Digital Camera Quality Passing Film? 710
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 "
Overpriced (Score:5, Funny)
It's a JOKE! (Score:2)
Consumer Cameras are REAL far off (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Consumer Cameras are REAL far off (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a high end digial camera (canon d30) and it's as easy to use as the body for my film camera (elan II).
Photos taken with this camera aregood enough to print at 8x10 with very little pixelation, if any.
Film is dead. As a semi-pro photographer, and someone who has been doing it for a VERY long time, I can say: film is dead.
Re:Consumer Cameras are REAL far off (Score:2)
Re:Consumer Cameras are REAL far off (Score:4, Interesting)
Painting is dead. As a semi-pro photograper, and someone who has been doing it for a long time, I can say; painting is dead.
Hmm. Does that sound short sighted and assinine?
What a load of crap. First, lets get one thing straight. You can be no more "semi-pro" than you can be "kind of pregnant". You either are or aren't.
For mass produced, K-Mart style, get 'em in and out type photography, digital as a medium kills film. There is however, the right tool for a particular job. If you wan't to project HIGH quality images or make archival prints, digital looses (don't give me crap about the new epson inks, they haven't been proven and still can't hold a candle to platinum prints).
I guess I should throw out all my vinyl too, huh?
Pyramid
Re:Consumer Cameras are REAL far off (Score:2)
As far as archival quality goes, digital blows film out of the water. It's hard to back film up to a tape on another continent without leaving your recliner. You can do that with digital.
Maybe you think the quality isn't good enough for fine analysis and enlargement? My dad just had surgery, and there's not even a darkroom in the hospital anymore. They're 100% digital.
Film isn't going the route of vinyl. It's headed in the same direction as 8-tracks and 45 RPM singles.
Re:Consumer Cameras are REAL far off (Score:2)
Re:Consumer Cameras are REAL far off (Score:4, Insightful)
If you had color film photos of your kids, 100 years from now those would probably be gone too because color negative film is not archival quality. The only archival color film process that I'm aware of is Kodak's K-14 "Kodachrome" process. It will keep for 100 years in dark storage, but it is a slide film ("color reversal"). The good aspect to this is that in 100 years, provided humans still have eyes, the technology to view this will still exist.
Black and white negatives *are* archival. Black and white prints today generally are not. Resin coated B&W photo papers will not last that long.
Now in defense of digital...
Dye stabilized CD-R's *are* archival. Most CD-R's are not dye stabilized, you have to pay a little extra for those (the non-dye stabilized have an expected shelf life of about 5 years). So assuming something that can read a CD exists in 100 years, digital photos stored in this medium will be available then.
NASA's problem is that they have photos stored on magnetic tape, a process that was known to be non-archival when they implemented it. It can take an hour or more to get all the data off one tape. In comparison a 700MB 80Min CD-R can be read in under 5 minutes.
So, if you want color pictures of your kids to last 100 years, you can:
a) have them transferred to Kodachrome slides (a cost of about $0.50/picture)
b) put them on dye stabilized CD-R (a cost of about $0.01/picture)
Makes digital look like a very attractive option for archival purposes.
Re:Consumer Cameras are REAL far off (Score:3, Informative)
Archiving is a constant job. If you let paper photographs sit in a damp, dusty, etc. area then you WILL have problems. Same thing would be leaving 5.25" floppies sit around by magnets, etc. Improper care and treatment is the ONLY reason digital, or otherwise, archiving fails.
Re:Consumer Cameras are REAL far off (Score:3, Interesting)
That is a big assumption, but I don't think it is that unreasonable an expectation. About 75-ish years ago someone put video on a phonograph and about 1-ish years ago, someone figured out how to get the video back off.
You can still buy vinyl record players, but if all of them suddenly disappeared from the earth, somebody already figured out how to scan them and reconstruct the audio from that.
There are geeks now who are into high tech ways to work with antique tech, I'm assuming the same will be true 100 years from now. Even if no CD reader exists, somebody will figure out how the data is stored, and come up with a way to lay the CD data side down on a scanner and reconstruct the data from that.
