

I could not have expressed that view any better myself. In short: the cream rises to the top.



You've undermined your first point somewhat with this last part, which suggests that success in commercial photography requires that you play the conformity game. As you stated so well, it's the independent thinkers who reap the greatest rewards. Moreover, it's important to keep in mind that fine art photography works the same way. There are fine art photographers who kowtow to market demand and trends, and then there are those who are setting those trends. The latter group is of course most likely to enjoy the greatest success.

100% of course...I just want to do fine art, so in some ways I am making excuses in my own mind that force me to really make it happen...;-)

 

[Phrasikleia]

100% of course...I just want to do fine art, so in some ways I am making excuses in my own mind that force me to really make it happen...;-)

May the road rise to meet you.

 

[snberk103]

... There are fine art photographers who kowtow to market demand and trends, and then there are those who are setting those trends. The latter group is of course most likely to enjoy the greatest success.

I'm not sure I agree with this last point (though I agree with everything else in your post). It may depend on how you define "success" though. I know several (and know of several more) photographers who sweat and anguish over their art, and are creating amazingly brilliant work. But hardly get noticed because they are in their studios creating their art and not selling themselves. However, these artists are noticed by photographers who may not have a lot to say themselves, but do know a good thing when they see it. And are very good at selling themselves and their work. I'm not claiming that this 2nd group are copying the 1st group...
often they are very talented themselves. They just aren't very creative, and this group constantly is looking for inspiration. And they often find it in the studios of the artists who are happy to just create art rather than selling it.

100% of course...I just want to do fine art, so in some ways I am making excuses in my own mind that force me to really make it happen...;-)

I wish you very great success... however you want to define it ...

 

[Phrasikleia]

I'm not sure I agree with this last point (though I agree with everything else in your post). It may depend on how you define "success" though. I know several (and know of several more) photographers who sweat and anguish over their art, and are creating amazingly brilliant work. But hardly get noticed because they are in their studios creating their art and not selling themselves. However, these artists are noticed by photographers who may not have a lot to say themselves, but do know a good thing when they see it. And are very good at selling themselves and their work. I'm not claiming that this 2nd group are copying the 1st group...
often they are very talented themselves. They just aren't very creative, and this group constantly is looking for inspiration. And they often find it in the studios of the artists who are happy to just create art rather than selling it.

I'm not sure that you are actually disagreeing with me. What you're pointing out is a subset of influential artists: those who are unable/unwilling to translate their creative success into financial success.

 

[snberk103]

I'm not sure that you are actually disagreeing with me. What you're pointing out is a subset of influential artists: those who are unable/unwilling to translate their creative success into financial success.

I finished my post too soon, and perhaps didn't make my point well. It depends if "success" means "financial" or "influence". If "financial" then I think many of the most creative artists are not "successful" - in that they often work a 2nd job to earn the income to continue their artistic endeavours. They don't sell their art for high prices, and are often glad to trade their art to another creative person for their art.

The financially successful artists are often, imho, the ones who can spot a good trend and/or creative technique and who are very good at selling themselves. I'm actually appreciative of this 2nd tier of artists, because they are the ones who spread some very interesting artistic visions further afield than would otherwise be the case. I'm perfectly happy to be influenced by a particular artistic idea, and I enjoy absorbing as much of it as I can.

… just my 2¢ worth …. and I'm still trying to assimilate everything I saw at the just concluded Eastside Culture Crawl in Vancouver. I'm still on a bit of an overload.

 

[Phrasikleia]

I finished my post too soon, and perhaps didn't make my point well. It depends if "success" means "financial" or "influence". If "financial" then I think many of the most creative artists are not "successful" - in that they often work a 2nd job to earn the income to continue their artistic endeavours. They don't sell their art for high prices, and are often glad to trade their art to another creative person for their art.

The financially successful artists are often, imho, the ones who can spot a good trend and/or creative technique and who are very good at selling themselves. I'm actually appreciative of this 2nd tier of artists, because they are the ones who spread some very interesting artistic visions further afield than would otherwise be the case. I'm perfectly happy to be influenced by a particular artistic idea, and I enjoy absorbing as much of it as I can.

… just my 2¢ worth …. and I'm still trying to assimilate everything I saw at the just concluded Eastside Culture Crawl in Vancouver. I'm still on a bit of an overload.

OK, well if you want to talk about success of the financial sort, then the point still holds true that (all else being equal) the innovators/independent thinkers will be the ones who rocket ahead of the others. For example, lots of artists managed to ape the style of Ansel Adams back in his day, and many of them were able to make a decent living at it. But Adams himself was wildly successful, far surpassing any of the business-savvy copycat artists.

