Digital No...Film Yes

[silken]

Originally Posted by camille1585

It must be one of those new Taiwan hybrids, there's a lot of Phals with such markings starting to appear on the market, but they're still hard to find.

Ching Hua had some wonderful large paintbrush type Phals at the show last weekend (knowing you will be going to a show where they are in a few weeks)

[Paul]

Digital has come a long way and has many obvious advantages over film. However, I do find that film still does a significantly better job in terms of accurately capturing colors -- especially reds & purples -- than digital.

[tropterrarium]

Originally Posted by Paul

Digital has come a long way and has many obvious advantages over film. However, I do find that film still does a significantly better job in terms of accurately capturing colors -- especially reds & purples -- than digital.

Don't agree in the least. Once you shoot the same subject with several different films, you notice tremendous variability in color rendition. I've gone through that exercise with largeformat and sheet film, where you can really take the very same set-up and shoot with different transparency/slide films. With negative material you get a whole other layer of alteration depending on how it is processed (wet or digital) to a positive image.

In terms of color consistency, I am favorably impressed with digital (Canon 5dmkII). I find myself doing less color correction than with scanned film (old Contax RTSIII with all Zeiss primes and Arca 4x5 with various modern glass: Schneider Rodenstock Nikon). Even automatic color temperature determination is quite on the money, better than what I can do with external Minolta color III meter. That is with a spider calibrated monitor, and fully color managed workflow to Epson 3880.

I have not had the luxury of trying different sensors side by side. Still on my first digiSLR. Don't think I will get a 5dmkIII. Possibly cheap sensors may produce poor results, but that is not the appropriate comparison then. Doing proper digital workflow (from capture RAW, adjust RAW on open, 16 bit/channel processing, etc.) is assumed here. So cheap cameras that only capture jpegs will fall short here.

And then there is the issue of glass; that's an entirely separate story.

Accurate color rendition is mostly not the goal of film. It captures colors as we would like them to have been, so more saturated. Old Agfa films were quite neutral, but were always pale in comparison to Kodachrome 25/64 or the Fuji counterparts (Velvia, Provia lines in their various incarnations). The only way to truly check for accurate color would be with a MacBeth color checker (or similar), which hardly anybody does. In archival repro-photography it is done once in a while, but that is an esoteric application.

[silken]

I agree with above. In the last few years digital cameras have come a long way in improving image quality to the point where it meets or surpasses film technology. Most people just don't use their white balance to their advantage and shoot in RAW format. Before, an amateur photographer did have to know how to set the camera, but if it was wrong, the professional in the lab did a lot to fix it and sometimes the photographer didn't even know it had been made acceptable in the lab. You needed colour filters to adjust for different lighting situations as well, where as white balance handles that quite well now. But a tiny inexpensive point and shoot digital is never going to compare to a good film SLR. It's not even a fair comparison. You have to get similar cameras to compare.

[golforchid]

Yes, there was variability in color rendition between color films, that was part of the "fun"...my favorite film was Fuji Reala, which I can't find anymore. It's also hard to get decent processing, there's a decided difference in quality between the prints I obtained from the local professional lab and the local Walgreen's...so yes I will "tweak" the photos for contrast and saturation at times. But hey I love my equipment although it is heavy (no plastics) and it has certainly served me well for close to 30 years.

[tropterrarium]

One more thing about color rendition. It is the interplay between object color, lighting, optics and recording device. One recording device cannot be better than the other unless all the other factors are considered.

With digital workflow, one can now build custom .icc profiles for any given combination of light, lens, and sensor. That is not possible with film. One can do that when the film is scanned, but that adds one more layer of processing.

Accurate color rendition is not always desirable. E.g., sunset shot at the real, low color temperature removes all the red-tones, which make a sunset what it is.

Film is still useful in places. Does not need electricity (unless your camera needs it! so think about Nikon FM2 or Olympus OM3), and for LF, where perspective control and distortion-free wide angle images are desirable (no problem with retrofocus designs as on any compact or SLR camera).

Re purple tones, I think the problem may be exposure. Purple is dark, and there is more noise in dark areas. Once you think about exposing to right of histogram, then adjust in RAW-opening, you will get much better color (and signal-to-noise). See Michael Freeman's "Perfect Exposure" treatment for details.

[golforchid]

Gee whiz...as an amateur I'm interested in "purty pictures"..those that people enjoy looking at, all that other stuff with histograms and RAW yada, yada sounds too much like engineering and is for those who want to make their living at it. A talented photographer can take a great picture with a point and shoot; however, it does help to have good tools.

[tropterrarium]

A talented photographer has a lot of knowledge that he/she can rely on. Knowledge about all aspects of photography from composition to optics to processing and output will help in generating better/prettier images. Apart from composition, it is all engineering. That's what the craft of photography is about.

That knowledge come also into play when a talented photographer uses a P&S camera. It is the knowledge of how to use a reduced set of tools most advantageously.

Having good tools without the knowledge of how to use them is pointless. If I'd hand my LF to most people, they would not even know where to press the shutter.

How much each of us wants to get into it is a personal decision. I'm on the ultratechy fringe. Those who like to improve their photography, increase the knowledge about all aspects of photography. Needless to say, without practicing photography, that knowledge will not lead to better images either.