Kia ora tatou:

I was recently asked to participate in a debate this coming weekend, in which the Motion is: that digital photography is dancing on the grave of film photography. I am to be the 3^rd speaker for the affirmative, so it relatively easy to take that stance. The more I thought about it however, the more I have come to realise that the argument is academic, that digital has replaced film as the mainstream means of image capture. Further reflection leads me to think that the whole argument is pointless (I will of course, debate my accorded stance with enthusiasm, conviction and not a little vitriol, as I should) and that photography has come of age. Film photography has as much of a part to play as digital photography. They are the same, only different, much as petrol and diesel engines exist side-by-side. They both do the same job, but have their own strengths and weaknesses.

So why would you shoot film anyway? A phone call today from a student I taught years ago on the West Coast further brought the topic to my attention. Georgie is an 80-something who got her Voigtlander back in 1967. It has finally given up the ghost and she has been told that the cost of fixing it makes it not worth doing. She told me that she had checked with a couple of local photographers, who had both told her to go digital. She assumed I would agree. Not necessarily.

A year or two back, I would have agreed. Now I am not so sure.  A long conversation with Freeman Patterson has shifted my thinking. Although he “gets” digital, he has decided to stay with film. It comes down to this. Do you like computers? He doesn’t. He would much rather be outside, working in his garden. Or taking his camera out and making photographs.

Fair enough.

I don’t have that perception. I like being able to control my images from previsualisation to output, which is what I enjoyed about the darkroom. I could stand there, pointing my camera up into stormy light and make choices which would play out in the finished print. Now I use a computer for the same reason. But I have had to put time and effort into getting to know it. I had to go back to school again to get some control of my process. Not only that, I could shoot more freely, make a whole range of choices and not have to worry about the cost. The instant feedback allowed me to know the finished result before I left the scene. The downside was the need for continual upgrading of computer and software (paying my PhotoShop tax, as one commentator has put it).

Back to Georgie.  I asked how many photographs a year she made. Not that many. Was she happy with the results from her Voigtlander? Yes. Then you should probably stick with film, was my reply. Certainly cheaper than a laptop (she had heard about email, but was yet to use it). All the more reason, I added. Before you can get the most from a digital camera, you have to learn to use a computer, and then learn to use the software on that computer. If you love learning something new, go for it. Otherwise my advice would be to hunt out a good used film camera. Photo and Video lists a Canon EOS 50 with 28-105mm lens for under $500. They also sell a Minolta Dynax 3 + Tamron 28-300mm F3.5-5.6 for $240. Make them an offer and I wouldn’t mind betting that they would jump at it (they might also wonder what you were smoking…).  In the end, my advice to her was to make her decision based on how involved she wanted to be in the world of computers.

I know, I know. Why not buy a point-and-shoot and use an E-Lab? True, but have you seen the equality of the prints they spit out? To my mind there is little difference in the more common sizes ( 6 x 4 and 5 x 7) between what you get from 35mm film and the results from a digital point-and-shoot. So why change?

Which brings me to the main part of this article. It seems to me that the tsunami has moved on and that we can go whichever way we wish. We can buy a diesel or a petrol vehicle. They both do the same job for roughly the same money. Similarly with digital and film. What you save on film and processing you probably spend on software and your computer.

Horses for courses.

And an interesting thing has happened. The lines are drawing close together. Over the last year or so, I have used a variety of plugins which give me a film look. Why? Because, while I can simulate the look of film, which I still really love (E100SW…sigh), the nature of the characteristic curve gives me a tonal rendition that is, well, not the same. Film, remember, is an analogue medium and its capture curve is non-linear. Not its rendering or processing curve. The two are different. Digital initially renders a linear tonal curve, which we can later tweak in our software of choice. But it is digital, not linear, so to get an analogue look, we have to reverse-engineer the curve to get the result we may have envisaged. I know it sounds trivial, but it does matter.

Not only that, but there is a curious visual effect at work here. Believe it or not, a film image of similar quality to a digital one will look sharper! In the race to reduce noise (sic grain), digital photography has produced lower and lower levels of noise. This has the curious effect of making an image look softer. While it is an optical effect, it can be significant. And noise is not the same as grain. The two produce significantly different results. Noise occurs uniformly across the file; grain occurs in a random and analogue fashion and often occurs in a clumped way. Winding up the noise in your digital file simply is not the same. For that reason products such as Silver Efex by Nik Software attempt to apply grain in as analogue a fashion as possible, using quite complicated algorithms.  But for all their best attempts, it is never quite the same. No Werther’s Original here.

So you pays your money and you takes your choice. You enjoys the analogue nature of  film or you celebrates the flexibility of digital.

Or you has your cake and eats it too. You shoots film and scans it.

Hmmmmm.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 6th, 2008 at 5:54 pm and is filed under Thinking about Photography and Art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.