 

[AlaskaMoose]

This may be off subject, but maybe not. You be my judge. I was looking at a photo posted by a photographer at a Canon photography forum, and it looks like a mixture between a painting and a film photo. I thought that it was quite amazing, and perhaps the OP would like to see it. At the Canon users forum I clicked on the image I am referring to, and it was a link to the photographers webpage:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dominia/10887663745/

 

[hulk2012]

This may be off subject, but maybe not. You be my judge. I was looking at a photo posted by a photographer at a Canon photography forum, and it looks like a mixture between a painting and a film photo. I thought that it was quite amazing, and perhaps the OP would like to see it. At the Canon users forum I clicked on the image I am referring to, and it was a link to the photographers webpage:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dominia/10887663745/

Thanks mate! It looks really interesting I agree..

 

[nateo200]

First off while digital cameras may have been around when a specific client bases age was born that doesnt mean that everything after that was shot digital...plenty of movies are shot on 35mm and people associate that look with "filmic" or whatever, whether they know what to call it or not.

 

[fathergll]

First off while digital cameras may have been around when a specific client bases age was born that doesnt mean that everything after that was shot digital...plenty of movies are shot on 35mm and people associate that look with "filmic" or whatever, whether they know what to call it or not.

When viewing still film today on a digital platform, I think it's biggest limitation is the fact that many of the scans are quite subpar. I think thats where the biggest hangup is at for the most part. I've seen some awesome scans of medium format film on some guys pages where it's quite clean and that I will say I like over a high end DSLR like a D810. From a motion picture standpoint put in the Dark Knight on bluray for the IMAX scenes which is basically medium format film. It's looks spectacular and obviously thats an example where you have an unlimited budget for the transfer of film to digital.

I'm not sure if I prefer 35mm over it's digital counterpart but medium and large format film is pretty awesome for its sheer IQ if you can scan it proper.

 

[sarge]

I'm currently embarking on a new (personal) project using high powered light sources. I'm not sure of my final print size yet but I want a very detailed image on close observation. I started shooting 5x7 Portra 400 but the highlight retention even with a +2 push is ridiculous, which means it actually isn't suitable for the look I'm going for.

In considering the digital route, I would like to rent a Pentax 645 but I can't seem to find any rental houses that carry them here in NYC. Also I'm ignorant of the effects of repeated and protracted over-exposure on a small portion of CMOS and or CCD sensors - could I possibly damage the chip? In any event I prefer the tests I've done on FF digital as these are mostly taken in low light where my exposure times are greatly reduced and the high end of the curve is quickly overwhelmed.

For me, the question of Film vs Digital is a ruse - it's the equivalent of telling a guitarist they should only play acoustic or electric. The next time you listen to Street Fighting Man, Gimme Shelter, or Jumping Jack Flash, you might want to ask yourself how Keith Richards got that sound...

 

[fathergll]

For me, the question of Film vs Digital is a ruse - it's the equivalent of telling a guitarist they should only play acoustic or electric. The next time you listen to Street Fighting Man, Gimme Shelter, or Jumping Jack Flash, you might want to ask yourself how Keith Richards got that sound...

I think a better analogy would be for a guitarist to choose between a a tube amplifier and a solid state/modeling amp. Acoustic or electric produce completely different results which isn't the case in the film vs digital. Thats why you see those blind tests where people need to choose while one is film and which one is digital. I'm a guitar geek so i can't help nitpick.

 

[sarge]

I used the analogy because what I'm essentially doing is exploiting the effect of using a continuous light source to blast the sensor with photons, intentionally hoping to cause distortion/blooming. I'm essentially taking a page from Keith Richards, who famously used an acoustic guitar and passed it thru a mini tape recorder to get the 'electric' guitar sound used on Let it Bleed.

 

[fathergll]

Fair enough. The analogy has merit in a different way. I guess I always viewed the majority of these debates of both film vs digital and say tube amp vs solid state being very similar. The benchmark seemed to be getting digital to match its older 'analog' counterpart in resolution and other tangible and intangible measurements.

 

[phrehdd]

I admit to having a bias towards traditional film and darkroom printing but would be remiss to not say that digital photography certainly makes it "easier" to get a useful image and to do inkjet prints immediately.

Film qualities can add to an image and we are lucky that with care, much of it can be emulated digitally. Whether it is a Kodachrome look or Agfa's delicate palette for skin tones to Tri-X pushed and Technical Pan (nearly grainless).

