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Digital Camera Quality Passing Film?
smartbit writes "Luminous Landscape writes in their Preliminary Field Report of the Canon 1Ds 11 Megapixel camera: 'the 1Ds produces the best combination of resolution, colour accuracy and low noise that I've yet seen in a digital camera.
What about a comparison with both 35mm film and medium format? I'm afraid that film has definitively lost the battle. The 1Ds's full-frame 11MP CMOS sensor produces a 32MB file -- as big as a typical scan. But this file is sharper and more noise free than any scan I have ever seen, including drum scans. There simply isn't a contest any longer.'
Kodak's Pro 14n list price is $5000 lower and uses a similar CMOS sensor supplied by Fillfactory "
I simply can't afford to take good pictures, no matter the format. No, sir, I'll stick with my Brownie.
Who wants to go halves on a T3?
same website that claimed to be able to print neutral toned B/W from an Epson 1270 with dye inks! -- i'm not impressed with their reporting.. .. digital is great -- ..
IANAP (I am not a photographer)
There are so many issues and artificats using a digital camera, even the ~ $1,000 models.
One big quirk I have is the delay. Traditional photography is INSTANT, and at least with all digital cameras I've used, there's a noticeable delay between when I click before it shoots.
Don't even get me started on shiny objects in the sun with a digital camera.
Digital cameras still have incredible value and usefulness if you're a budding eBay auctioneer, or when you take a lot of pictures to put on the computer, and quality isn't the #1 issue.
Film is a chemcial reaction with light and a photosensitive chemically treated film. This captures things at the atomic level, and has a VERY high resolution. This is something that will probably never be replaced by digital.
Crime scene investigators are a good example of people who need to have that resolution. If you were on trial would you rather have a hard photo, or a digital photo? I'll take kodak film any day over anything digital.
Other con's against these high-res digital cameras would have to be portablity and speed.
At 32mb a picture, you can fill even a 40gig HDD pretty fast not to mention saturating the connection (firewire or USB) and there must be a delay in shooting speed i.e. 1 picture/per 3 seconds.
Of course, none of this matters for certain applications. I'm just think about the notion of replacing regular 35mm's with these new digitals.
'He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.' - Douglas Adams
... is like vinyl vs CD
Okay, so if I want a picture inside my computer, I should use a camera rather than a scanner to scan a real picture. That's hardly "film losing the battle" as the post states. That's scanners losing the battle on film's behalf. It's still going to be quite a while before a digital camera can truly reproduce film's quality away from the computer.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
"film has definitively lost the battle..."
Pardon me, but the battle won't be "lost" until the local supermarket starts selling disposable 3M-pixel digital cameras.
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by mere idiocy.
Being a semi-pro photographer, I've considered moving to digital for a while now. Lately I've been getting really close:
...but I've resisted so far. I shoot a medium-format Yamica and a 35mm Leica M4P, both dazzling in quality. Digital currently cannot match:
* similar image quality, with very expensive digital cameras, to medium format
* zero printing/developing cost
* high capacity for 35mm-quality shots
* flexibility in color response and grain afforded by different kinds of film
* quality of final print (photo printers haven't caught up yet)
* artistic manipulation. Photoshop does not count.
Until it's really worth it to blow $10000 on a top-shelf digital, I'll stick with my film.
... that film still, and will always have its advantages. For one, all charge coupled devices (CCD and CMOS) with the exception of one camera (The Sigma SD9) use a pattern of red, green, and blue sensors, tiled. This causes artifacts in the image which must be fixed in software, causing "blurriness" which must be sharpened in post production.
Besides, being a photographer, I still prefer real film, to digital.
Now, A lot of people would argue that digital is good for a lot of low end consumers. I still won't buy that argument either. A lot of digital cameras still suffer from rather severe Chromatic Aberrations, and ccd noise.
And finally, yeah, digital might be getting up to film quality. So what?
The Nikon D100, a "prosumer" digital SLR camera is over $2000, and that's just for a body, no lens. I can get a Nikon F100, the professional Nikon film camera, for half that.
I can also get a Nikon N90, for around $500. Thats a SLR film camera on par with the D100.
See why i'm not excited about digital yet?
11 megapixel may be nice, but it sure is a pain to have to buy a new hard drive for each photo album...
There are qualities of film which derive from its imperfections and these are not addressed by a strict comparison of the various media based on criteria such as pixel size or color accuracy.
To me, there are also some abstract issues, such as the fact that people take a LOT more pictures today, with digital cameras, than they ever would have done with film. I remember when 3:20 of super-8 film would cost about $4.00, $8.00 to process, and projector bulbs were not cheap.
Also consider the environmental impact of film photography. I cannot stand to even go into the town of Longview Texas, where the Eastman Kodak factory spews the waste products of film manufacturing. It literally makes me ill to breath the "air" for MILES around the plant. They claim their emissions are safe (but nobody should ever have to breathe air that smells this horrible). According to my sources, that town has the highest proportion of ancephalic babies in the country, and it is very common for kids to be ADHD. I can't make a credible correlation, but I can say with certainty that it is not a place where I would ever choose to set foot again.
So, if the digital revolution reduces the environmental impact from film manufacturing, I'm all for it.
There is a question of permanence also. We take digital photographs with no regard to the fact that the formats might be locking us out of access to our own work, or that the storage used is rather ephemeral.
Is there a digital alternative to the sort of photography that would be considered museum quality? How about X-Ray film? Infrared?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
This is slightly off topic, but...
For average, everyday people, digital cameras have completely and utterly displaced film. The previous "idiots cameras" the 110's, are pretty much extinct - I haven't seen one in years. This is due to the rise in quality of the 35mm point+shoots.
Now those same 35 point+shoots are being displaced (in mass quanitity) by point+shoot digital cameras. You can get a decent 2MP digital for $200 now, and 128meg of SmartMedia for under $50.
For the average joe-bag-a-donuts, 2MP is PLENTY of resolution.
What I predict you'll see is the continued dropping in price (and increase in capability) of consumer level digital cameras and the eventual exinction and/or price increase (due to lack of demand) of 35mm film, processing and equipment.
Poloroids - I'm surprised they're still in business today.
You know you're a geek if you've ever replied to a tagline.
32mb per image.
24 images = 768mb +/-
1GB Kingston CompactFlash card = $856 dollars
1 roll film = $2.50 +/-
Developing charge = $4.00 +/-
What does it all mean? I can purchase 131 24 frame rolls of film (more if I buy in bulk) AND get them developed for the price of the card required to store 24 images on this thing.
I understand that the quality is phenomenal, but unless you're printing these shots into Iris prints, I feel this camera is overkill.
Photos have been just fine in terms of razor sharp quality and colour for the last 10 years...why do we need to make them 1000x better?
Okay...cue the flames.
Anyone can walk on water....think WINTERTIME.
National Geographic had an article a while back about the different kinds of film and photography methods used in the magazine over the years. In it they describe the limits of each technology. Much of the film today produces images that can be enlarged to an amazing degree, well past the point where digital images can be sized before pixelization sets in.
The person who posted the article confused the resolution of scanners with that of cameras. The article had the wrong title. It should have been "Digital Camera Quality Passing Scanners?"
The film still has better "resolution" than the scanned images or the digital cameras, it's just that lots of that resolution is being lost in the scanning process.
It is comparable to saying that CDs are of a low quality media because the MP3 your ripped from it is full of noise and pops. You're judging the source based on the merits of a lossy extraction of data from that source.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
It's The Dynamic Range, Stupid.
Discuss.
Where can my wife take a memory card and have someone extract 36 of the pictures and print them out for 8 bucks in one hour? It's not going to happen soon.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Digital's good for some things, film's for others. When you can have a near-grainless 16x20 from digital as you can from Velvia, I will believe it.
:)
If you want a picture to send to grandma or even an 8x10 enlargement of a good color photograph, then it's probably even with a good scanner and printer. I scan color pictures that I take that did not quite come out right in print, and photoshop does it justice. Just that printing beyond 8x10 is not there yet, but I haven't tried Pictography.
When digital can do all that B&W custom processing can do, then I will be very impressed. Currently, B&W comes out flat flat flat, but acceptable for a snapshot.
When there is a Foveon-like full-35mm-frame 11+MP chip as fast as CCD, then we are talking a much more level playing field. When I can afford all that in a Canon SLR, then I go buy one
-- "You can lead a yak to water, but you can't teach an old dog to make a silk purse out of a pig in a poke" - Opus
http://clarkvision.com/imagedetail/film.vs.digital .1.html
The EOS 1Ds looks to be priced around $5000, this coming from Canon dealers taking semi pre-orders. This makes sense, look at the price of the EOS 1D, and the price of the Kodak.
If you don't believe me, check out www.dpreview.com for more info. Cheers, Josh
"Technology.....the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it." Max Firsch
i usually read digital camera reviews at dc resource
::aky
/. so that it opens in another new windows, tried that bfore(target didnt work)..couldnt make it work, it would be so cool if i could.
but looks like he didnt put it up yet, but this link may be useful too...
p.s. just curious, how do i put up a link on
Check out Roger Clark's analysis for the details.
My dad was an avid photographer and has a closet full of shoeboxes of 35mm color & b&w slides documenting the family going back to the 1940's and beyond. Most are in excellent condition (except for some ektachrome(sp?) organic dye slides with some mold slowly growing on them). To view them you just hold up to a light or use a fairly simple projector.
Q: If someone takes as many pictures in digital format will they be as easily viewable 50 years from now? Will those inkjet printouts have all faded away, the CD's become unreadable, or no readers available unless you transfer to the latest and greatest digital storage format every 5 years? Will your grandchildren have to hire a data recovery specialist to see their parents 1st birthday party or what Aunt Jane looked like?
