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Photographers who still enjoy film do so for the same reason that a lot of guitarists still enjoy tube amplifiers: it's reproduction is less accurate, but it's

Photographers who still enjoy film do so for the same reason that a lot of guitarists still enjoy tube amplifiers: it's reproduction is less accurate, but it's inaccurate in an aesthetically pleasing way.

jrockway 10y ago
I don't think that's particularly fair. With a sheet of 4x5 film, I can capture much more information than any digital camera on the market; even the $50,000 100MP "medium format" system cameras. Film has the disadvantages inherent in a chemical process; time and chemicals are required. But in terms of maximum information capture with minimum equipment cost, it wins. If anything, the shortcuts that digital photographers take degrade the quality of the image. The tiny image circle of DSLR lenses means that you can't control the image at the time of exposure, and have to use information-destroying transforms in post-processing. In the end, it doesn't matter, art is art, and jacking up all the colors to a million gets you the likes on 500px. Nobody will notice that the lighting was poor or that some of your square-at-the-time-of-exposure pixels are now rectangles. (That's why everything in the grocery store contains sugar. Nobody ever complaints about too much color, and nobody ever complains about too much sugar. It's a great way to make something mediocre delicious for the mass market!) But there is some value in getting it right in-camera, if only for the sense of achievement.
- pedrocr 10y ago
  People used to make similar arguments about 35mm film. Now that that's firmly surpassed I guess 4x5 will do. 4x5 is only 16x the area of a 35mm sensor so it's not too far away, you will have to soon move on to 8x10 to make the same argument :)
  - lightedman 10y ago
    "People used to make similar arguments about 35mm film. Now that that's firmly surpassed" Nanoparticle films are coming out. Gigapixel resolution in 35mm format.
    - pedrocr 10y ago
      Meanwhile semiconductors are already so good that we could build that today already. Nokia's 2012 PureView sensor's density was over 400MP in 35mm and that's already 4 years old. I'd bet on the digital side for this.
      - lightedman 10y ago
        Eh, we can get into the picometers with analog molecular films. Got any semiconductors at that scale?
        pedrocr 10y ago
        Are there any actual films that can outresolve an atom? That would be quite cool.
        lightedman 10y ago
        No, but we've got films in development where the individual grain size is just a few atoms. Got any semiconductor display techs capable of that small size?
        pedrocr 10y ago
        There's nothing fundamental stopping semiconductor technology to reach those feature sizes and a fair comparison is between technologies at the same development stage. If you use the proxy of what is commercially available today CMOS sensors beat film. There are still reasons to use very large film, mostly because no one develops large enough sensors (and even if they existed cost would be very high), but the advantages are being overstated.
        lightedman 10y ago
        "There's nothing fundamental stopping semiconductor technology to reach those feature sizes" The laws of physics most certainly are THE fundamental thing in the way. Electron leakage, current ripples at nanoscale, capacitive interference. There's a lot more involved when it comes to semiconductor technology.
  - lllr_finger 10y ago
    Current APS sensor technology is around 15 stops of dynamic range and 50MP. 4x5 sheets of Portra can resolve 100-300MP with 18 stops of dynamic range. Digital has beaten 135 film, but it still hasn't beaten 120 / medium format in several key areas. I would be surprised if digital beat 4x5 in the next 10 years because there's no substantial market for such a product.
    - pedrocr 10y ago
      You're just making my point exactly. You're getting 6 times the resolution out of 32 times the area. 35mm sensors are already common and that's already twice the area with better SNR. Maybe not all the 18 stops but close and it's also all semiconductor technology which improves for many other purposes than making sensors. There are also computational techniques to make the equivalent of a larger sensor from many small ones. We're coming at this from too many directions to not solve it. We'll soon need to have this discussion with 8x10.
