Official BeyondUnreal Photography Thread

I have always felt like shooting film was like using a redeemer. You just fire and forget. Braver man than I. I'm too impatient for film.

BillyBadAss said:

Yeah, it's a lot more work, but I like the end result better.

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define "better."

in college I took a course in photography because I've always really enjoyed it as an amateur. we used film cameras and learned the developing process which is great fun. one day I would love to have my own darkroom and add developing to shooting film as a specific hobby.

but I also own digital SLR's.
I fail to see how film is any better than high-res digital at this point.

It's completely a matter of taste and using the right tool for the right job.

I completely get why BillyBadAss loves film. People throw around the word "better" as an opinion based on personal preference. Film format is still such a specialized format and it can be done on the cheap. With over 200 years of photography tools out there supporting a film format (over 75 years if we are just talking about 35mm) there is no wonder why such a polished format is still used today.

What if you just liked the D800 sensor but you wanted to put it on your 30d body because you like the controls? Forget it! With a film camera you can easily use a roll of Ilford Delta 100 in ANY camera that accepts 35mm film! Lots of flexibility with film.

Most of the areas where film excels at are areas that have not yet been visited or made popular with digital photography. There are of course many areas of digital photography that film simply cannot remedy.

I understand both points of view; like I said it would be awesome to shoot more film if I had my own darkroom and developing chemicals.
I'd love to do it myself again someday as an additional hobby.

BBA mentions the fact that different kinds of film yields different kinds of style in the shot, in regards to color/contrast. but the digital answer to that is simply 5 minutes in Photoshop correct?
of course there is something to be said for dodging and burning manually under darklights. it was very gratifying to do this the old fashioned way when I learned it for the first time.

Who

Who is biting that guitar JSR? Is it Ted Nugent?

I am far from knowledgeable in photography, I am learning slowly but without a decent digital camera it is a slow process. I have a 35mm film camera but don't take allot of photos with it. So most of the time I just shut up and listen in this thread.

PS on the other hand I have been working in since 1995. Adding realistic quality film grain to a photo is not hard but I do agree the noise filter is crap. I personally don't like film grain in any photo though so I can't fathom adding it unless you are going for it in a vintage photo-edit. Cleaning up an already noisy photo without plasticizing it is definitely a challenge and usually requires retouching by hand and a layered approach.

Edit: Erg redundency ><

Sometimes adding noise is an effective way to repair an underexposed portrait. It sort of obscures the artifacts that appear when you turn up the exposure in ACR, and adds a different effect that some find appealing.

35mm film? My 5 cents...

I can understand the attraction to film, there's also a solid clunky mechanical feel to a film camera that's genuinely pleasing, but when it comes to image quality, in pretty much every measurable criteria, digital has left film behind. This..

BillyBadAss said:

In the realm of 35mm film; digital cameras are finally catching up in terms of resolution.

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..is completely untrue (no offense BBA). In terms of resolution, digital overtook film around 4 to 5 years ago.

Here's a shot of a print I did for a client on Friday. It's one meter wide (about 40 inches) and I shot it with a 12mp camera.



Here's a close up of the same print with my iPhone to give an idea of scale.



Despite the fact that it's been up-rezzed considerably, there are no digital artifacts and you have to push your nose up against the print to see any pixels or loss of resolution (and these are the shadows, which is where any digital artifacts are usually most noticeable).
The largest photography books I have on my shelf are Art Wolfe's Edge of the Earth Corner of the Sky, Steve McCurry's South Southeast, Yann Artus-Bertrand's Earth From Above and Sebastiao Salgado's Africa. These were all shot with 35mm film, and the biggest has some images printed at about 20 inches across 2 pages - half the size of the above print. These are not cheap books, but it's really clear to see that they are pushing the format to it's absolute limit. In some images there is a clear loss of resolution from printing so large.
I know that Art Wolfe, Steve McCurry and Yann Artus-Bertrand now all shoot digital. Salgado, I don't know....although I haven't seen any new work from him for a very long time, so I don't know how active he is.

When it comes to high ISOs, you just can't even begin to compare. The image below was shot at ISO 1600.
Ever seen film at ISO 1600?
You just couldn't make a shot like this with 35mm film....it's inconceivable..



In terms of resolution, dSLRs are even catching up with medium and large format. Have you seen the DXO Mark ratings of the Nikon D800 sensor? They say it's the best sensor they've ever analyzed INCLUDING medium format digital sensors.

All these comparisons head in the same direction: the D800’s sensor is comparable to the best medium-format sensor, and in fact does even better — much better — as ISO increases.

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35mm film can't come close to digital medium format in terms of resolution, and yet 35mm digital can.