Re:Consumer Cameras are REAL far off (Score:5, Insightful)
No longer do you need to develop a roll, look at them on a lighttable, scan a picture in, and then edit it to be used on the page. Now you can just download all the pictures, arechive the ones you want, edit the others, and send it to production. Savings of 30-40 minutes.
Re:Consumer Cameras are REAL far off (Score:3, Insightful)
In similar situations, digital will take over (and has taken over) like a firestorm. In other areas like fine art and advertising, the take-over will be a longer process. Film won't die overnight... And I'm hesitant to say it will ever die. There's something about being in a darkroom that makes even the most digital fanatics long for it. It's an artistic magic that doesn't have a digital equivilent. (Unless you start getting into things like 3D.)
-Sara
Re:Consumer Cameras are REAL far off (Score:3, Insightful)
Blacksmithy is dead. Fact. There are some blacksmiths, but the industry is dead.
Film is dead. Some diehards will use it, but for all practical purposes 35mm and smaller is dead. MF has been mortally wounded. Large Format's relatives are taking out large life-insurance policies.
Face it, digital provides better pictures than color 35mm film hands down. B&W film has a higher dynamic range, but only barely, and digital can bracket the shot and comine the two pictures for a much higher range.
Semi-pro is generally known as someone who makes money off of it, but doesn't try to make a living from it. If "Pro" is such a hard line, what's the defintion? Anyone who pays all their bills? Anyone who has ever taken money for a picture? Or anyone who shoots as if they were getting paid, regardless of ability to pay the bills? How about someone who makes money with a disposable camera?
And yes, you should throw your vinyl out. Or rather, sell it on EBay, some gullible fool there has been conned into calling static noise "Warmth" and will snap it up. You can either buy the music in digital form or record it yourself before you get rid of it, though a record sounds so lousy you might as well download a 128mbps MP3 for all the fidelity you'll get.
Re:Consumer Cameras are REAL far off (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe you should step out of your "tiny sphere in which you reside"?
Personally, I don't think film is "dead" either, but what the hell does dead mean anyway? People still use latin, but they call it a "dead" language. Dead used in this context usually means "no longer mainstream", which of course it doesn't mean it's not worth pursuing, IMO.
Re:Consumer Cameras are REAL far off (Score:2, Insightful)
Is film still dead? I think for pro work film is basically dead, because digital quality is definetly good enough for 95% of situations, and the othe 5% can be faked. The value of the quick turnaround is worth to much in the pro world. In the art world...film is so great as a tool...no way is it going away.
Re:Consumer Cameras are REAL far off (Score:4, Insightful)
What a foolish extremist assertion. There is no doubt that digitals have some benefits, but they have some downsides as well:
I'm hoping to find a digital camera that convinces me to dump my film habit, but so far it hasn't happened, at least not until looking in the $2000+ range.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Consumer Cameras are REAL far off (Score:5, Insightful)
But that brings up an interesting point -- one that I continue to struggle with. Digital equipment remains a difficult investment -- especially if you're a working pro. Just because a camera is 4/8/11/14 megapixels doesn't necessarily mean it's better than "film" or better than "last year's camera" if you have to pull two or three times the job to cover the cost of the initial investment.
There's no doubt digital is here to stay. And there's no doubt that many folks have proclaimed digital to be "better" than film, but "better" can mean all sorts of things to all sorts of people. I suspect folks mean "better quality" when they say "better", but I'm not sure what that means either.
I can show you Winogrand photographs taken, oh, in the 1950s that are, in fact, "better quality" than anyone's digital photograph. Anyone's. And Winogrand used a beat-up Leica M4-P without a meter!
I can point to a grainy, dim Salgado print and say, well, that's grainy and dim, but it's "better" than anything I've yet to see reproduced digitally.
Yet I can also point to a hybrid print -- analog film, digital manipulation -- by someone like Gurksy (the guy who makes those massive prints) and say, well, in Gursky's case, the hybrid approach works wonders.
And I can, of course, go to a site like Photosig.com and Photo.net and point to any number -- literally thousands -- of "digital photographs" taken with prosumer gear like the D30 or the new Nikon D100 and say they're absolutely dreadful -- despite the fact they are *crystal clear* pictures of dogs and cats and babies with sticky oatmeal on their face.