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Conventional photo film has a wider contrast range than any digital technology currently available. Photographers divide this range into 10 levels from total black to total white in measurable steps. Known as the Zone System of photography it is the entire basis Ansel Adams' entire body of work. Digital cameras using either CCD or CMOS chips simply do not have that kind of range. At best the high end cameras might have 7 or 8 zones, resulting in muddy shadows and blown out hightlights. In addition they are slow compared to film, requiring more light to make an exposure. Even though manufacturers might claim that the cameras have an effective ASA/ISO rating of 100 or 400, when compared to film, the digital cameras require a slower shutter speed or wider apeture to make an acceptable exposure. Just like MHz ratings in computers, Mega-Pixel ratings are just a part of the whole when measuring performance.
Sorry for the offtopic post, but this is important.
See this story from yesterday for more details. Pets Warehouse has recovered from the Slashdot Effect and is back up . Click the link, click the link, click the link! Don't let Robert Novak, Slashdot enemy-of-the-month, earn one more dollar from his website!!!
Also, e-mail them and tell them what you think! Call them at 1-800-991-3299 from a payphone: they'll have to pay for the 1-800 call *and* for the payphone usage!
Show them the POWER of Slashdot!!!!
The article compares the digital camera's output to a digital scanner's scan of 35mm film. But I imagine that the paper output of the digital camera's image is still not as good as an actual 35mm print, even with a top-of-the-line photo printer.
It's good to know that digital cameras surpass digital photo scanners. I don't know that it's true that they're surpassing 35mm film.
More importantly, how are these pictures going to be stored long term? We have photos and negatives lasting over a hundred years. I'm lucky to have a hard drive last longer than three. The possibility of the great photographs of our day being erased with an accidental click of a button or the failure of a hard drive read head worries me.
If there's one thing that the old 35mm cameras have over the newer digital ones is that we pretty much know how long the images will last over the course of time. How long will it be before we lose our digital pictures because of an unreadable format or digital failure?
With digital, the quality will always be the same with the added advantage of being able to take advantage of future tools and printing methods to enhance the original. Screw the cost of archival papers and inks. If it fades in a few years... I'll just print another one on my newer/better printer.
As long as one keeps the digital photos on good/current media, they will last forever.
CD-ROMs are estimated to last anywhere from 30 to 200 years.
CD-Rs, before they are recorded, have an estimated shelf life of five to ten years.
CD-Rs, after recording, are estimated to last between 70 and 200 years.
CD-RWs are expected to last at least 30 years.
Perhaps for consumer 35mm yes, the stuff you buy at Walmart, digital is surpassing film. Then again, most consumers like that won't spend $9000 for a camera. But no way digital is better than all film, certainly, not for slide films, and DEFINITELY not the medium or large format films used in most professional photography (eg, wedding studio shots, high-end photojournalism like National Geographic, etc.)
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
I bought a Kodak DC5000 2.1M for xmas last year. I can go hiking, take 50 pictures (the memory card will hold over 100), come home and print a few for a friend before he even heads home. Glossy paper is cheap and the quality out of my photo printer (2400x1200) is decent when printed on glossy. Also, I don't print the crappy pictures which you get when developing film. I can dump all the pictures to my webserver and have the family (several hundred miles away) look at them within minutes of a family event (i.e. Children's birthday party).
Yes, film prints better. But with film I would do a roll of 24 about every 6 months... and then it would be weeks before I would take it in and spend the $7 to develope and buy then buy more film.
For me, film has passed into history. I will never go back to film. In the future when I get a better photo printer I can always reprint my favorites and they will be better since I am dumbing them down with my current photo printer.
One of my side projects lately has been converting analog camcorder tapes into SVCDs... but that's a different topic. Digital... it's the only way to go.
Jeff
Most studies I've seen place 35mm film resolution at an effective 20-40 megapixels. This makes a $5000 digital camera somewhat less performant than a $500 film camera.
For $5000 I can get a good medium format camera which puts me in the 100 megapixel range.
flexibility in color response
To get increased dynamic range in digital, you can do the following:
Will I retire or break 10K?
What they said.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
From am amature perspective, I have a 3megapixel Minolta D-Image5 with a 80 MB card.
I routined fly through 100+ photo's in the time I would still be on the first 24 on a role of normal film. Since the card can be rewritten for free, I am not concerned about the costs involved with wasting "bits", as opposed to wasting frames of film, which are of a limited quantity.
Out of a given space of time, I will catch many things on digital I would not have caught on an normal SLR, since film in unlimited and essentially free.
For printing, my Epson 785EXP can print out good enough 8x10 images to be hung. 5x7's come out just as good, if not better than 35mm film from a lower end camera with wallmart printing. It even costs less, since I only print the good ones.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
If film was dead, They would stop making new SLR's.
Digitial is a different tool. Film is most certainly not dead, nor is it ever going to die.
I, for one, am just getting into photography and have no plans on going digital. I want to cut my teeth with film and with darkroom technique. I want to be just as comfortable in the darkroom as I feel in Photoshop.
Tools is tools.
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
I got to sit next to the photographer at the last wedding reception I attended. He was an older guy, near retirement, and we got to talking about digital cameras. If I remember correctly, he said that he's got about a 4 megapixel with 3x optical zoom. In his opinion (hey, he's a professional photographer), the digital camera was better than standard film for pictures that would ultimately end up being printed to less than 8x10 (that's inches, naturally). For 8x10 or bigger he preferred film, regardless of the resolution. Less blocky, he said. For what it's worth...
We take digital photographs with no regard to the fact that the formats might be locking us out of access to our own work
Oh really? JPEG 1 is a mature standard, and nobody seriously claims any restrictions on it. Even Forgent's claim has been shot down. If you want lossless, use PNG.
or that the storage used is rather ephemeral.
A digital image can be copied losslessly from one storage medium to the next.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I have a 3 mega-pixel digital camera, and I love it. But I have a gripe with this story.
For some reason, no one ever mentions dynamic range in ccd/film comparisons, but this is a place where I believe film soundly tromps the ccd.
If you look at digital photos shot in a very high-contrast environment (such as almost anywhere on a bright sunny day), you will notice that either the bright areas are totally white, or the dark areas are totally black. There is no way to expose the shot so that you get detail in both.
Slide film, in particular, is excellent when it comes to capturing detail in the shadows, even in very high contrast scenes. The human eye has much greater dynamic range than the CCD, so this isn't totally without merit.
I guess that this dynamic range would be roughly analagous to getting 14-bits per pixel, per color from a digital camera, instead of the usual 8.
Granted, it is very hard to preserve all this detail on display. About the only way is to project the image onto a screen. Still, as far as I can tell, digital isn't even close to film in dynamic range, and there doesn't seem to be any improvement trend. 24bpp has become the standard.
Just my $0.02
MM
--
By including this sig, the copyright holders of this work or collection unreservedly place it in the public domain.
II had the opportunity to take some pictures of my friend playing soccer a couple of weeks ago, and I found out how challenging it was to photograph sports action. A gentleman nearby was taking pictures with a brand-new Nikon digital camera. He was having a much harder time than me, because all of his pictures were a split second behind the action. In fast action, a split second lag is a lifetime.
Digital camera will take the crown for still photography soon, if it has not yet, but film will be king in action photography until digital cameras can process their images faster.
Instant Karma's gonna get you - John Lennon
I hope this is relevant to the current discussion.
Last year, I went to visit my grandmother and she shared with me many of the photographs that my grandfather took of my mom when she was growing up. My grandfather was a prosumer-level photographer, and pretty good at it. I really enjoyed the photographs, and I realized at that moment that I would like to be able to provide photographs like that for my grandchildren some day (I'm in my mid-20s at the moment).
I currently have a point-n-shoot camera, but it's so old and low-end that almost I'm embarrassed to use it. So, I plan on buying a digital camera within the next couple months (so far, so good). Digital cameras interest me as there's no cost to developing the "film", and the photographs can be easily distributed to friends and relative through my blog or even through e-mail.
However, my primary concern is in the longevity of the data. Sure, the bits themselves may last, but would CDRs be readable by computers 50 years from now? I mean, even disks from 20 years ago (such as an 8-inch floppy) may still have good data, but you'd have a hard time getting the data off it today (who has an 8-inch drive anymore?).
So, I see two options: I could either buy an analog camera in addition to the digital camera, or I could get prints made from my digital photographs. (Or, is there maybe a third option that I'm not seeing?)
Through some Google research, it looks like I can get digital prints made for about 30 to 40 cents each. And, that works out to about the same price-per-print as getting regular film developed. One downside to digital prints (from a longevity perspective), is that there's still no physical negative from which other prints could be made.
The other option, as I see it, would be to buy both a digital camera and an analog camera. The advantage, of course, is that I would have the negatives and physical prints from the analog camera (along with the convenience of a digital camera). However, by having two cameras, I'd have to either (1) take both cameras to an occasion or get-together or (2) take only one camera. Taking two seems a bit unwieldy, but taking only one would seem to defeat the purpose of having both (as I would get only digital or only analog photographs that way).
So, any ideas or suggestions? If I were to buy an analog camera (in addition to the digital), the Nikon N90 (or maybe F100, if I can find it used) looks like it would suit me well (that's the level of quality I'm aiming for). On the digital side, the one I've had my eye on is the Nikon Coolpix 5700. My guess is that its quality-level may not (?) match that of the aforementioned SLR, but digital SLRs are just too expensive for me at the moment (about $2000, and that's without a lens).
I'd be interested in hearing how other Slashdotters have coped with digital's "posterity problem". I'd also be interested as to what digicams may be equivalent to something like Nikon's N90 or F100 (I'm not as concerned with the megapixel or resolution comparison between digital and analog, but straight photographic accuracy and quality of the two).
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's interesting "medium format" was blurbed in that passage considering 11MP does not quite replace the resolution of good 35mm yet, and is even further from replacing the resolution of a good 6x7. We also mustn't forget those natural characteristics of film that exist that digital is very far from replacing as well. You are not going to get the same result out of a digital camera that you'd get out of a roll of Ilford Delta 3200 or Fujichrome Velvia 50 (RVP). Digital is still limited to certain ISO emulations, I don't expect to see ISO 50 or ISO 3200 results, let alone Velvia or Delta results out of one just yet. Also, let us consider such things as the zone system.