Also, film has a smaller dynamic range and is prone to colour shift in long exposures, so there really is no measurable way in which 35mm is better than modern digital.

I can understand what you're saying about the "feel" of film, but to go back to Steve McCurry, I remember hearing an interview with him where he said he changed to digital when he realised that it was no longer true that film had a better "feel". And he's arguable the greatest living photo-journalist.

To be honest, I think a lot of this thing about "feel" comes from the fact that many people print digital images as JPGs straight from the camera, which have had all the in-camera processing and compression done to them.
If you also factor in that a lot of people shooting digital are using compacts with ridiculously high MP counts on a tiny sensor, and they often print cheaply (by that I mean using cheap inks, cheap paper and cheap printers)..then yeah, it's easy to see all the tell-tale signs of digital in prints.

However, if you compare a print from a 35mm film camera with a print from a properly-exposed and processed RAW file shot with a 35mm dSLR from the last 4 years, printed on the same paper with the same inks and printer, and at a regular size (say, up to about 35cm (13 inches) then it's impossible to see the difference.
Print it bigger, or shoot at higher than ISO 800, and you will see the difference because the film print will start to look inferior in terms of detail.

I also understand all the flexibility about being able to switch different types of body and lens with different films for a completely different look, and I would LOVE someone like Nikon or Canon to produce a properly modular system (interchangeable sensors for example), but the flexibility of film for me is kind of fun but not particularly practical.
With film, if I want switch from colour to b&w, change the ISO or the colour temperature, then I have to change the film. With digital I can change all of those things from shot to shot, and that for me is real, practical flexibility.
Not only that, but once I've got the RAW file, I can process it to look however I like...and as I said, if it's done well, I don't believe the images are distinguishable.

There is a magic to the darkroom, and sitting infront of a PC can certainly be annoying. I understand the pleasure of developing film, but for me, it's like the attraction of tinkering with an old car or something. Occasionally I'll play around with my Nikon FE2...I do love the mechanical snap of the shutter, but most of the time it's used as an attractive paper weight, and for anything where image quality is important, and certainly for any client work, I shoot digital.

[GU said:

elmur_fud]...I do agree the noise filter is crap... Cleaning up an already noisy photo without plasticizing it is definitely a challenge and usually requires retouching by hand and a layered approach.

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The best PS plug-in for noise I've found is Noise Ninja. Put it on a separate layer, hide the layer, then just use the brush tool at a lowered opacity on the areas you want to work on until you're happy with how it looks.


EDIT: Just re-read my post back and it sounds kind of rant-y. No offense meant, it's just opinion and at the end of the day photography is about having fun and creating, and enjoying what you create. If film gives you that, then that's awesome. Didn't mean to come across like some kind of zealot. Apologies if I came across that way.

Israphel said:

...The best PS plug-in for noise I've found is Noise Ninja. Put it on a separate layer, hide the layer, then just use the brush tool at a lowered opacity on the areas you want to work on until you're happy with how it looks.

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Most (if not all) noise filters are a waste of money as they do the same thing you could do with free brushes, textures, and/or gradient maps. True they cut out some of the time involved in doing it by hand but the result isn't as good.

BillyBadAss said:

Another thing I like about film is it's easier to store. I have a solid physical copy that is much easier and cheaper to take care of than a digital copy. Digital stuff you have to recopy every few years (recommended by pros) as data on drives etc. can and will fail. I know you could "use a cloud service," but I don't want to do that as over time it's a lot of money spent.

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Doesn't acetate-based stock suffer from long-term storage issues (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulose_acetate_film)?

I would strongly advise against using a cloud-based service as a primary means of backup. As some users of Megaupload have discovered, (alleged) illegal activity on the part of the operator and/or other users of the cloud service can leave you as collateral damage (http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news...r-pirates-angry-users-out-of-luck-for-now.ars).

None of the consumer-grade cloud services that I have seen offer anything like an acceptable SLA for those "treasured memories".

Cloud as a backup to what is otherwise a complete backup regime is a reasonable second pair of braces for what should already be a "belt and braces" approach.

One advantage that digital does have is capacity. I shoot a lot of Judo competitions and often you have to start taking the shot before the throw starts. I am getting better at reading the players but even so there is still a lot of wastage where what I thought might be the start of a move turns out not to be or gets blocked. I could not afford even to learn how to be efficient if I had to use film.

(and there is some merit in the argument that the very limitations of a format can lead to innovation)

I think the more important point is that BBA gets some great results working with film. Why change what (for him) is a winning formula?

BTW those Kodachrome shots are gorgeous. The saturation looks false to me but I love the end result.

Glasgow School of Art at night:
[screenshot]http://www.margrave.myzen.co.uk/images/Winter11/GSAatnightderes.jpg[/screenshot]