So you have a D100 and are able to take crystal clear pictures of baby drool that can be blown up to 16X20?
Great.
The other issue -- much more serious -- is that digital cameras simply won't leave behind the sort of "archeological" records that film cameras leave behind.
This is an unpopular argument, however. Folks always say, well, you can burn whatever you want on whatever medium you want -- CDROM, DVD, you name it.
But as someone who has spent many, many hours in dimly lit photoarchives, I can say without hesitation that if someone like Garry Winogrand shot digitally, there would *be no* Garry Winogrand. Ditto for someone like Cartier-Bresson. They might have one or two great pictures but there would be no beagtives -- only old, outdated media -- most of which (possibly) cannot be salvaged.
Winogrand, for example, had stacks and stacks of prints and negatives in his little NYC apartment. You'd come in for a visit, and he'd toss you a stack of workprints.
His was a "record it all, no matter what" mentality. Now that's both good and bad, but for sifting through an artist's work, I suspect it's bad if you use digital. There's a permanence to a negative which may or may not be the case with CDROMs burned today. There's also a *bulk*. Negatives took up a lot of space. And that fact alone prevented many boxes of negatives from many photographers from being tossed out or misplaced.
Don't underestimate *bulk*. Physical product. In art, it's very important. Maybe not now, not today when the artist is alive and struggling, but when he or she is dead, bulk of what remains -- the presence of his or her remnants -- play a siginicant role in preservation.
Re:Consumer Cameras are REAL far off (Score:3, Insightful)
Ahh, but take those "great" photos you mention. Would you say the same thing if that artist had made the same image with a digital camera? Your argument seems to go along the lines of: group A did killer photography with film. Group B did crappy photos digitally. Therefore film is better. But it sounds like the composition of the film photographers was better not the technology. Sure you can hold up great photographers to support your case but you forget billions of mediocre shots taken over the same period by lesser photographers as well as JQ public. Give digital time and the cream will rise to the top.
As to the long term storage...lots of early films (as in cinema) are rotting in their light-prof cans. Add a little too much humidity, and negatives will stick together permanently. But a digital file can be copied infinitely. And can be easily copied to the next best data storage format. If you are at all careful, the digital file can be permanent. Something film has never done.
The other part of this argument is that 35mm is not the only format of film. Digital may be ready to take over 35mm but 4x5, 8x10 or 11x14 negatives? I don't think so. Not for awhile yet.
Re:Consumer Cameras are REAL far off (Score:2)
Film is NOT dead. If most of your photos will be framed on the wall, or projected on a screen, film beats digital. If most of your photos will be viewed on a computer screen, or printed in a book, digital is definately the way to go. Digital is great for people who need a photo for a web site, newspaper, magazine or book. Film is for people who want a photo in a larger format for permanent display. Also, with film you are in more control of the medium. You can process the film differently to make it MUCH more light sensitive than a digital camera. What is the highest ISO possible with current digital technology? There is currently avaliable 3200 ISO b/w film, which with special processing can be pushed to 6400 or even higher ISO. I have used it. It will overexpose at 1/1000 sec in a dim basement. Try that with digital. Film, especially large format film, can be enlarged much more than a digital image. Good film, even 35mm, can be enlarged to 8x10 with no grain visible without magnification. Medium and large format can go even larger. Im sorry, but film is most definately NOT dead.
Re:Consumer Cameras are REAL far off (Score:5, Informative)
I shoot pro digital (1D). There is no delay between shutter release and image capture. I can fire off frame after frame as fast as I can press without having to wait.
My dynamic range is better than I used to get with film, slide or print -- there is more detail in deep shadows and more detail in bright highlights. I do not shoot JPEG so there are no compression artifacts. The resolution with my 4mp pro sensor often seems to exceed what I used to get with scanned slides, probably because there is no film grain to interfere with edges and details.
I don't have to suffer with the film quality variables. Each batch of film is different. Inevitably you sometimes get some duds and problem frames just because of the variability of the film manufacturing process.
I don't have to suffer with the excessive levels of grain in high-speed film. My camera can produce shots in high-film-speed situations that are clean and smooth.