 

[nateo200]

When viewing still film today on a digital platform, I think it's biggest limitation is the fact that many of the scans are quite subpar. I think thats where the biggest hangup is at for the most part. I've seen some awesome scans of medium format film on some guys pages where it's quite clean and that I will say I like over a high end DSLR like a D810. From a motion picture standpoint put in the Dark Knight on bluray for the IMAX scenes which is basically medium format film. It's looks spectacular and obviously thats an example where you have an unlimited budget for the transfer of film to digital.

I'm not sure if I prefer 35mm over it's digital counterpart but medium and large format film is pretty awesome for its sheer IQ if you can scan it proper.

Agreed. For the record if I didn't mention it already I shoot medium format and after shooting 6x9 120 it makes 35mm film look like a joke, That said my 2K scans of 35mm do not give it justice, for a real comparison I usually request a 5K scan of 35mm, still I prefer MF....not that I don't break out my 35mm SLR every now and then but I've got 8K scans of my 6x9 Velvia and Portra shots that look amazing and still don't even have all the resolution resolved...I imagine many of them could double the resolution and still resolve a lot of detail, good glass and focus dependent of course. But yes The Dark Knight is amazing, both of them. I watch movies multiple times, usually at least once or twice in my home theater and untold amounts of times on my laptop. When watching a Blu-ray on my rMBP its amazing to see the subtle changes in film grain from anamorphic 35mm to 5-perf 70mm and then to the massive IMAX (15/70mm). At one point I was thinking of doing a stop motion film using medium format with slide film but then I woke up I love film but it is costly and I have a back log of 120 film that needs developing, some from last year, literally a whole box, kind of a stressful thing.

EDIT: I'm really going to miss a lot of the slide film that has gone the way of the past. After Ektachrome was discontinued I went on a binge buying all the E100G I could find, I probably spent $300 if not more on E100G alone! I really loved that slide film, the only slide film that I could use for a portrait and be happy with the skin tones, Velvia and Provia are great but they are not for skin tones. That said Portra 160 and Portra 400 are amazing for portraits. 160 is so fine grained its insane.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Terrific, interesting, informative thread, and conducted in a tone of courtesy and mutual respect. An absolute pleasure to read.

 

[sarge]

When viewing still film today on a digital platform, I think it's biggest limitation is the fact that many of the scans are quite subpar...
I'm not sure if I prefer 35mm over it's digital counterpart but medium and large format film is pretty awesome for its sheer IQ if you can scan it proper.

Agreed - The only frustration for me is the introduction of Moirè when scanning architectural negatives and the like.

 

[nateo200]

Agreed - The only frustration for me is the introduction of Moirè when scanning architectural negatives and the like.

Do you only get this issue with certain types of film? Maybe a certain scanner is to blame? Surely their is a way to get rid of moirè, er rather avoid it by preventing it, that is unless you are a professional picture taker of brick walls and complex fences then you have your work cut out for you! That said I am a movie guy and I enjoy Blu-ray's greatly, especially catalog releases and new releases shot on film (The Dark Knight Rises being completely finished optically and then scanned for the DCP, Blu-ray, etc.) and moirè seams like a pretty tame issue with the latest releases. With scans I notice the issue relates heavily to a sub-par scanner or imaging sensor.

 

[nateo200]

I'm currently embarking on a new (personal) project using high powered light sources. I'm not sure of my final print size yet but I want a very detailed image on close observation. I started shooting 5x7 Portra 400 but the highlight retention even with a +2 push is ridiculous, which means it actually isn't suitable for the look I'm going for.

In considering the digital route, I would like to rent a Pentax 645 but I can't seem to find any rental houses that carry them here in NYC. Also I'm ignorant of the effects of repeated and protracted over-exposure on a small portion of CMOS and or CCD sensors - could I possibly damage the chip? In any event I prefer the tests I've done on FF digital as these are mostly taken in low light where my exposure times are greatly reduced and the high end of the curve is quickly overwhelmed.

For me, the question of Film vs Digital is a ruse - it's the equivalent of telling a guitarist they should only play acoustic or electric. The next time you listen to Street Fighting Man, Gimme Shelter, or Jumping Jack Flash, you might want to ask yourself how Keith Richards got that sound...