Granted, the world of digital has gained a higher resolution, and a sensor which is much like 35mm, so now a photograph taken with a 50mm lens in digital resembles a photograph taken with a 50mm lens in film. The big problem factor for me is that digital has caused people to become less inspired in their photography due to not having to deal with the permanence of film. In digital you delete, in film that mistake stays, reminding you for next time. Of course this all depends on what you're doing, but I seriously doubt many are going to be using an EOS 1Ds to take photos of their kid's birthday party.
Another thing one must consider is the ultimate purpose of this camera, the Canon EOS 1 series are press/pro tools, especially the new 1Ds. I have a camera on my table right now that I deem far superior for my purposes than the EOS 1D-series would do for me, and it cost me $350 (EOS 50). And I don't have to stick with one type of sensor, if one week I want Kodak TMax 400, or Ilford Delta 3200, or Kodak Portra 400UC, or even Fujichrome Velvia 50 (RVP) I can have them, and they're all unique.
Digital does not replace film, my friend, it may accompany it, but it does not replace it.
------------ Ben Chroneos
I guess color is going the way of black and white film in manual cameras! To the dumpster!
Oh wait...
In a few years, film will be choosen for its properties and qualities--not as default. This is a good thing though.
Still, not all the reviews I've read say color accuracy is quite up to snuff yet. Also, you can't throw a new type of sensor into a camera for a special effect. You can do that with film.
Even more interesting though. When will digital allow camera manufactures to start designing "out of the box" for camera's that are easier to hold etc.
Step one replace film
Step two become primary in the industry's thoughts about the design of a camera.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
Yes, this camera may have passed 35mm film in quality.
But at this price range, you're already well into the price of medium-format film.
MF film can carry MUCH more data per frame than 35mm. While the resolution is the same, the area is far greater.
Heck, for that price, you can even get a basic used LF setup.
It's going to be a long time before this camera comes down enough in price to be the equivalent of a 35mm SLR with the same quality.
That said - I shoot entirely using digital cameras now. But I have much lower requirements than pro photographers. I'd be best described as "advanced consumer".
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
indeed the quality of 35-mm dSLR at high end, like canon 11 mp and kodak 14 mp is better than almost all 35-mm film quality. now these cameras are getting limited by lens quality. though it will still take time to kill regular SLRs, high-end SLRs are likely to be the first casualty. there are many things to be worked out, among them: standardization, print color matching, display matching (images looks very different when viewed on different monitors), cheap prints, print ordering convenience and most important of all, the price.
also, it seems the 35-mm dSLR may not be the future for replacing regular low to medium end 35-mm SLRs. the main obstacle is sensor size. it is extremely costly to make a large chip (24x36mm). and if you reduce the sensor size, then it is costly to make wide angle lens (35 mm lens on film camera would become 70 mm if the sensor size is 12x18). so the future looks like smaller sensor, smaller lens. olympus and kodak recently introduced a new format called 4/3. this standard if adopted widely could become equivalent of 35-mm film standard in future. this uses smaller sensor (i guess, the diagonal size would be 4/3 inches), so the lenses would be small and dedicated lenses would have matching focal lengths.
Price wise and quality wise, full frame 35-mm dSLRs are likely to be in the range of current medium format cameras and hence the medium format market seems under direct attack too. Goodby hasselblad, welcome kodak!
But I played one in the highschool darkroom. :-)
We're all talking 35 mm film here, comparing it with specialized, super-expensive cameras.
Wouldn't someone that worried about resolution be using large format film like 8"x10"?
I doubt digital is within overtaking that. I would venture a guess of another 50 years before it can do that.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
> For one, all charge coupled devices (CCD and CMOS)
> with the exception of one camera (The Sigma SD9)
> use a pattern of red, green, and blue sensors, tiled.
I'm not sure what the Sigma uses. But Foveon has developed
a three layer CCD. The products using this CCD are
hardly affordable at the moment. But Canon is rumored
to also work on this. I'd say that those CCDs will be
standard in a few years.
It very expnsive to store film and more expensive to to safly store it... like Betman Arkive it takes special facility and milions of dollars to preserve thos films
forthere more the film is is not very dyreble media and get ruined very fast... and can't be any "archeological" value when it ruined...
Who controls the information, controls the world...
lens system (corner falloff, radial distortion correction)
ISO rating (fortunately most digital cameras do 400 these days)
Color quality & noise (related to the demosaic-ing process)
The megapixel argument is very similar to the CPU clock one (A PIV 1.5 GHz is just 15%-20% faster than a PIII running at 1GHz - on spec 2000, but people still buy clockspeed.)
The Raven
The Raven
I doubt that the entire world is now functioning digitally - in the poorer parts of the world, I'm sure that older analog, manual wind-on cameras still have great use - there's no battery to run down (of course the film can still degrade), for example. Perhpas the photographer doesn't have a computer to make use of digital photographs.
As an astronomer and an amateur photographer, I agree with everything you said, but disagree with your lead-in.
Astronomy used to be done with plates: glass plates with custom emulsions, which would be developed in labs and illuminated for research work. Nowadays, it is all, without exception, done with CCDs. No professional optical telescope uses anything besides CCDs, and it's not just because of advantages in post-processing. CCDs have higher sensitivity, higher dynamic range, and higher fidelity than plates ever did. And yes, they are robust and easy to import into workstations too.
Of course, with CCDs, it helps a great deal if price is (almost) no object, upto a few tens of Gs. For amateur (prosumer) cameras, cost is abig deal, but this is one case where I'd bet on rapid development. The 11MP cameras show that we're getting close: when we get, say, 15 MP cameras for under $1000 (at the level of the Canon A-2 or whatever it is these days), I'll bid a fond farewell to film.
But until then, I agree with you - I'm not excited by digital cameras yet.
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
Rather the going based on visual appearance, here's a discussion on Google Groups that attempts a more scientific approach to the Digital vs. Film question. Using mathematical calculations and physical light propegation properties of lenses, film and a high quality drum scanner, this discussion arrives at the conclusion that film will only hold it's own up to 5.22MP. All else being equal, go digital if it's over that value. Speaking as someone who has recently purchased a 6.3MP Canon EOS D60, I can tell you its picture quality is exceptional!
Okay, I'll reply not just to feed the trolls but also for someone that might not know (like my relatives that send 2.1MB bmp files)
JPEG is a lossy compression. Depending on the level of compression and the content of the original photo, you will get a wide variety of results.
I highly suggest reading the JPEG faq for more details or checking Google for the right format that best suits your need.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Much of the film today produces images that can be enlarged to an amazing degree, well past the point where digital images can be sized before pixelization sets in.
What about fractal image compression? Magnified images gain an extra level of detail that doesn't actually exist in the original image. It may be false, but surely it's more attractive than the usual blockiness or simple smoothing that's normally performed.
It may not be practical for the cameras to perform the compression, but could certainly be done on a desktop machine before the image is manipulated further.
Pardon me, but the battle won't be "lost" until the local supermarket starts selling disposable 3M-pixel digital cameras.
Photographic film is by its nature disposable -- you can only shoot a roll up once. The whole point of digital film is that you can reuse it endlessly. Even if the technology were that cheap, you wouldn't buy disposable digital cameras because it defeats the point.
Your point about cost is valid, though. The whole reason we still use pads of paper and pens is because tablet PCs aren't economically viable as an alternative -- yet. On the other hand, you hardly ever see people buying or selling typewriters anymore because the advantages of a word processor and printer, even ones that aren't PC-based, far outweigh the added cost of typing digitally.
Polaroid has (or had) a digital camera that bypasses the PC by including a digital photo printer attached to the camera itself, mimicking their longtime instant film while adding the advantages of digital film. Other digital camera makers like Canon have developed small portable printers that can connect to the camera directly for printing 3x5 or 4x6 shots without a PC. Alternatively, commercial digital film developing (and CD-R backups) will become more and more common for people who either want long-lasting film and ink for their photos or don't want to spend the money on their own photo printers.
As these devices come down in price, they'll displace reusable consumer film cameras more and more. Small, cheap digital cameras are $50 and lower today. Most consumers are more interested in quick and dirty snapshots of their friends and family than in high resolutions. Disposable film cameras can't catch enough quality to justify 8x10 blowups of your photos anyhow.
Bottom line: disposable 3M digital cameras aren't necessary to displace film. All that's needed is widespread sales of a 2M, 20-shot digital flash camera for less than $50 and the ability to plug it into a USB cable at Walgreens and get them printed, burned to CD and flushed from the camera's memory for $9.99. If Joe Consumer had access to that, the only thing holding him to film cameras would be the ones he already owns.
For instance, having to white balance a digital camera for a photojournalist is an incredible pain, regardless of the print quality.
On the other hand, She can transmit digital with her satellite phone on a daily basis. If she is searched or gets her bags stolen her photos are already back in the states.
Say you shoot a pulitzer prize winning photo. You don't have a negative. You just have these bits of data. Archival quality of the digital printer papers still is suspect and storing it on you hard drive just sucks for presentation.
Heil Sig! -Rob
Try and get shallow depth of field in a digital camera that costs less than $2,000. You can't. And if the image quality from a $2,000 Canon digital SLR is the same as a $200 Canon film SLR, I think I'll stick with the $200 camera, thanks.
Digital WILL NOT be better until image quality, features and price ARE ALL better than their film equivalents.
That said, the only time I use film any more is in extreme low light situations and even then I usually don't bother if I can get the equivalent with a long-exposure on my G2.
My Canon G2 Tests
-Matt
Make the switch, it's amazing what you can accomplish with digital - as long as you can think as both a photographer AND a geek.
In this sense Photoshop most certainly does count, and eliminates the "Flexibility in color response and grain" per film. You can adjust the grain to your liking, and get a full range of artistic manipulation with a much greater freedom than traditional paper. I've yet to find an effect or filter I can't reproduce in PhotoShop. It even compensates for some lenses, though I'd still keep those handy (as well as a good polarizer - it's much simpler than photoshopping it).