      - jrockway 10y ago
        The resolution of the sensor is pretty irrelevant. Camera and subject motion, the MTF of the lens, and diffraction are much bigger factors (once you get to a certain point). You're almost diffraction limited on modern APS-C cameras at f/8! The motion of your hand and body will cause a point of light to illuminate two sensor elements even at 1/8000 shutter speed. Basically, DSLRs require perfect conditions in the field to actually achieve the sharpness stated by the camera manufacturer. A 4x5 sensor allows much more slop.
        pedrocr 10y ago
        So you're doing 4x5 handheld? I don't understand your point. If there's anything digital clearly wins at is at getting you better results than film for a given physical constraint. It has better sensitivity so takes better advantage of the light, it has more density per unit of area so gets you more resolution per unit of camera volume or weight, etc. The only thing film still wins at is being able to cheaply build larger "sensors" since film doesn't get more expensive to manufacture larger. And as sensors have gotten better it's gotten harder and harder to actually realize a benefit from larger film up to a point where you need a large cumbersome camera in a very sturdy mount and really good technique and process to have a shot at it. I expect that within the next 5 years multi-sensor/multi-lens cameras and a bit of software to finish off the last few advantages there still are[1]. [1] https://gearjunkie.com/multi-lens-light-l16-camera https://gearjunkie.com/multi-lens-light-l16-camera
- PeanutNore 10y ago
  I have a 6x9cm medium format rangefinder, but it's kind of an apples to oranges comparison to digital cameras. A much more direct comparison would be between my Canon EOS 55 and something like an EOS 6D. But regardless, I have a decent, although APS-C, DSLR (Canon 7D) yet I still shoot film for 99% of photographs that I take with anything other than a cell phone. Usually I use my Olympus OM-1 and a 50mm f/1.4 lens.
lightedman 10y ago
"it's reproduction is less accurate" Analog film has far higher dynamic range than any digital format. The camera itself makes no difference with all the f-stops, the analog domain is far finer-grained. Film is not effected by moire.
- mrob 10y ago
  This hasn't been true for a long time. Analog being "finer-grained" doesn't matter, because analog (just like digital sensors) has noise, and noise is the limiting factor for dynamic range. High end digital cameras have better dynamic range than most film cameras. Eg. check out this Nikon D810 photo of a cloud lit by lightning: https://www.dpreview.com/files/p/articles/7705642292/DSC_4818.jpeg https://www.dpreview.com/files/p/articles/7705642292/DSC_481... (source: https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikon-d810/14 https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikon-d810/14 ). Maybe a large format camera could capture something like this but it would definitely be impossible with 35mm.
  - lllr_finger 10y ago
    This is completely incorrect - the 810 is tested at somewhere shy of 15 stops DR. Portra 400 can squeak out 18. A slow B+W film can do 20-21. I spent years struggling with high dynamic range/contrast acutance with severe weather photography and digital cameras. Blown highlights, color noise in shadows, rough tonality through contrast transitions, etc. Specific films (not slide film like Ektachrome) were my salvation. Also, noise is not the same as grain. If the difference is unimportant, I'd think the other nuances relevant to this conversation may be as well.
    - mrob 10y ago
      Example pics for extreme HDR 35mm film at similar resolution (pixels can be binned to reduce noise at cost of resolution)? I've never seen any better than what the 810 can do. And note that cooled sensor digital cameras exist, so even better digital dynamic range is possible. I consider grain to be noise, just like vinyl surface noise is noise. I don't consider any distinctive and "artistic" defect of a reproduction medium to be a good thing.

