film and digital?

This is a very interesting article: http://www.arizonahigh​ways.com …name=Photo_Talk​803&page=2

In this, the magazine Arizona Highways argues that film is still better than digital. To be quite honest, I feel they make some very valid points about the maturity of the digital camera industry.

I wonder whether we'll get 75MB images from 22mp dSLRs anytime soon. If we do, how are we to store them? How fast and how big will the memory cards have to be? Our current dSLRs are already outstripping storage capacity, computer capability and card speed. I forsee a plateau where nothing much changes fairly soon.

When people like John Shaw move to digital, it really makes you wonder how much better film is supposed to be.

Interesting, but I have a couple of problems with the points he makes. First of all, he states that the best available digital cameras when he wrote the article were 11 megpix; it looks like the article was written in 2004, so even if the 1Ds MkII and 22 MP Hasselblad backs were not out yet (but still just around the corner), Hasselblad had a 16 mp back out at that time; in other words, he was not comparing his film to the current state of the art even in 2004. Also, he asserts that an 11 mp image cannot be printed at 300 DPI with sufficient clarity for his magazine's 12x18 images. By my calculations, a 12x18 image at 300 DPI is about 19 mp, so even without any interpolation an 11 mp image is certainly in the ballpark. I do not, however know much about offset printing, and so do not know how that affects the need for more pixels. Finally, he compares digital to 4x5 transparency film. In that regard, I would certainly agree with him, and have even made the same argument myself. However, most people who pose the question are thinking
of 35 mm or APS film. In those categories, digital is certainly competitive with, if not superior, to film. I wonder if he still feels the same way today?

To answer my own question, apparently not.

I'm curious of the date of this article. It states that the current state of the art is just over 11 MP, and we know the EOS 1Ds MKII has been out for about 2 years with 16 MP. Even with that, it states that they use a 4x5 transparency, which is no match for 35mm, film or digital. There are also now medium format digital backs as well as complete cameras with 22 MP and more.

When I clicked on the "Photography Talk" tab, I got a different article, and no easy indication of how to get to older articles or determine the date of the article you are viewing. This article certainly may have been accurate when written, but I think technology has marched on, and overtop the pronouncements in it.

My 2 cents.

Have Fun,

Edit: Oops, I came in just behind Tweatherred - I guess great minds think alike.

Arizona Highways used to be all-film. They changed their policy within the past few months, and will accept digital images within certain restrictions

I suspect that a lot of old-hand film users compare digital unfavourably with film, even 35mm, digital lacks the definition of say Velvia. They ignore that the digital image carries more information, washed out skies are a thing of the past. It is a trade off.

The whole printing industry at whatever standard has always been based in dots. Newsprint, with coarse screening, the change is barely noticeable. But quality colour magazine and brochures with higher dpi the change is more apparent. They, too, are constrained by costs, digital is cheaper into the pipeline, so with advanced software such as Photoshop the standards of origination can be lowered. I can more than get by with an 8Mp 350D and lens costing 1500GBP, compared with Leica, Nikon and Hassleblad outfits costing several times that, then add processing and other costs as well as time. For purely financial reasons I have been forced into the change. Pragmatism rules.

rhys wrote:
This is a very interesting article: http://www.arizonahigh​ways.com …name=Photo_Talk​803&page=2
I wonder whether we'll get 75MB images from 22mp dSLRs anytime soon. If we do, how are we to store them? How fast and how big will the memory cards have to be? Our current dSLRs are already outstripping storage capacity, computer capability and card speed. I forsee a plateau where nothing much changes fairly soon.

RAW files from a 22MB image will not be 75MB. RAW from m 5D are 12 to 18MB so 22MP would yeild 20 to 34 MB files or so.

And if you haven't noticed, flash memory prices have come way down. You can get 4GB cards for $90 now and 2GB for half that price. The jump needs to be made to 16GB+ cards which will make 8GB cards come down more.

Sure... prices are coming down but...

When I started in digital photography, an 8mb card which would hold 20 photos cost me $40. A 1GB card currently costs $40. That'll hold 68 photos (RAW+JPEG).
CPU speeds have doubled and hard disk prices have fallen.

The fact is though that we're running against the limits of technology now. CF card speeds cannot increase much more and hard disks can't get much bigger than about 500GB per platter. Also backup/optical media is the limiting factor at 4.7gb for a single layer DVD.

dont forget blu ray and HD dvd, sure it might be a few years till they are widely distributed, but hold 10X or more than a standard single layer dvd. technology never ceases to grow. twenty years ago not even computer designers imagined that pcs would need so much power as they do today, so new technology will continue to pave the way. It might not seem like we can push much further with current technology, but i think we will all be suprised one way or another.

Blu-ray mini-disc for on-board camera memory maybe?


personally i see digital as the way forward for me, but i dont think that its a black and white thing, there are times (landscape mainly) when film could be better, but ive grown up in the digital era, i also find the instant viewing of the images *extremly* useful.

Time exposure is where digital craps out badly. With film it's a case of locking the shutter open and coming back later to close it. With digital it's not so easy as it eats up battery power.

Digital cameras use rechargeable batteries, so it costs next to nothing to recharge. Film cameras tend to use more expensive non-rechargeable batteries and these tend to run down more quickly when doing time exposures (unless you have a more primitive camera with a totally mechanical shutter). The trouble with time exposures is that you are never quite sure what you got until the film is developed. With digital you can see immediately, make appropriate adjustments to exposure and re-shoot immediately. I'll use digital over film any day for long time exposures.

I love people who claim to be able to look at a picture and tell whether it is film or digital. In my office I have a collection of 12"x18" and 16"x20" photos hanging on the wall. Some are made from Provia F100, Provia F400 and Velvia slides and others from my D60 and 20D digital cameras. One of the prints from slide is a Cibachrome and the others are commercial scans and prints.

A client who is an accomplished film photographer visited and during our conversation expressed his opinion that film would never match digital and that he could always tell the difference. I invited him to examine my pictures carefully and tell me which were digital and which were film. He got more wrong than he got right. It appeared that he confused the visible grain in the Provia F400 images with digital pixels and the blocked up shadows in the high contrast Velvia picture with what he percieved to be the more limited dynamic range of digital. Other than those pictures he might as well have just been guessing because he was wrong as often as he was right.

Part of his problem may have been that I do post processing on my digital files, so I have more control over the print than with film where I just send my slides to a lab and are dependant on their interpretation of what I want.

In any case, he agreed that my digital prints were just as good, if not better than my 35 mm film prints. His next problem was that the cameras cost so much. I pointed out to him that for the cost of film and processing that he now pays he save the cost of a digital camera in beteen one and two years. He agreed, but he still shooting his film camera. He shoots Nikon, if that has anything to do with it.

I have never seen Arizona Highways magazine, but assume that it uses high quality printing techniques. I also agree that current digital cameras cannot match the resolution of a 4"x5" film camera. However, I doubt that the resolution of even a high quality commercial magazine press can provide enough detail on a full page image to see the resolution advantage of the 4x5 over an 8 mp digital image.

I stopped caring about quality 2 weeks ago.

I never printed at higher than 20 by 24 and they all look good. Sure - you can have some noise... or some grain... or jpeg artifacts may start showing.

But:
1) My photography isn't serious... so it doesn't matter
2) Non-photographers don't look at sharpness
3) I'll usually screw up by misfocusing anyways.