[niels hansen]

Like many times before .- I agree with Steven.
For me Image quality is a technical matter, resolution color balance and so on, but picture quality is entirely a subjective matter. What is the "story", is the technique supporting the "story"?
One of the best danish photo journalists today, Jan Grarup .- he has won many international prices - states that his stories can only be told with film, he has been all over the world, documenting wars and catastrophes.
Till this day I have not seen a digital black and white photo with the same aesthetic values as the well performed traditional print, scanning the negatives means loss of quality.
The traditional black and white darkroom gave - and gives - the full process control, delivering color film to a lab means loss of control.. My tries with color darkroom are awful.
In this aspect the digital process has given me the control over the colors, a great advantage .
Others have mentioned that the amount of endless costless poses contributes to less concentration . I agree.
Before I retired I worked together with many young people. When they became parents my present was black/white portrait of the child . Very very often they asked: Why is it that you make 12 poses and 10 are acceptable/good? I have made innumerable poses and none are good. My answer was : concentration. I suggested that the next week they were only allowed to take 30 poses, and every time they pressed the trigger they should say yes to this question : is this situation so important , that I dont regret if a failure cost ½dollar? In every case the quality of their photos got much better.
Fortunately I dont need to choose between analogue and digital, but IF i had to chose the choice would be MF with Ilford FP4plus.

---------- Post added 03-04-20 at 01:03 AM ----------

Astro baby
Your thread came while I was writing, concerning the cameras, nothing beats the feeling that the heavy duty all metal camera gives, not to speak of the almost unlimited lifetime. Thank you for your contribution. part of my thread coud have been spared if I had read yours

[Robert N]

Many thanks to all for providing stimulating opinions on the SLR/DSLR comparison. The response from PDL gave a very comprehensive comparison between the two media and rightly heavily weighted towards recent DSLR models. Personally I believe we are in a golden era of photography, where the performance of current DSLRs is so good and versatile (for all photographic genre), backed up by processing software with an amazing array of tools for both normal and creative processing. I am a member of a camera club, of around 100 members (with a decent proportion of very competent, well qualified members). On a show of hands of these members, not one would revert back to shooting with film.
I also think we are very lucky to have the excellent photographer orientated Pentax brand.

[Rondec]

Those numbers are commonly quoted,* but have little basis in fact. MTF values for the better B&W emulsions are pretty impressive such that it is apparent that the lenses are the limited factor. I am a bit limited in that I can only scan to 4000dpi, so my limit, pixel-wise, is about 24Mpx with 35mm.



That is a real shame that your film gear and processing provided little basis for comparison. FWIW, I print the same size (13x19 on a Pixma Pro-100) from both my K-3 work and my film scans. Back in the day, 16x20 wet prints were no problem.

Now...back to the real world...

I shoot both and don't bother doing comparisons. The capture technology is different as is the shooting experience. Quite simply...film has no pixels. Another maxim...while my K-3 is a pleasure to use, so are the cameras in my film quiver and I get about the same percentage of keepers...moreso with the 4x5 work.

One may note that artists that use paint don't waste a lot of time discussing equivalence of oils vs. acrylic vs. watercolor vs. mixed media. Can you imagine a post on a painting forum bragging about 6 canvasses per day vs. only 4 with paint A vs. paint B?


Steve

* Where did they originate from...Peta Pixel?

The question of resolution in film depends on the film and the scanner. The same with regard to dynamic range. I tried different things when I was shooting 35mm film (I don't have a great scanner) -- scanning my own negatives, having the darkroom scan them (I wasn't developing them myself), and eventually using my K-1 with a macro lens to take pixel shifted images of them. The last probably gave the best results, but I didn't necessarily find that going past 16 megapixels actually gave more detail in most situations. It typically felt more like going past the 1:1 pixel view on screen, but that's my experience and I am sure there are folks with higher quality scanners who have better set ups than I have.

Medium and Large format are a different story and I'm sure black and white negatives of those have significantly more detail and dynamic range than is currently offered by digital.

[ChrisPlatt]

Shoot what you like, and what speaks to you.
Film does it for me, while digital does not.
Maybe one day...

Chris

[Astro-Baby]

Niels its all good, thank you. Scuse typos my fingers are not good on a mobile.