As for quality of the final print, why go photo printer? I've got one (fairly good quality, 2880x1440 dpi 6 chrome) for proof production, but the cost is beat by going to a good development place with a digital processor. Note: MANY DEVELOPERS NOW USE DIGITAL FOR STANDARD PROCESSING AS WELL. It's just easier, and the results are more consistent.
As for $10000 for a top-shelf camera, pick up a 5-6MP for under $2K unless you have do larger than 20x30 frequently, then wait 6 months and get a 10MP for the same price. Photoshop makes smooth interpolations across the board, really, so that may even be unnecessary.
Any spoon would be too big.
Several years ago, I remember reading an article about news sources and digital prints. The concern was not about digital vs. film (I imagine digital is easier for them to work with for easy transmission and printing), but about Photoshopping news pictures.
The article mentioned that new services were already Photoshopping out things like clouds and other things that might distract from the actual news in the picture. However, there is oviously a fine line to be drawn - where does modifying the image begin to distort what the picture is? How should news services let the public know that the picture has been modified?
As we move from film to digital prints, this is a ethical question that needs to be addressed.
Sure, it is more than possible with film prints, but the ease with digital prints means that it will be happening more and more often.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
When I was in college, work in the Photo Lab, I knew a guy who could tell if a batch of photo chemicals was going bad by the taste (or so he claimed). With digital, you'd loose that wonderful, dangerous skill. What are you going to do, lick the Flash Card?
(DC, if you read this, get in touch man! It's been too many years...)
Ed Wedig
Graphic design services
docbrown.net
Why is it that every time some new digital camera comes out with a higher resolution there is the frequent "film is dead" troll making his remark?
Digital offers many nice features film doesn't and will never have. Film also offers many nice features that digital will never have.
I personally like film because (1) it forces me to think before I take a shot (I'm paying for the film to be developed), (2) I like being able to operate my rangefinder even when the battery dies, (3) The form-factor of my film camera is much lighter than a pro digital camera.
The same trolls said "radio was dead" when the TV was invented and the same trolls said "TV was dead" when the internet came to the masses in the '90s.
For those still holding on to analog film, check these links out with samples taken with the Canon 1Ds.
This link are Canon's official images.
And this link is of an independent reviewer's images in the field.
The amazing thing is that this is a first-generation true-high-end digital product behaving as a latest-generation super-high-end analog product. Expect the image quality to go even higher in the coming months/years.
You need more three-color samples *and* you need more bits per color. 8 bit just don't cut it.
One thing that I usually think is usually overlooked with digital cameras is the fact that when you pick up a 5,6 even 10 megapixel digial body, that's the max resolution that THAT BODY WILL EVER DO. If you need higher quality, you'll need to buy another camera body. Ouch :)
:)
Film SLR cameras are interesting in that the resolution of your photos is determined by the film you put in (which is usually toted as a bad thing(tm) with respect to film photography). So I think that film photography is a bit more flexible in this respect... just my 2cents.
Chris
-- Humans, because the hardware IS the software.
And if you have ever heard how rich a vinyl recording on high-end equiptment sounds, compared to a CD recording (especially DDD), then you will understand why film will always be better for some applications than digital.
Prints from film, especially large prints, have a *feeling* that I haven't seen captured by digital. The same goes for vinyl. When vinyl is played on a $50,000+ system, the *feeling* is overwhelming compared to the sterile sound of the same track on the same CD on the same system. It is just a byproduct of analog recording.
For snapshots and newsreporters, etc. digital is the way to go. I recently sold all of my 35mm equiptment and got a 4Mpixel digital camera for family gatherings and pictures of the dogs at the beach. Howerver, I won't give up my 4X5 camera any time soon. I use it when I want to make an artistic, emotional statement. Printing at 16x20 with no grain is a nice benefit as well.
One very important aspect all consumer photographers forget is the characteristics of film material and the impact that has on the resulting picture. I can choose saturated colors or muted colors by changing film, something Photoshop will not give me. Changing the white balance in the camera is NOT the same.
I shoot with Hasselblad, Nikon and Sinar. I have the Sinar digital back. It is NOT the same as a sheet of Velvia in my Sinar, no matter what adjustment you make in Photoshop. And yes, photoshop is a great tool.
And even IF digital is better (which it is not), then there is the question of long-term archival safeness of the files themselves and the resulting prints. Would you want a book of faded prints or do you fire up your pc every time your mom wants to view a picture?
Until film material is no longer available, I will continue to shoot on film, and scan my work as needed. I have more quality, more control and mre certainty that my work is usable 50 years from now.
My son just got married a few months ago. We had about 200 guests between ours and the bride's family. For the reception, I put a Kodak MAX one-time-use flash camera on every table, about 25 of the damn things for under $200. Got the film processed, and put everything into a scrapbook of memories for the newlyweds.
When I can do that with digital for less money, then maybe I'll agree film is dead. Until then, I got three more kids to marry off....
Now, I am tempted not to take this at face value, because there are good reasons why CCDs should essentially never have the dynamic range possible with film. (Essentially: film responds to light non-linearly, such that x photons hitting your camera does not equal the same amount of "brightness" on your image independent of how many previous photons have been registered. CCDs basiclaly are linear in response -- x photons equals x number of counts, modulo factors of gain, etc. -- up to the point where the number of photons registered is a significant fraction (like say 1/2) of the maximum well depth. Note that film is in this way more like your eye: an object that is twice as luminous does not look twice as bright to your eye, and you can simulaneously see things with your eyes that are many orders of magnitude apart in true brightness. To go even more off-topic in this comment: this is basically the reason why the most common stellar magnitude scale is defined logarithmically, where a difference of one magnitude corresponds to a factor of about 2.5 in brightness; it's an historical relic of the fact that when Hipparchos looked out at the stars, he called the brightest ones "1st magnitude" and some of the faintest ones "6th magnitude" ... and the latter turn out to be about 100 times dimmer than the former. Whew.)
Having said that, though, I don't actually have one of these things, and he doesn't really post any objective backup for his statements about dynamic range, so it's hard to prove or disprove them. He probably does know a hell of a lot more about photography than I do, so I'm sort of tempted to believe that they dynamic range issue is ceasing to be a problem, even if only by careful post-processing and choice of exposure. fwiw.
Spatial resolution is catching up and will surpass film, but one spec that still miles behind is dynamic range, i.e. the magnitude ratio between brightest and darkest resolving light levels. Film still kicks digital on this, with digital using either using only a few decades or using autoranging. Film still has a large non-auto-ranged dynamic range. Being in the IC business I don't see this changing any time soon.
If you don't look at it in terms of numbers, for most practical purposes, in terms of image quality, digital has become comparable to 35mm with the advent of high quality 5 Mpixel cameras. There are still some areas where 35mm is better, but there are already many areas where even a 5 Mpixel camera exceeds a 35 mm film camera in terms of image quality.
Apart from issues of image quality, the immediate feedback of digital, the lighter and faster lenses, greater DOF, and better performance at low light levels mean that you can get many shots with digital that were very hard to get with film.
Yep, digital cant possibly match the distortions from vinyl warping, and will never match the wow & flutter from vinyl playback.
Then you get the nice harmonic (and other) distortions created by the analogue pickup and amplification processes required to convert the feeble movement of the stylus into signals.
Not to mention that everytime you play a vinyl disc you score it with the needle wearing down the vinyl so every playback is subtly different from the last one.
for inaccurate reproduction and distortions, you can't beat vinyl.
I can take my digital files to Sams and develop my prints using a Silver Halide process (I think) for only 20 cents. Film negatives that other people bring in USE THE SAME 1 hour developing machine. So yes, to answer your question.
A normal 35mm slide film has around 100 lines per mm.
The size is 24mmx35mm.
That's ~34 million pixel.
Now how can 11M be more than 34M.
The funny thing ?
That's not even important.
Contrastrange with slide film is above 1:1000.
Very good digicam manage around 1:150.
Natures range is around 1:1000000.
So guess what a digicam can do in high contrast situations.
Once a >30MPixel cam is cheaper than my RebelG SLR (~$300) and I can put on high quality lenses.
I might consider it.
Digital?
For ebay pics: Yes.
Anywhere else: No.
On the other side of the screen it all looked so easy.
I first bought a Kodak DC50 to see if I liked digital photos and digital photography. I was hooked. I then bought a DC265 (as did my father-in-law 6 months later). Together we have taken over 12000 photos and printed hundreds to send out as well as burn CDs for friends and family. I am looking to move up to a higher resolution camera and a better printer. My 35mm camera sits in the closet....
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
Transfer digital images to film negatives for archival purposes. As digital surpassses 35mm, transfer to larger film formats.
_khl
The rise of Digital photography will only push film photographers in to the catagory of artist. Photography comes from Greek meaning "light writing". I take pictures with a Holga, Ansco Shure-Shot, Kiev 60 and a Canon AE-1 because I like the way the pictures look. The first two produce images that are far from technically perfect but are still beautiful. It's sort of a contrived imperfection. The Kiev take great medium format pictures for its price, and the AE-1 handles things like family gatherings and friend's weddings. I have one old digital camera which is ok, but I'm not really drawn to the medium. I like working with "antiquated" camera's just like I enjoy playing guitar through tube amp and analog effects even though digital effects are "better". There is something to be said for the warmth of analog imperfection.
Just for grins check out Digital Sucks for interesting Holga photography.
Unfortunately I haven't had a chance myself to carefully compare the results of digital and analog photography for the same subject and light settings. Does anyone know where one can find such comparisons? What do the pro's here think about those two issues: color and contrast ratio?
One: I have yet to see a digital camera beat film in low light level situations. Yeah, the Sony F707 is incredible in low light, but a high quality ISO 1000 film is better. And where long exposure times are okay, ISO 100 film with really long exposures is many times better than the F707.