jrockway 10y ago

I don't think that's particularly fair. With a sheet of 4x5 film, I can capture much more information than any digital camera on the market; even the $50,000 100MP "medium format" system cameras. Film has the disadvantages inherent in a chemical process; time and chemicals are required. But in terms of maximum information capture with minimum equipment cost, it wins. If anything, the shortcuts that digital photographers take degrade the quality of the image. The tiny image circle of DSLR lenses means that you can't control the image at the time of exposure, and have to use information-destroying transforms in post-processing. In the end, it doesn't matter, art is art, and jacking up all the colors to a million gets you the likes on 500px. Nobody will notice that the lighting was poor or that some of your square-at-the-time-of-exposure pixels are now rectangles. (That's why everything in the grocery store contains sugar. Nobody ever complaints about too much color, and nobody ever complains about too much sugar. It's a great way to make something mediocre delicious for the mass market!) But there is some value in getting it right in-camera, if only for the sense of achievement.

pedrocr 10y ago
People used to make similar arguments about 35mm film. Now that that's firmly surpassed I guess 4x5 will do. 4x5 is only 16x the area of a 35mm sensor so it's not too far away, you will have to soon move on to 8x10 to make the same argument :)
- lightedman 10y ago
  "People used to make similar arguments about 35mm film. Now that that's firmly surpassed" Nanoparticle films are coming out. Gigapixel resolution in 35mm format.
  - pedrocr 10y ago
    Meanwhile semiconductors are already so good that we could build that today already. Nokia's 2012 PureView sensor's density was over 400MP in 35mm and that's already 4 years old. I'd bet on the digital side for this.
    - lightedman 10y ago
      Eh, we can get into the picometers with analog molecular films. Got any semiconductors at that scale?
      - pedrocr 10y ago
        Are there any actual films that can outresolve an atom? That would be quite cool.
        lightedman 10y ago
        No, but we've got films in development where the individual grain size is just a few atoms. Got any semiconductor display techs capable of that small size?
        pedrocr 10y ago
        There's nothing fundamental stopping semiconductor technology to reach those feature sizes and a fair comparison is between technologies at the same development stage. If you use the proxy of what is commercially available today CMOS sensors beat film. There are still reasons to use very large film, mostly because no one develops large enough sensors (and even if they existed cost would be very high), but the advantages are being overstated.
        lightedman 10y ago
        "There's nothing fundamental stopping semiconductor technology to reach those feature sizes" The laws of physics most certainly are THE fundamental thing in the way. Electron leakage, current ripples at nanoscale, capacitive interference. There's a lot more involved when it comes to semiconductor technology.
- lllr_finger 10y ago
  Current APS sensor technology is around 15 stops of dynamic range and 50MP. 4x5 sheets of Portra can resolve 100-300MP with 18 stops of dynamic range. Digital has beaten 135 film, but it still hasn't beaten 120 / medium format in several key areas. I would be surprised if digital beat 4x5 in the next 10 years because there's no substantial market for such a product.
  - pedrocr 10y ago
    You're just making my point exactly. You're getting 6 times the resolution out of 32 times the area. 35mm sensors are already common and that's already twice the area with better SNR. Maybe not all the 18 stops but close and it's also all semiconductor technology which improves for many other purposes than making sensors. There are also computational techniques to make the equivalent of a larger sensor from many small ones. We're coming at this from too many directions to not solve it. We'll soon need to have this discussion with 8x10.
    - jrockway 10y ago
      The resolution of the sensor is pretty irrelevant. Camera and subject motion, the MTF of the lens, and diffraction are much bigger factors (once you get to a certain point). You're almost diffraction limited on modern APS-C cameras at f/8! The motion of your hand and body will cause a point of light to illuminate two sensor elements even at 1/8000 shutter speed. Basically, DSLRs require perfect conditions in the field to actually achieve the sharpness stated by the camera manufacturer. A 4x5 sensor allows much more slop.
      - pedrocr 10y ago
        So you're doing 4x5 handheld? I don't understand your point. If there's anything digital clearly wins at is at getting you better results than film for a given physical constraint. It has better sensitivity so takes better advantage of the light, it has more density per unit of area so gets you more resolution per unit of camera volume or weight, etc. The only thing film still wins at is being able to cheaply build larger "sensors" since film doesn't get more expensive to manufacture larger. And as sensors have gotten better it's gotten harder and harder to actually realize a benefit from larger film up to a point where you need a large cumbersome camera in a very sturdy mount and really good technique and process to have a shot at it. I expect that within the next 5 years multi-sensor/multi-lens cameras and a bit of software to finish off the last few advantages there still are[1]. [1] https://gearjunkie.com/multi-lens-light-l16-camera https://gearjunkie.com/multi-lens-light-l16-camera
PeanutNore 10y ago
I have a 6x9cm medium format rangefinder, but it's kind of an apples to oranges comparison to digital cameras. A much more direct comparison would be between my Canon EOS 55 and something like an EOS 6D. But regardless, I have a decent, although APS-C, DSLR (Canon 7D) yet I still shoot film for 99% of photographs that I take with anything other than a cell phone. Usually I use my Olympus OM-1 and a 50mm f/1.4 lens.

lightedman 10y ago

"it's reproduction is less accurate" Analog film has far higher dynamic range than any digital format. The camera itself makes no difference with all the f-stops, the analog domain is far finer-grained. Film is not effected by moire.

mrob 10y ago
This hasn't been true for a long time. Analog being "finer-grained" doesn't matter, because analog (just like digital sensors) has noise, and noise is the limiting factor for dynamic range. High end digital cameras have better dynamic range than most film cameras. Eg. check out this Nikon D810 photo of a cloud lit by lightning: https://www.dpreview.com/files/p/articles/7705642292/DSC_4818.jpeg https://www.dpreview.com/files/p/articles/7705642292/DSC_481... (source: https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikon-d810/14 https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikon-d810/14 ). Maybe a large format camera could capture something like this but it would definitely be impossible with 35mm.
- lllr_finger 10y ago
  This is completely incorrect - the 810 is tested at somewhere shy of 15 stops DR. Portra 400 can squeak out 18. A slow B+W film can do 20-21. I spent years struggling with high dynamic range/contrast acutance with severe weather photography and digital cameras. Blown highlights, color noise in shadows, rough tonality through contrast transitions, etc. Specific films (not slide film like Ektachrome) were my salvation. Also, noise is not the same as grain. If the difference is unimportant, I'd think the other nuances relevant to this conversation may be as well.
  - mrob 10y ago
    Example pics for extreme HDR 35mm film at similar resolution (pixels can be binned to reduce noise at cost of resolution)? I've never seen any better than what the 810 can do. And note that cooled sensor digital cameras exist, so even better digital dynamic range is possible. I consider grain to be noise, just like vinyl surface noise is noise. I don't consider any distinctive and "artistic" defect of a reproduction medium to be a good thing.