perfect exposure! Man, look at that tonal range. Digital has a long way to go.
Wow. Great photograph. What film was this?
I'm with Seenew, digital has a long way to go before it even starts to catch up to film...thats why I almost always grab my Nikon F3 and some Tri-x over my D80.
Thanks to both of you... I believe the film was Illford Hp5+ 400, although I also used Tri-x for a while. The only way I can be sure is to dig through my negative archives and find the actual negative used for the print.
I was hesitant to post this at first because of the "blown" highlights, but since I was going for the "sidelit" effect with no fill flash I knew the light source would be overexposed, and liked the look. Much of my film shooting ventured into serious backlighting and strong sidelighting, creating some interesting specular highlights and difficult contrast situations - which made the photographs more interesting, at least in my mind...
I do like the look of b/w film, including the variations of the grain from changing film. Tri-x looks a lot like HP5, T-Max 400 looks more glassy, and Ilford Delta 400 has it's own look... I also played around with overexposing Plus-x 125, or doing shots into harsh backlighting, and doing a very diluted, longer development (with very gentle agitation) using the old classic German developer, Rodinal, to capture more shadow detail, and tone down the highlights. Usually the tonal range of the film was pretty extensive, and the contrast had to be bumped while printing to find the right balance....
Anyway, I babble on... but film is fun, and demanding - digital is fast. Some parallels to music. Analog vs. digital. I love them both.
Seenew: Really nice work with the polaroids - very artistic and beautiful results...