Although, I think the point of this article is that the new 11MP cameras ARE as good as film.. When the end format is digital. I won't argue that nothing beats film for a print. But if the final destination is digital (or, heck, if it needs to be digital at any point) then these new cameras are better.
Yes, if you're a professional photographer that never digitizes your film, then yes, you have no reason to go digital. But if you're a news reporter, who needs pictures to go digitally to the publisher, then you can finally stop using film. (At least, since I haven't seen the output myself, that's what I'm taking this article to be saying.)
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
How can an 11.4MB RAW image hold RGB data for >11M pixels? Should be north of 33MB.
Sorry, try again. Depending on how many pictures you take digital is cheaper once you subtract film and developing costs. In addition, anything that can be done in the darkroom can be done (with undo) in software.
You mention experimentation is good, but then you condone the taking of 20 pictures. Which is it? Should consumers just 'know' how to get the right shot, or should they have the flexibility to throw away bad pictures without paying for them?
Spencer Ogden
Large DOF has nothing to do with digital vs. analog and everything to do with the fact that the focal length in most consumer digitals is so short that the hyperfocal distance becomes very short. A random shot taken with a DC280 selected from my archive says 6.3mm at f/4, putting the HFD at 1.3 feet and everything from about eight inches to infinity in focus.
I found the excess DOF in my DC280 annoying enough that I sprung for a DSLR, and when I want that much DOF, I can have it.
Whenever the "digital vs. film" debate turns up, I can't help but think about the "film vs. video" debate that went on in the 70's and 80's.
Maybe this has been mentioned already, but it seems to me that eventually these things sort themselves out. Film isn't the same as video. Obviously, the contrary is also true. Even though we only thought of the new media in terms of a previous type of media doesn't mean we should necessarily place them in the same category and assign them a rank.
Clearly filmmakers are now able to use film and video to get different effects to convey very different ideas. The news is much different now that we can have a "man in the street" with a video camera to catch the action -- something basically unheard of (at the same scale) in the old film-only days. There are countless other examples, I'm sure.
I have faith that eventually digital "film" will become it's own unique thing. It will become just another colour in the photographer's palette. We haven't even seen what the digital image people can do with digital cameras yet; this stuff is just too young right now.
Just as some photogs will eschew digital for "pure" film, I'm sure there will be many who take digital beyond film, into something else.
-- clvrmnky
There is one major area where digital photography has not overtaken film, and one area where it never will.
The first area is price. Provided we're not just talking about casual snapshots, you can get some fantastically good medium-format analog cameras for a fraction of the price of the high-end digitals.
The second area, which is the important one for me, is process. Taking, developing, and printing analog images is an enjoyable craft. Whether it is for anyone else is a matter of personal taste, but I enjoy the hell out of it. I also enjoy painting and drawing, too, and those are skills that have long since been "obsoleted" by film and now software.
Now mind you, I own several digital cameras, and there are tasks for which I prefer doing things digitally, but the very labor and uncertainty which digital photography eliminates are a very large part of the charm of analog photography.
Plus, knowing that my pictures will be viewable with nothing more expensive than a human eyeball for at least the rest of my lifetime is a big damn plus.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Okay, I will be the first to admit that I know nothing about the art of photography.
So could you explain to us what dynamic range really is? Is it perhaps the range of dark, to bright, which can be shown by the medium?
As far as I remember, printers cannot produce as bright or as dim colors as photos; computer monitors are in between.
However, I do also remember that there are photographic output devices available -- essentially an image source that points at a camera. Since you can vary the length of time that a pixel shows up, I would think that you should be able to get any dynamic range that photography is capable of (if I'm understanding the term correctly).
That being the case, I wonder why it wouldn't be better to shoot digital, then output to your photographic output device, under ideal conditions?
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Actually, chromatic aberration is caused by the lens -- whether the camera is CCD or film makes no difference. Perhaps the digitals you've used just had crappy lenses (made of cheaper glass)?
The point about CCD noise is a good one, though. A CCD cell can hit saturation even in low-light conditions if the exposure time is long enough, and there are other effects like electron spill that can contaminate the image near really bright objects. In the future, though, CCD materials will no doubt improve (wider bandgaps, tighter electron wells, quicker drainage times).
When digital really does start surpassing film, try to set your bias aside and at least give it a shot...
Yeah! I use the People's Glorious Revolutionary LOMO!
spawn_of_yog_sothoth
I can shoot pictures with my film camera with dead batteries, or no batteries. If I'm out in the far reaches of BFE and my batteries go, I still can take photos. I have cameras that don't even take batteries. If a freezing wind puts the chemical reaction in my batteries to sleep, I can still take photos. I might run out of film sometime, but for the price and weight I'm sure I can carry around far more high-resolution high-fidelity frames.
Whilst you are looking into suitable suppliers I'll keep on using my Kodachrome 25.
Given the ability to create and digitally edit photographs at a resolution greater than film emulsion and then transfer that image to film we will loose the ability to authenticate a photographic image as original and-or unmodified.
As this digital editing capability spreads across our technological society we can expect legal chalenges that will result in banning the use of photographs as evidence until new standards for image authentication can be established.
[ Imagine - A world in which in which a doctored composite photograph or motion picture film can have the shadows and lighting match in direction and density. What will the conspiracy theorists do? ]
The only thing delays this day should printed as a disclaimer on the box of any shrinkwraped image editing product - "Talent is Not Included".
can beat a $500 35mm quasi-professional film camera, not using the best film available, and only in terms of pixel resolution (not dynamic range).
Big deal.
I'll put your puny digital toy up against a decent medium format camera any day.
The real comparison is effective resolution and noise, and on these counts it should be clear that the new Canon 1Ds is comparable to 35mm in every meaningful way. At 11x17 print sizes, uncropped shots from the 1Ds will equal in sharpness all but the most carefully handled 35mm negs on top quality gear, and in noise there is no comparison at all. Heavy cropping _might_ still be easier on film, but even that doesn't appear to be the case.
Of course, this is still pretty serious $$$$, but even the D60 is very close to 35 in basically every way. 18-24 months? Guess what - that's when digital will start to rival 645, not 35mm. (of course, that'll be in an MF body, and probably cost $10k++)
b) You won't get anything usable from scanning 35 mm film beyond around 4000 x 3000 anyway, with most film stocks - the grain overwhelms the pixel size.
c) The Canon 1Ds (and Kodak 14n) have 12 bit sensors, which gives a dynamic range of 1:4096.
d) The Kodak DCS 14n is built with a standard Nikon SLR lens mount. The Canon EOS 1Ds is compatible with over 60 of Canon's EF lenses.
OK, a decent SLR is a lot cheaper, but it doesn't have any of the advantages a digital camera gives you, either.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
So let's compare...
lpmm = Lines of resolution per millimeter... basically linear pixels per millimeter.
Fast color film is about 100 lpmm
Slow color film is about 175-200 lpmm
Fast B&W film is 250 lpmm
Slow B&W film is 300-320 lpmm
so-called Gigabit film (B&W) is about 400 lpmm
This camera has 112.66666667 linear pixels per mm.
Gimme my 4x5 inch negatives made with Kodak Technical Pan anytime.... It'll kick the pants off any digital camera.
All you really say is that a digital camera produces a better digital image than a scanned photographic print. Well duh. That's been true for a long, long time.
6 megapixel cameras approach (but not do quite equal the resolution of high speed 35mm film. The new 11 MP cameras will equal the resolution of even slow speed, high-res 35mm. But not even get close to even the smallest of the medium format, which is 2.7 times larger than 35mm.
Where digital still loses out is color saturation, and contrast range. Film still manages saturation better, and records across a wider ranger of contrast - the difference between the lightest and darkest parts of the image. Print film will handle up to 4 f-stops of contrast, slide filme up to maybe 3. I've yet to see a digital camera handle more than 2.
The bottom line is, if you want an image for digital use, use a digital camera. That's been true since 1 megapixel cameras came out. If you want snapshots on your vacation, there are some serious advantages to digital, starting with cost (unless you print out all your pictures, in which case digital is much more expensive).
But if you need high resolution, bold, vibrant colors, and the ability to accurately record high amounts of contrast, go with film, preferably medium format or larger.
Frankly, I'm glad I don't ever need a darkroom anymore. I hate the smell of chemicals so good riddance!
The replies to this article are astonishing! I seriously can't believe the heresay and outright wrong information can come from a bunch of supposidly smart people. Man, if you don't know your facts, please don't make yourself look stupid.
1. The discussion about how many "pixels" in a 35mm frame are meaningless without context. Do you mean for similar noise levels, the same resolution?
2. Digital images are absolutely archival with proper data management. You wouldn't stick slides in a dusty moldy basement, and you shouldn't leave your images in a 50 year old format on 40 year old CD-Rs. Some film and paper photographic processes are very archival but the majority are not.
3. The contrast range of digital is generally higher than that of slide or negative film.
4. Consumer digital cameras are not the state of the art and you cannot judge the state of the art with them.
5. You cannnot say what someone else needs in a camera. Pros don't necesarily need 6MP or full frame CCDs.
6. If you write, IANAP (I am not a photographer) then stop right there. If someone wrote IANAP (I am not a programmer) in a discussion about the best algorithm for adding two binary coded decimals you would stop reading.
7. Digital SLR bodies handle much like film SLR bodies. No delays, similar ruggedness, etc.
... could you improve edge effects by going from a square matrix, to a hexagonal matrix?
A lot of the edge effects, as I understand, came from the RGBG matrix.
Or, alternatively, going from RGBG in the square matrix, to a ton more
KRKK KBKK KGKK, instead, and getting major definition on the edges, but lower definition on the color?
Even better might be KKKK KKKK KKKK RGBI KKKK KKKK etc., in a hexagonal pattern, with I being infrared.
As I remember, the color (rods?) receptors in the eye are not nearly as high definition as the brightness sensors. So I would think you could do the same on the CCD, and get a ton better edge definition without loss.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Check the Foveon images on dpreview.com. They are amazing! The Bayer based images just look "flat" in comparision. I can't tell you what it is, but the 3MP Foveon images just look so much better.