I get my shots to editors before all of the film shooters, who are busy developing... I can take a shot, get it over to my PDA and have it wireless e-mailed to my editor in about a minute flat, without having to leave the event. That's power.
Those I shoot for routinely comment that my images are far better than the 35mm photographers they work with. The comment especially on sharpness, clarity and what some call image "pop".
Film is dead. Maybe not at the consumer end (though I think even there, too) but certainly at least for pros. an 11mp full-frame sensor brings a pro digital body near the quality of film-based 645. Only large format remains...
Re:Consumer Cameras are REAL far off (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, there is a delay - it just may not be any longer than you're used to. Even film cameras have a delay. At my old company, we called it "Lag Time" - it's the amount of time between pressing the shutter release button and having the strobe fired (which usually happens when the opening curtain has fully opened). On most Canon cameras, the lag time was between 180 and 350 ms, and very inconsistent. The fastest camera we tested (IIRC) was the Nikon F4, which was always about 72 ms (very consistent as well).
People may be talking about the delay after triggering the camera - waiting for the previous image to be written to permanent storage.
> Those I shoot for routinely comment that my images are far better than the 35mm photographers they work with. The comment especially on sharpness, clarity and what some call image "pop".
I'd be very surprised if an image from the 1D was sharper than a 35mm film image - before being corrected in PhotoShop. You may just be a better photographer
There is one thing that film still does better than any digital sensor (with the possible exception of the Foveon X3) - it's multi-layer. If you have an 11MP sensor, it's actually a 44 MP sensor with a Bayer pattern filter on it - it gives you 1 red, 2 green, and 1 blue patch per effective "pixel". This is the best that can be accomplished for single capture photography. (There are multi-shot cameras that use a monochrome sensor, and shoot 3 times per frame, overlaying a red / green / blue filter for each pass). So, each pixel is actually 4 pixels, which are combined together for the single 24/36-bit RGB triple. This causes moire problems and color smear around sharp edges. There's a filter in most photo editing programs to reduce this problem (I think it's called "Unsharp Mask"). Film responds to all colors in one vertical segment - this gives better correlation between the color being recorded and its position.
You can certainly get your shots to print faster digitally than you can with film, and for most magazines and newspapers, the quality of either capture method is far better than the output media ("Printing on toilet paper at 130 miles an hour with a squirt gun", as a photographer friend of mine used to say).
Re:Consumer Cameras are REAL far off (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes there are articfacts in many settings, but some cameras will store nearly uncompressed images with very few artifacts. Also the D1 lets you change the senistvitiy of the camera (like using a different speed film. It goes up to IS0 6400. Sure it has a decent amount of noise, but imagine how grainy real film would be at that speed.
At least in sports photography real film is being beaten back by digital, I expect other photography forms to go digital too.
not that far off (Score:2)
I have some pictures of lightning I can send you if you want to see them, that I took with my Sony DSC-30 digital camera, which I paid $500 for over 2 years ago.
I'm not sure what other cameras have this feature, but I know Sony's do: the trick is you set the exposure by pushing the button halfway down, waiting 1/2 second, and then you can snap the picture on an instant's notice. This works pretty well, because lightning doesn't usually wait around for long...
Of course there are other reasons to stick with film for now, particularly if you like glossy 8x10's which require much more expensive equipment to do digitally. But that might not be true in 2 years.
Re:Consumer Cameras are REAL far off (Score:3, Interesting)
Since most people use cameras to take pictures of their lives, vacations, etc. quality is not a big issue. In this type of photography, there is a "good enough" threshold that a 3 megapixel camera usually meets.
That said, I do have a 35mm camera that is useful for nature shots and other real photography stuff. I just doesn't need to get used that often.
Re:Consumer film cameras have one real advantage: (Score:3, Insightful)
- We would probably go through 2 rolls of 24 exposure film each month.
- We already own a computer.
- We are clever enough to avoid damaging our delicate camera in most cases.
- We bought the 128MB flash and thus can take so many pictures that we don't need to empty it into a laptop very often except in the case of very long vacations.
- We don't have a problem with viewing our photos on a computer screen.
As far as cost, if you allow $12 per roll of film for purchase of camera and developement (which is very cheap), we would spend $288 dollars a year. So my initial investment of a $300 dollar camera and $50 flash will be paid for in less than 2 years and then all my pictures are basically free.
