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Digital is WAAAY easier to get started on, no doubt. It's also much easier to learn the basics of composition and exposure. Unbelievably so! You can "develop" y
by tel 10y ago
Digital is WAAAY easier to get started on, no doubt. It's also much easier to learn the basics of composition and exposure. Unbelievably so! You can "develop" your images in microseconds.
With film you have to supplement a lot of what's achievable in digital via guessing and checking with careful thought. You also have many fewer opportunities to get the shot right before you exhaust your film and probably blow the moment replacing it.
This makes film into a forcing function to perform excellent technique and to pre-visualize your shot. This creates better technique.
It's also nice that film has a very high effective resolution (when drum scanned), that film grain is a favorable aesthetic right now (it was usually considered ugly before digital), and that film has a logarithmic response to light meaning that it can handle a wider dynamic range than digital.
- mulmen 10y agoThe logarithmic response to light is the first non-emotional benefit to film photography I have seen in these discussions. Thanks for pointing that out.
- madgar 10y agoWhat's wrong with emotional benefits? I cherish the fact that I experience emotions and the richness they bring to my life.
- TheOneTrueKyle 10y agoEmotional benefits don't really help me understand the difference between film and digital. It seems too anecdotal of an experience for me to take it seriously. Might be me though...
- tel 10y agoFor better and worse, photography is largely an artistic endeavor. Finding emotional appeal is a big part of that. On the other hand, scientific imaging is definitely something where non-emotional performance matters and I doubt people use film for any kind of scientific work these days.
- mulmen 10y agoThere's nothing wrong with emotional benefits or discussing them, this is just notable as an objective difference in the mediums.
- huxley 10y ago> film has a logarithmic response to light meaning that it can handle a wider dynamic range than digital. Not sure if that situation still exists in DV but for digital photography that stopped being true a long time ago (the balance started shifting almost 10 years ago), most digital sensors support more stops than even the best brands of film.
- tel 10y agoI went and looked it up to be sure and yeah, looks like empirically I'm off base with the dynamic range question. That said, subjectively I still feel that way. It might have something to do with digital noise and how the experience of actually witnessing different exposures feels between the two media.