However, digital cameras are either a) Flimsy, cheap, and full of bells and whistles but difficult control over the basics of photography (focus, shutter speed, aperture) or b) too expensive for most people. Most of the non-SLR ones have really limited aperture ranges, which is a severely limiting factor for people who want creative control over their photographs as they're taking them. Not everything can be fixed in photoshop.
I just picked up a voigtlander vitomatic ii from 1956 that works beautifully and has excellent optics. I use it every day. What are the chances that 50 years from now, the Nikon D1 will still work? Storage formats change frequently. Transport connectors and speeds change frequently. Are we still going to be using USB and FireWire 50 years from now?
Bear in mind I'm not an expert in optics or photography, and this is only a rough sketch of what could be done.
We can easily scientifically validate whether digital film or analog film is better, and at exactly what resolution they are better. Construct a poster of an enormous barcode... row upon row upon row of millions of tiny lines. At first, make it finer-detailed than you can possibly resolve with either camera. Set up your analog camera so that the poster exactly fills the frame, then snap a shot, print it out to the size of the original (make sure you use a method of printing that preserves the detail in the photographic image), and run a barcode scanner on the printed result.
If you get the wrong result from your scan, construct a new poster with slightly less fine detail, and do it all again. Repeat until you get the correct scan from the printed result.
Then take the same shot with a digital camera at some fixed resolution. Print it out, and scan that. If you get an incorrect scan, increase the digital image resolution and try again. Repeat until the digital camera printout also scans correctly; you have now found the resolution at which the two images, analog and digital, have the same amount of detail. Any higher digital resolution should be superior to film of that quality.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
People here seem to have a bad case of the old if-it-isn't-suitable-for-me-then-it-is-useless-for -everybody syndrome. Digital is good enough for majority of photography. Can you imagine a newspaper that still uses film? No, it would be just plain stupid. :)
Digital cameras today are "good enough" for majority of uses. I guess that the people who count pixels are the same that overclock newest and greatest CPUs.
But congratulation Canon and Kodak. Now we can use our $1000 wideangles again.
Come on, what kind of confused reasoning is that? Digital cameras have shorter focal lengths and larger DOF because digital sensors are smaller than 35mm film.
I found the excess DOF in my DC280 annoying enough that I sprung for a DSLR
I agree that excess DOF is not particularly nice for certain shooting situations. However, for most people, it's a good thing because it makes "getting the shot" much easier.
Actually, I find 35mm DOF to be neither here nor there: it doesn't give satisfactory separation of subject and background in many situations, yet it is small enough to punish inaccurate focussing ruthlessly. I think MF and digital each represent better tradeoffs: with MF, I get meaningful separation of subject and background, and with digital, I generally don't have to worry about it at all.
Film vs. digital? I do both, because they complement each other nicely.
I like to use my digital camera for quick and dirty shots. No processing, instant pictures. I use Polaroid if I know I'll need pictures before I can get back to a computer.
I also shoot medium and large format. They require more care and thought in setup and use, and cannot produce a picture as quickly. But even if digital could produce the quality and general impact of a good large format print (debatable; some digital is crap, and some is awfully good), I couldn't afford to do it.
At least, not in this epoch: my total investment in photo gear wouldn't buy a professional digital camera, let alone the printer I would need to go with it. So I continue to play with wet things in the dark.
...laura
It's possible to synthesize a very, very wide dynamic range with a digital camera. You tripod mount it and shoot multiple exposures at a range of apertures. This gives you a wide sampling of the light in the scene (from the darkest shadows to the brightest highlights). Then you bring the images into a program like Paul Debevec's HDRShop http://www.debevec.org/HDRShop/ and composite them together. You wind up with a High Dynamic Range image that represents luminosity far beyond what your monitor can display. I'm looking forward to cameras that have this as an automatic feature; you click the shutter button and it rapidly takes a dozen images from f2.2 to f18 or so and saves them into a floating point format. You would take the image home and decide how you wanted to expose it that evening, as you sat at your computer
Anyone?
Sorry. But it just pisses me off when several people post the exact same question that is disscused right on the first page.
I suppose if I sat down and thought about it, I could come up with a more detailed analysis of the effect of smaller detectors on camera design, but I'm lazy...
"It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
Many film cameras I know are still battery dependant. You need a pretty low end camera to actually have to crank it to the next frame, and rewind by hand.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
As a software engineer currently working with vision systems, I understand a bit of this, and as one other poster commented, dynamic range is where film has it "all over" digital.
That's changing, however.... because of non-linear sensors that can greatly enhance the perceptual range of color at 12-16 bits per pixel (by pixel, I mean a single red, green or blue imaging element)
The thing to remember folks, is there are OTHER problems as well; sensor artifacts, for example, are a big barrier to imaging without supersampling techniques (which reduces absolute resolution). We currently see 'edges' on objects as they pass across the imaging quad arrays (RGGB), resulting in false red and blue edges. Not only are the edges a problem, but fin objects can even be lost BETWEEN these pixels.
BTW: Pixels != RGB Quads in imagers. If I'm not talking out of my ass (since my experience is in machine vision), imagers running 1600x1200 pixels, for example, are ACTUALLY 800x600 QUADS. You need 4 pixels (one red, one blue and two greens) to make a valid 32-bit quad (which is a screen pixel, but not an imager pixel, get it?) Camera use interpolation techniques to create the image, effectively grabbing the other three pixels surrounding each sensor pixel. It's a cheap way of anti-aliasing and extrapolating an image larger than the camera is physically capable of. Essentially you are looking at redundant data.
Dude: "Do you think the D-76 should have been 1:1?" Jeez, you should be using HC-110. Or the Ilford stuff; it's much better.
> The grain is the limiting factor in film resolution.
Many times that is true, but keep in mind that for a wide variety of situations, diffraction is the limiting factor. Diffraction! The inescapable wave nature of light interacting with your lens aperture. Any lens with an aperture (all!) are subject to the effect. Diffraction prevents a lens from achieving a perfect focus spot. Instead, any one point of an image diffracts to cover a small disc, the airy disc. In MANY shooting situations, the airy disc is bigger than film grains, and much bigger than digital camera pixels. At that point, smaller pixels dont help any furthur. As most know, the furthur you stop down a lens, the greater the depth of field becomes, but at cost -- the airy disc size increases with each reduction in aperture.
Film will always be around nometter what. Yes for everyday qucky shot there is nothing better then digital. But for professional or art photos there is nothing better then film. Films are like LPs. Digital will kill 35mm but it has no chance against 60mm. Analog will always be analog.
"There are plenty of reasons to shoot slide film, but a supposed wide exposure latitude isn't one of them. The wide exposure latitude of negative film may still have an advantage for the moment, but digital imaging technology is rapidly closing the gap with its analog counterparts in terms of exposure latitude, and I expect film's latitude to be exceeded by consumer quality CCDs within a few years. It's already happening in the digital video arena, Sony claims that their DVW-700 camera has 11-stops of exposure latitude (on par with the best negative stock), and directors of photography have managed to get at least 7-stops from the latest professional video equipment."
Quick: go back and re-read your copy of Ansel Adams' The Negative. He talks about exposure latitude, specifically with respect to B+W films, but it's applicable to all films.
Basically, there's no such thing as "exposure latitude." There's ONE exposure that's correct for any scene -- if your intent is to capture the full range of tones in the scene.
When someone talks about "exposure latitude," they usually mean, "my metering can be off by three stops and I still get an acceptable photograph." Keyword: acceptable. "Acceptable," to Adams' eye, differs greatly from "Excellent." And, of course, Adams strived to make excellent photographs.
Yeah, but one scratch to a CD or DVD, or a HD crash, or your stupid kid deleting the wrong thing, can wipe out hundreds or thousands of pics.
What happens if a negative gets scratched? Of course I lock my CD-Rs in a safe place, just like most serious photographers keep their negatives.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The depth of field is directly related to the size of the imaging sensor used. Look at some results from this google query for explanations.
While you can get excellent DOF separation for portrait photography with a 35mm SLR using a 100 mm lens at f 2.8, the same DOF with a digicam with a small CCD would require a (illusory) f 1.0, according to German c't magazine.
"There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
IIRC these new high density cameras are actually CMOS (at least, i am very certain that the Canon is). CMOS used to not have as good range and performed much worse in low-light conditions, but that is slowly changing, i suppose.
And one of the important thing about this new thing (canon / kodak) is that the chips themselves are the same size as 35mm -- which means no focus multipliers, no lens adapters, no nothing). now -- here is the kicker: how many sensors can you fit onto a 200mm wafer? not a whole lot (try it, the sensor size is 36mm x 24mm; add a couple more for the cut-line and the contact patches)... i honestly believe this is what's making these things so expensive, and why their prices won't budge as much as you guys seem to think it will (in the future). sure you will cram more pixels onto this area, but you are still only getting handfuls of sensors per wafer...
My life in the land of the rising sun.
That's a lot of film...
For my favourite application (sports photography), until cameras you can strap a decent size telephoto lens come down in price, digital won't be usable. When they do, of course, digital will become the medium of choice because with a large enough memory card you could basically shoot continuously.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
My photography studio recently made the switch to Electronic Imaging (the new term for high end digital photography). We use the Kodak DCS760, the little brother to the 14n, and we love it.
Most of the flame responses in here point out the fact that film cameras are remarkably cheap compared to digital, which is of course, understandable considering the newer field of DP.
Both sides have benefits and drawbacks, but I would say for the overall _professional studio photographer_ (NOTE the professional studio photographer), a correctly managed digital imaging system is by far superior to film. Film is great for certain projects, and digital is great for others. One thing most people don't understand is that while film quality may have many benefits over raw digital photography, every one of those benefits can be negated in some fashion by software/hardware for digital printing (by this I mean the extreme CCD sharpness, T-bluring, color quality, etc).