[kaseki]

(A) The MTF curve shapes of film and digital arrays are different, even if two instances of the technologies have the an equal X% amplitude at some spatial frequency. If the film is not printed from negatives, but instead the negatives are scanned, then over sampling is needed to achieve the published film MTF. Otherwise, one gets the product of the film MTF and the scanner's sampling MTF.

(B) The sampled data system used in digital Bayer filtered color arrays provides P actual data pixels divided into 0.5P green and 0.25P each for red and blue. These pixels are not coincident as in film. All of the interpolation and estimation applied to this image does not change the actual information in it; rather it adds generally benign misinformation. However, given a static scene, pixel shift can overcome this information lack at the cost of four frames and some appropriate processing.

(C) The color spectral sensitivities of digital arrays likely do not exactly match those of color film emulsions. (Films themselves vary in this respect.) Correction in post processing may minimize this difference.

I would argue that given the ways digital images (and scanned film images) can be modified in post processing, how far one goes in post may dominate any or all of the above, perhaps making the differences moot relative to composition, and to being in the right spot at the right time with sufficient equipment for the intended result.

[niels hansen]

Kasei
I must admit that I do not have the knowledge to understand your thread. I should like if you translate it for digital dummies like me. regards

[kaseki]

Kasei
I must admit that I do not have the knowledge to understand your thread. I should like if you translate it for digital dummies like me. regards

Maybe a few definitions:

MTF is an abbreviation for modulation transfer function, which represents power (or irradiance at the focal plane) response as a function of spatial frequency. It is the Fourier transform of the point spread function, the shape of the blur at the focal plane. For an example of MTF, download from Kodak the data sheet for Portra film. Digital sampling MTF has the shape of a sinc-squared function. This topic is an element of the field of digital imagery, and I don't think I can be very helpful (or even competent) to condense a book on the subject to a few words.

Bayer filtering is a term related to how the colors are arranged and processed in a particular architecture of imaging array. I suggest searching on the term on the Internet. I have seen descriptions where there are some good diagrams.

Spectral sensitivity is also a long subject. One can look up eye response (relative output vs. wavelength) on the Internet. One can look up spectral response of films on their respective data sheets, e.g., the aforementioned 'Portra' data sheet. Spectral sensitivities of the photo array detectors that Pentax uses may be documented somewhere, but I don't know where -- maybe Sony's detector data sheets.

There are no simple answers to these subjects. I brought them up to note that they may be contributing factors in observed differences between film and digital images.

Neither basic physics or electrical engineering courses would likely touch very deeply on these subjects. They are either addressed in graduate courses, or absorbed by exposure in photonics or electro-optics engineering work environments. Self study can be effective, depending on the course material vs. the reader's background.

[lesmore49]

Film is ok, but I prefer digital.

With film I had to choose what ASA (ISO) I needed before I bought the film roll, Did I want a great pix with lots of resolution (Kokachrome 25) or did I need a faster film (Tri-X B&W 400 asa) with not as much resolution, but with Tri-X 400 ASA, I could get some speed for shutter speed/F stop particularly when doing available light indoors...which I had to at a job, many years ago. Also I would sometimes push my 400 Tri-X to 800 ASA.

The film I generally used was Kodak or Fuji colour 200 ASA. At that time, before digital it was a good compromise for me, doing the kind of pix that I generally took.

I like 35mm and 120 medium format as I have both 35mm and medium format cameras. With my medium format...Mamiya Pro 220 F TLR...I generally use/used a tripod so I didn't worry too much about slower ASA film and with the MF usually used Kodak/Fuji 100 ASA/ISO.

Digital has been great. I love to be able to change ISO at will...anytime. I love being able to shoot in B+W or colour...at any time. All these things can be done with in camera controls quickly. I love being able to shoot almost endlessly...not always budgeting how many frames would I shoot with film...cause of the cost of film, developing and printing.

Also to be honest I have a hard time seeing in an image ...whether it's been taken with film or digital. Even after 50 years my eye just isn't that sophisticated.

I have to say that even though I really opposed the whole idea of digital in the earl years and was somewhat of a film purist, once I tried out my first digital I was hooked.