I find film in general and specifically Portra to maintain highlights in a superior way over digital and most view this. Generally speaking with digital you have to protect for the highlights because they clip easier but you get better shadow detail while with film you have to avoid going into the shadows too much but you have a lot of head room in the shadows. You could say this is how it is with digital audio vs analog audio, with digital audio when I record I tend to tread very lightly to avoid clipping because its very hard to reverse, when recording 24bit however all that dynamic range is great because you can record at low levels and still recover a lot of sound where as with analog audio it seams the opposite, the lower levels have more noise, tape hiss, whatever. I have never listened to a DSD but some swear its analogous to analog (always wanted to say that lol) its a 2.8224MHz / 1bit signal vs high res PCM which is 88.2/96/176.4/192KHz 24bit. Ultimately I find both analog and digital fascinating concepts and topics, we need both that is for sure!



As for film I've pushed Portra 400 to 3200 and it held onto the highlights better than some decent digital cameras, it was a unique experiment because when I shoot film I bring my DSLR with me and shoot a side by side sometimes, usually just to nail the exposure just right and use the DSLR preview as a reference for immediate preview and then later time and date info but comparisons of a highly dynamic image in terms of light was interesting.

 

[sarge]

Do you only get this issue with certain types of film? Maybe a certain scanner is to blame? Surely their is a way to get rid of moirè, er rather avoid it by preventing it, that is unless you are a professional picture taker of brick walls and complex fences then you have your work cut out for you! That said I am a movie guy and I enjoy Blu-ray's greatly, especially catalog releases and new releases shot on film (The Dark Knight Rises being completely finished optically and then scanned for the DCP, Blu-ray, etc.) and moirè seams like a pretty tame issue with the latest releases. With scans I notice the issue relates heavily to a sub-par scanner or imaging sensor.

The random arrangement of grain doesn't produce moire until it overlaps w/the CCD sensor pattern - but I think I probably notice it most when I'm resizing the image. You can mitigate the effects -I forget the technique..applying a selective gaussian blur maybe? I'm sure there is a formula used when reducing images as well. Lol, I'm sure there is some poor sap out there photographing men in plaid shirts w/striped ties against a brick wall for the next JC Penny catalogue but it isn't me thankfully.

 

[sarge]

You could say this is how it is with digital audio vs analog audio, with digital audio when I record I tend to tread very lightly to avoid clipping because its very hard to reverse, when recording 24bit however all that dynamic range is great because you can record at low levels and still recover a lot of sound where as with analog audio it seams the opposite, the lower levels have more noise, tape hiss, whatever. I have never listened to a DSD but some swear its analogous to analog (always wanted to say that lol) its a 2.8224MHz / 1bit signal vs high res PCM which is 88.2/96/176.4/192KHz 24bit. Ultimately I find both analog and digital fascinating concepts and topics, we need both that is for sure!

Didn't realize this until this evening but apparently, Star Wars The Force Awakens was shot on film. Obviously they made heavy use of digital imaging but they also went back to making models because it has a different look and feel than CGI, which I personally find flat and lifeless.

I know a lot of people swear by vinyl but I once met a sound engineer who told me that all the albums from the late 70s onwards all went thru a AD processor and that all that 'audiophile' vinyl is made from the same compressed bits as a cd except theirs is pressed into plastic and played with a needle and the cd's grooves are read by a laser....but I know next to nothing about audio. I just found it interesting to hear.

 

[phrehdd]

The random arrangement of grain doesn't produce moire until it overlaps w/the CCD sensor pattern - but I think I probably notice it most when I'm resizing the image. You can mitigate the effects -I forget the technique..applying a selective gaussian blur maybe? I'm sure there is a formula used when reducing images as well. Lol, I'm sure there is some poor sap out there photographing men in plaid shirts w/stripped ties against a brick wall for the next JC Penny catalogue but it isn't me thankfully.

I am a bit curious if you tried these techniques -

oil between neg and glass for scanning
or
taking the negative and scanning it 2-4 times each time with 90 degree rotation then merged together in Photoshop

I rarely scan 35mm these days but lucky that I have a Minolta Dimage 5400 that still works. However, I do have prints that are scanned and often, the texture of paper can also be reduced via the rotation technique. The idea of multi scanning negs is not new but often over looked.

 

[sarge]

I am a bit curious if you tried these techniques -

oil between neg and glass for scanning
or
taking the negative and scanning it 2-4 times each time with 90 degree rotation then merged together in Photoshop

I don't think I'm getting any newton rings..I only have a crummy old Epson 4870 and so don't do any oil mounting scans - but I can scan 5x7 negs w/it so that's nice - I really just use it for proofing purposes. I've heard of the rotation technique but I haven't used it myself.