I've read some people saying that digital photography lacks the color quality of film photography? Lies. CONSUMER digital photography might, perhaps. However, you can't make that comparison. Sure, you shot your film yourself, but some expensive high quality lab printer actually printed it for you. We own a Gretag Netprinter 812, a very beautiful printer. This isn't your favorite Canon or Epson inkjet. This is a lab quality printer, designed for hard workloads of high quality digital prints. We spent two months refining our local lab's print quality, making them get closer and better at matching color we wanted. When we finally got our printer up and running, we've been beating our labs (film AND digital) at every turn. There is no such thing as better color than your own, and digital is just as good as film. For those of you that don't know, this printer is a hefty beast, weighing in at our purchase around $70K.
Some of you might argue that you don't have $70 to spend on a digital printer. That's nice. You didn't spend $70K on the local Wolf Camera's lab printer either. And just like them, we can (and do, occasionally) print consumer prints for comparable to film costs.
Not mentioned in the executive summary of the article is that these large files (the 32mb raw files) are simply master files. You create any other file format from these files that you choose. So you don't wanna buy a new hard drive for every image? Fine. Make them 8mb JPG files instead. Make them 4mb if you want. Use the built in cropping software and reduce the quality to make them 1mb if you so please.
The sheer flexibility of DP is it's chief benefit. An average film photography session at our studio will go like this...
Client comes in, photographs are taken. We send the negatigves off to the lab for previews a day or so later. A week or so goes by, they come back. We process them for a day or so, and deliver them. They take them home, look at them, come back and order. We send back off to the lab, they send them back a few weeks later. We process and deliver them a week or so more. Figure about 25 days total, at the low end.
For digital photography, you have many many more options. Our current system works like this:
Client comes in, shots are taken. Client goes to the waiting room, and 5 minutes later they're shown a small slide-show of their shots on our wall projector, allowed to view each image individually, and then select their favorites. We print them off a quick set of 4x5 previews, they take them home. They bring them back with their order. We process the order in-house with our lovely Gretag Netprinter, spit out anything up to an 11x14 within 3 days, deliver in 2 weeks, tops.
Not only that, but business clients needing immediate prints can pay extra to have instant-prints delivered, and if they wish it, can pay a smaller extra fee for quick retouching, which they can watch us do in our demonstration lab. People love this feature. We do school sports teams, events(prom,etc), and senior portraits. We offer a Dynamic Senior package, which allows them to select different poses to create custom template pictures and wallets to order from. Extra package features might include color replacement, where we can mix and match colors (hair, skin, clothing) to whatever they may choose. This same ability might be present to a small extent in film photography, but there is NO viable option like Digital for the same effects.
Any photography studio lab person can attest to the fact that retouching an image at the studio(post-lab) end is an absolute beast, and Photoshop is a gift from the camera gods for this matter. The "fun" old fashioned way of doing dyes and markers is just useless now.
Camera delay is another issue lots of people gripe about. It's all dependant on your storage media, guys. The 760 has an internal memory cache which allows us to just fire off frames as we please, up to (I believe, I don't recall offhand) 30 shots before a two second delay is required to process them. Are you using a floppy disk to store images on? It's just as slow as writing to it from a computer, what else would you expect?
I see qurob complaining about shiny spots in the image. Just to let you know, qurob, there's no such thing as "bright shiny objects" in digital photography that don't exist in film, unless YOU mess the lighting up to create them. An overexposed area is just as good or bad in film as digital.
Copying from 'ergo98' I have this:
"Image fidelity is far more than simply "number of pixels": Even amongst the best digital cameras there are some concerns about their colour reproduction. With a roll of Kodak film a cheapo 35mm has damn close to perfect colour and linearity."
It does indeed. Because some poor guy stuck in a very dark room somewhere in a building, or some automatically tuned lab system in your local Wolf Camera is SET THAT WAY. You obviously either don't feel like mentioning ICC profiling to show the counter-arguement, or don't know of it. Just like a lab printer requires for film, there is a system for making color ring true for digital. it's just different, and you as a home consumer are uninitiated in the methods of doing such a thing. Also, again you're comparing apples and oranges. Unless you actually own a fifty thousand dollar lab printer to make your own home prints from film, a PROFESSIONAL LAB is doing it for you. Your Epson Photo printer is NOT a lab printer.
To Frothy Walrus, who's considering film and digital futures. Digital, my friend. Are you a certified professional photographer? Talk to some folks at PMA or some of the other major conventions, they basically recommend digital now if you wanna avoid lab costs. Find yourself a nice, small digital printing lab if you can't afford a printing solution yourself.
To bitrate, who seems to be expecting a horrific flame for an idiotic comment. You're 100% right, my friend. It's all a simple matter of timing of the industry right now. Time passes, prices change.
To avandesande, who can't find a memory card printer. Wolf Camera. Go.
To xyloplax, who needs to see things his way or the highway. The 14n has a 35mm CCD. For the price, you shall wait. Just like any other person.
To all of those who noted the misinformation comparing digital scans to digital cameras, and then made the judgement that film exceeded digital, please note the difference between consumer and professional digital cameras.
Just my, uh, well, 400 sets of 2 cents, combined with experience.
Keiran.
errgh, this really strikes close to home and I cant really argue this with quantitative numbers, but the truth is that i just cant say that Ive ever seen a print done with digital technology that looks as beautiful as a simple 35mm film. Im not particularly attached to regular film as a matter of religion, i just like the results better. Its like with audio most audiophiles will agree that tube amps are the way to go for a sweet sound. yet tube amps are actualy LESS acurate at reproducing sound than conventional amps are. I see photography in the same way, you can get cameras that are more acurate and more acurate but until I see one that LOOKS better then youre going to have a hard time convincing me that digital cameras outperform 35mm.
that said... here's my adhock attempt at explaining in definite terms why i think film looks better. when you make a print every silver molecule on the film or on the paper caries one bit of information, it's one molecule wide to fit that much information in memory you'd need one transistor for each molecule. lets be generous and say that a transistor is 90 molecules by 90 molecules and they can be packed edge to edge. the simple physical size of the memory that would store the information that's in one 35mm negative is enormous and impracticle.
that said ive been convinced (in no small part by a comment on slashdot a couple weeks back sorry i forget who the poster was) that for the large majority of commercial tasks digital photographs are just fine and easier to use.
--aiee
Come on you're taking ISO 50 velvia (that oversaturates and looks like a cartoon) as your benchmark. How about a useful film? Also what about dynamic range and noise in shadows. This analysis was way oversimplified and distorts the truth. You say 10-16 is required but this camera is 11.2 mpix, that seems like it's in your range and wins in many areas like noise and lack of grain. So I think digital is there. Unfortunately at $9k it's not really there in a practical sense so the whole debate is a bit of a red herring.
I have been told that digital photographs are inadmissible as evidence in legal matters--not sure about this, though. But it makes sense, given that a digital image is more easily altered.
As long as these digital cameras output images that use 8bits/channel they're not going to match film. Film has a much greater color range than the 16.7 million or whatever colors that a 24 bit (8bpp x 3 chan) image delivers. Anyone who disputes this can go search google for the term mach banding, and be enlightened. I could talk about the cineon file format as a possible way to capture better quality images, but their site and others would do a better job.
My patience is infinite, my time is not.
The fact that an 7.6mm lens on a digital camera is a moderate wide angle, while it would be an extreme wide angle on a 35mm camera, has to do with sensor size.
What it comes down to is that digital cameras, in practice, have larger DOF than 35mm cameras. That's not so good for some art or portraits, but it's great for snapshots and other, more utilitarian photography.
For most purposes, yes, no contest. Until the first camera that uses an 11 megapixel foveon chip.
You'll be getting far better sharpness and color representation at that point. Only then will it simply be a megapixel race. We may have high megapixels nowadays but that isn't the whole battle. The interpolation algorithms are still sitting between reality and digital storage.
Foveon is solving that cheaply. Their sample images are amazing:
Now, I am tempted not to take this at face value, because there are good reasons why CCDs should essentially never have the dynamic range possible with film. (Essentially: film responds to light non-linearly, such that x photons hitting your camera does not equal the same amount of "brightness" on your image independent of how many previous photons have been registered. CCDs basiclaly are linear in response -- x photons equals x number of counts, modulo factors of gain, etc. -- up to the point where the number of photons registered is a significant fraction (like say 1/2) of the maximum well depth.
The image sensor in the 1Ds is a CMOS sensor, not a CCD. This may be merely a nitpick, since both sensors likely measure photons linearly, but there *is* a difference between CMOS sensors and CCDs.
The only issue is potentially noise but that is MUCH better than film with the CMOS sensors.
If you expose for the highlights = (255,255,255), won't quantization at the lowest signal levels (0 to 15) kill shadow detail?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I guess in order to fill the field of view of a larger sensor, you need a faster lens, which then results in a smaller depth of focus. But the reason for the smaller depth of focus is still the lens, even if the selection of the lens is based on field-of-view (sensor) considerations.
"It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
If you read those links, they explain that depth of field is a direct consequence of the focal length and aperture setting, as I outlined in this post. Those links also clarified my question about the effects of sensor size on lens selection. For larger sensors, a faster lens is needed to fill the field of view, so the depth of field is smaller. Conversely, smaller sensors use slower lens so as not to overfill the field of view, and that results in larger depth of field.
"It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
Jesus H. Christ on a pogostick! :)
What kind of FUD is this? The Canon D60 costs around $2000. And since it has smaller image area, you can get away with shorter (and therefore cheaper) telephoto lenses. A 400mm lens on a 35mm film camera works like a 600mm lens on the D60. Since you are sports photographer, let me set up a example:
Canon D60 + 400mm/f4 = $7400
Canon EOS 3 + 600mm/f4 = $8800
Now tell me, which one is a better deal?
The price of the camera is the smallest part, as you can see.
(Of course, if you are into wide-angle landscapes, then you are officially screwed!)