[pres589]

I got my first real camera in 2006 with the K100D. At the time I thought I would be ahead of the learning curve not having to pay for film development costs to get up to speed.
I think I've learned more about proper exposure/aperture/ISO using film for the last year and a half, and seeing things not come out well, versus the dozen-ish years before this and having the ability to play with sliders in Lightroom and such with images that came from digital cameras to start. Now I wasn't really active with a camera until around 2014 but my point stands. I think playing with both has helped me a lot. When I pick up my K-5 II today I have more respect for its abilities and I believe I take better pictures with it now.

I also really appreciate how straightforward my film cameras are to use. The K-5 II is not bad in this regard; I find budget or low-end enthusiast interchangeable lens cameras to generally be worse. But comparing my K-5 to my MX, or Ricoh TLS? Not a contest.

[stevebrot]

But comparing my K-5 to my MX, or Ricoh TLS? Not a contest.

Yep, the K-5 fails miserably when used without batteries.


Steve

[niels hansen]

lesmore49
All you say is true talking about color. I would say that digital color surpases even Kodachrome 25. A nothether element in favour of digital is the tremendous low light performance, eg KP.
But in black and white the difference is obvious looking at prints made with an enlarger with a first class enlarger lens. In digital it is easy to make a good print, but the outstanding print demands film.
The judgement of a photo is subjective, not technical. The digital era has produced lots of perfekt nonsens because it is costless to spread all over the world. Rather many photographers need a little more discipline, you dont need to put all the sliders in Photoshop on maximum
I share your joy about Mamiya TLRs

[Alex645]

lesmore49
All you say is true talking about color. I would say that digital color surpases even Kodachrome 25. A nothether element in favour of digital is the tremendous low light performance, eg KP.
But in black and white the difference is obvious looking at prints made with an enlarger with a first class enlarger lens.

Digital color surpasses existing color film and papers? Yes. But I have yet have any of my digital prints surpass 120 Kodachrome 64 printed with P30 Ciba/Ilfochrome. As both no longer exists, digital wins, and digital excels when higher ISO is needed.

Totally agree that the difference between analog and digital B&W is tangible.

[pres589]

Yep, the K-5 fails miserably when used without batteries.


Steve

You know that wasn't the point I was making.

[stevebrot]

You know that wasn't the point I was making.

Sorry...should have added a smiley.

I will build on your point, however, in that a high level of sophistication and automation is not always the highest level of convenience or fun or a necessity for good results. The automation comes at a price of bulk, weight, and complexity. Granted, your TLS weighs about the same as your K-5 and while smaller, is not as ergonomic. Your MX, on the other hand is small, fast to the eye, fast to focus and capable of 2fps with manual wind in experienced hands. A camera such as an ME Super or my Ricoh XR7 (yes...both dead in the water without battery*) offers Av mode and is even quicker in the hand. In short, your K-5 is a much better digital SLR than either of your film SLRs, but is not always more appropriate to task.

It was that aspect that led me to start using my film SLR again after several years of doing exclusively digital work. I got some film, loaded the camera, and took a walk down by a local river. I heard a flock of sandhill cranes behind me overhead and was able to bring camera to eye and get off three shots (manual wind) before the birds had passed out of range. My K-3 (or K10D at the time) would still have been powering up or trying to attain focus. Those few seconds were a revelation of sorts.


Ricoh XR7, Tamron 28/2.5 (02B), Ektar 100


Below is an early summer snowboarder at Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood. I was not there to photograph skiers/boarders, but I saw they would pass close and took the shot. In fact, I took three shots (all in focus and sharp) using a fully manual (no meter) Pentax SV with Super-Takumar 28/3.5 mounted and ISO 100 film. Easy peasy.


Pentax SV, Super Takumar 28/3.5, Rollei Retro 100

Of course, it helped that I had already determined exposure and that aperture and shutter had already been set. That is how we roll with a meterless camera.

Yes, most of my shooting is with the K-3, but there are subjects that I prefer a film camera for. A good example might be street work where my vintage Soviet rangefinders attract little attention and even a film SLR is more likely to start a conversation rather than elicit a negative reaction. Yes, it would be nice to have a GRIII, but an early 1960s FED manages the same task well.


Steve

* Batteries last for a year or more of regular use.