At the rate many digital cameras, especially the LCD screens, can eat up batteries, you'd have to carry a backpack of batteries to shoot all day. For my poor ol "analog" camera, an $8 battery can last 6 months!
Patience is a virtue, but I don't have the time - TH
In photography brightness is defined in f-stops. Opening up the lens aperture by one f-stop results in twice as much light hitting the image sensor/film.
Films such as this one record an effective brightness range of 11+ f-stops. Video/Digital has a long way to go to match that, although resolution is getting similar. Id also like to see a purely electronic camera shoot 3000+ frames per second like this one.
Video/digital is a whole lot easier to use and is quite good enough for most applications, but film has the advantage in every *measurable* quality. Dont forget that.
--
Jóhannes Tryggvason
Filmmaker
--
Is that all there is to relationships -sex and robotics?
From Luminous Landscapes:
"I have had drum scans made from my 35mm and medium format film on several occasions. Yes, an 8000 ppi scan is impressive, and can make bigger prints. But, I'm also convinced that while they give me more pixels, I don't get a whole lot more real data. "
Rrriiiight. Hes convinced. Good enough for me.
This is a perfect example of the mass hysteria that "digital has to be better no matter what".
A scanned image is only as good as the scanner that scanned it, and scanners are not evolving as rapidly as digital cameras.
Accept the fact that at present film is *technically* better, but digital is easier to use. Select your tool for the task at hand.
--
Jóhannes Tryggvason
Filmmaker
--
Is that all there is to relationships -sex and robotics?
Sure, for pro-level equipment, the costs are comparable (and once you factor in film much cheaper for digital), but you can get away with cheaper lenses and still take decent sports photos, which simply can't be done with digitals.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
There's nothing confused about it if you go back and re-read my post. I said consumer digital cameras have short focal lengths, which makes sense because the optics are designed to illuminate the entire imager. On most consumer models, that's a whopping 4x5mm.
Digitals based on SLR bodies, on the other hand, have just as much (or as little) DOF as their film counterparts because the lens geometry is still configured for a full 24x36mm frame. The fact that a 50mm lens behaves like a 75mm lens because of the multiplier does nothing to change the fact that the focal length is still 50mm. The smaller imager just captures something smaller than 24x36mm.
My point here is that a blanket statement declaring that (all) digitals have large depth of field is nowhere near accurate and certainly won't be when a consumer digital point-and-shoot with a 24x36mm imager is available for $200.
I agree that excess DOF is not particularly nice for certain shooting situations. However, for most people, it's a good thing because it makes "getting the shot" much easier.
If you aske me, near-infinite DOF isn't particularly nice in most shooting situations. It does help people using fixed-focus cameras get their subjects in focus more often, but potentially great snapshots get ruined when a sharply-focused background distracts the viewer's eye from the equally-sharply-focused subject.
Actually, I find 35mm DOF to be neither here nor there: it doesn't give satisfactory separation of subject and background in many situations, yet it is small enough to punish inaccurate focussing ruthlessly.
I don't buy that, because the math doesn't bear it out. Take your garden-variety 50mm f/2 lens on a 35mm body focused at 10 feet. Stopped down to f/22, you get 23.34 feet of DOF to play with, because everything from 6.03 to 29.37 feet will be in focus. (CoC is 0.025, by the way.) Open it up to f/16 and it's 12.46 feet, at f/8 it's 5.09 feet, at f/4 it's 2.43 feet and at f/2 it's 1.21 feet. That's enough range for a whole lot of situations with a single prime lens. And at worst, there's a 6% margin for focusing error. If you're not trying to manually-focus a short-throw autofocus lens, that's not a hard margin to hit.
I think MF and digital each represent better tradeoffs: with MF, I get meaningful separation of subject and background, and with digital, I generally don't have to worry about it at all.
I'm not even going to ask what you think happens when you put a digital back on a medium-format body. :-)
Fancying myself as a photographer I've gone to both ends of the spectrum. In the end neither will ever replace the other, they are both completely diffrent arts with diffrent people who'd use them. Digital: Digital is the epitomy of easy and cheap, and quite often good quality. Even with a $5000 camera, you will probably save money. I spent $300 on my camera and probably a good $1000 a year on film and processing. The one huge downside I have to digital is that no matter how hard they have tried they can't get proper colour reproduction (this can, however be fixed with PSP, or another program with proper capabilities) 35mm: Definently more clear. Doesn't matter how many megapixels you have, when you blow up a 35mm print and digital print next to each other, that's when you'll notice a diffrence. Not likely that you'll blow it up large enough for someone to care though. The other thing is, 35mm films offer some interesting effects that they haven't gotten to digital yet (unless I missed something, and they just may soon.) Things like Bracketing, and Multiple exposures are just not avalible on digital (not to mention burn ins, but those are not generally liked). The only thing that has really deterred me from digitalis is the inability to take clear shots in the dark. I have taken a shot in the dead of night (still, mind you) and it comes out sharper, and a bit less intense than during the day, but mainly it is perfectly clear. Where digital leads away is that most of the cameras don't have sensitive enough photographic plates, so it digitally fills in light which then makes your picture look like there was gauze over the lens. I am personally partial to 35mm, more for the challenge than anything to do with proper colour reproduction or clarity. I find that after using 35mm, digital seems like cheating, it's too easy. Not to mention some of my favorite shots would have been completely impossible in digital. I do not, however, have a snotty attitude about digital, diffrent strokes for diffrent folks is the way I see it. My stroke is just 35mm
Yeah yeah, I know... but what's the speed of DARK?
I have to say that it looks like digital photography is becoming more practical than film for most purposes. For that matter, acrylic paints are more practical for the artist than oils. I mean, the variety of colors you can get with acrylic is much greater than what can be had with oils. And photography itself has made painting largly impractical. Isn't nice that you don't have to sketch pictures of your vacation, you can just take a camera which will preserve the details of your trip much better.
But of course it is not silly to use oil paints or make sketches of one's vacation. And I don't think it will be stupid for people to stick with film if they want to.
People love working with materials. Working with film and photosensitive papers can be facinating. It may no longer be practical, but it sure can be delightful, and I think this delight can show through with good work.
I've know many people who made wooden boats. That's inpractical and expensive, but I'm pleased that there are folks keeping such skills alive.
In a similiar way, there are many photographers moving toward using clearly antiquated materials. Sally Mann is making wet plate negatives! I bet she has had to struggle to get to know these materials...and I bet it has been a wonderful experience for her.
All that being said, I want to encourage all of you with nice film cameras to get rid of them NOW! Flood the market with your old Nikons and Rolleiflexes. Lately I've been noticing the prices for some old cameras going down, and that makes life good for me. So keep it up. I mean, what's the point of keeping that silly decades-old camera when flashy new digital cameras are so clearly better.
Monica
Yes, but those of you who like chemicals and working in dark rooms will eventually die out and hence be the last generation. Everyone else will have moved to digital.
My film scanner produces roughly 28Mb TIFFs (about 10 mega-pixel) which easliy compress to less than 15Mb PNG's.
That way I can put an entire roll of film plus two sizes of smaller images (thumbnails plus fits on a 1024x768 screen) on a single CD with space to spare for captions, etc.
It seems many mix up CMOS/CCD. CMOS and CCD are two different technologies, both have their pros and cons but they should not be mixed up. AFAIK CMOS technology is not used in digital photography, it is merely used for sensors and similar things.
With the 11MP camera, digital is now perhaps beating 35mm, and _maybe_ some 2.5" cameras. However there are people out there shooting with 8x10 view cameras.
My favorite example is Rodney Lough Jr.. Looking at his prints at sizes like 4 feet by 3 feet, I cannot see any evidence of pixels or print artifacts without a magnifier. The tiniest needles on the farthest trees in the background are all individually present. Even at these sizes, the print looks like real life. This can't really be experienced without seeing an actual print, but the website is worth seeing anyway.
IIRC the best film has line pair resolution in excess of 1000 dpi, and because it also has a controlled randomness in the grain size, the result is actually better than a digital shot at the same resolution. The digital camera is "more" subject to the Nyquist limitation. To duplicate 1000 dpi, a digital camera will have to be capable of 2000 dpi. For an 8x10 view camera, this is about 160 million pixels.
Also, to my knowledge no digital camera has the same dynamic range (contrast and color range) as film. So blacks in particular can't be as deep.
If my numbers are right, and if Moore's law holds true for cameras, it'll be about 6 years before digital matches 8x10.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
It appears people are always comparing $6,000 digital cameras to 35mm film, for which a good pro kit can be found for (IIRC) around $2,000.
Can we compare the quality of a $6000 digital kit to a $6,000 120mm Hasselblad kit?
So you get a digital system with so many bins that they can easily classify even the rnadom microphone vibrations from the warmth of the air. At that point you'd completely captured the sound to the limit of the capture equipment (microphone) regardless of how you store it.
Also, analog storage is just as imprecise in the real world. Vinyl isn't perfectly smooth, look at it under a magnifying glass and you'll see the grain of the material. That's the limit to what you can retrieve during playback.
As to the watch... Your second hand may show the sub-second time more easily, but I doubt your watch it accurate enough for it to matter. Who cares if you think the time is 4:15:32.026 when the time is really 4:15:37? If your friend's watch is accurate to the second he's got a better clock. Then, consider that he can get a watch that shows hundredths of second in an unambiguous way. Can you really distinguish a second-hand's position to a hundredth-second resolution?
A master programmer passed a novice programmer one day. The master
noted the novice's preoccupation with a hand-held computer game. "Excuse me",
he said, "may I examine it?"
The novice bolted to attention and handed the device to the master.
"I see that the device claims to have three levels of play: Easy, Medium,
and Hard", said the master. "Yet every such device has another level of play,
where the device seeks not to conquer the human, nor to be conquered by the
human."
"Pray, great master," implored the novice, "how does one find this
mysterious setting?"
The master dropped the device to the ground and crushed it under foot.
And suddenly the novice was enlightened.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
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