Re:Consumer Cameras are REAL far off (Score:3, Insightful)
never once has it taken a bad picture that wasn't my fault. when digital catches up to there, i'll switch.
Re:Consumer Cameras are REAL far off (Score:2)
Kodaks camera (Score:3, Informative)
Apples and Oranges (Score:3, Insightful)
Further into Apples and Oranges (Score:2)
so this article is being presented incorrectly, and it makes a useless comparison from the get go. thank you slashdot.
Re:Apples and Oranges (Score:5, Informative)
Aside from photo exhibitions who uses analog pictures anymore? I really can't think of commercial applications which would not require scanning or digitizing the picture one way or another for processing. That comparison well reflected the usage patterns of typical professional photographer.
Monitors that are used for photo processing are generally very well calibrated so if one thing looks better on screen it'll look better on paper. All professional photographers using analog have high quality film scanners and all processing is done on computer anyway. Analogs are practically worthless as such. If you can get better quality by staying digital then definetly that is the way to go.
Re:Apples and Oranges (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Apples and Oranges (Score:4, Funny)
Thanks!
or LP vs. CD's (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Apples and Oranges (Score:2)
Comparing a print to a picture on a screen, now that is apples and oranges.
Bound to happen eventually (Score:5, Informative)
For amateur photography, digital cameras are as good as film by the 3 megapixel level, and a lot more convenient.
For pro photography, you need a bit more, but not all that much. Certainly not as much as the film zealots have been saying. 6 megapixel digital images have started appearing in magazines like Sports Illustrated as two page spreads. The cover of Newsweek was a digital image a few months back.
This definitely falls into the "get used to it" category.
Re:Bound to happen eventually (Score:2)
Re:Bound to happen eventually (Score:3, Informative)
I think what the grandparent post was getting at is the need for wider dynamic range in the sensors and more bits per pixel in the image.
At 8 bits/pixel, you can do only minimal brightness/contrast adjustment before the image looks really bad. 12 is much better (and all truly good digital cameras have a RAW format that gives you this). 16 would be even better than that, whenever they come out with it.
More bandwidth please... (Score:3, Funny)
I just pictured my dad trying to email these pictures to everyone.
Re:More bandwidth please... (Score:3, Funny)
I just pictured my boss inserting those into a power point presentation, and wondering why he can't fit his prentation on a floppy disk
Film VS CCD/CMOS ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Film VS CCD/CMOS ... (Score:2)
Re:Film VS CCD/CMOS ... (Score:2)
Just as CD has the ability to produce more consistent and even reproduction of sound, CCD/CMOS have the ability to produce more accurate and consistent images. film suffers from the same problems that plague analogue recording mediums.
Re:Film VS CCD/CMOS ... (Score:3, Informative)
That will take a while. The pixels would have to be able to be smaller than the grains in the finest grained film. I don't know much about colour film, but at least in black and white film, there are several films with grain so fine they can be enlarged to 8x10 or larger with NO grain visible to the naked eye. One way photographers often focus an enlarger is with a "Grain Focuser" which basically magnifies the grain of the image being projected onto the photographic paper. They then focus the enlarger until each grain is sharp. This is much more effective than focusing until, say, a sharp edge in the picture is sharp. Recently, I developed a roll of Fuji Neopan Acros 100. Although I did not dilute the developer when I developed the film, the grain was still so small I had difficulty focusing the enlarger, and this is with 35mm film. Remember there are still cameras around that use 8x10 FILM! An 8 inch by 10 inch ccd with resolution equal to or better than that of good black and white film would cost a fortune to manufacture, and purchase.
Well...it's a step (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well...it's a step (Score:2)
Well, given that things like Time, Newsweek, and Sports Illustrated are laid out using a computer, those film images need to be scanned in at some point. The fact that they need to be scanned in order to be useful is the true "failure of film" in this regard.
Re:Well...it's a step (Score:2)
No, 35mm film really has lost to digital. Game over. As a regular reader of the Luminous Landscape [lumious-landscape.com] site I've followed Michael Reichmann as he switched from traditional output to digital output for his images. I've done the same with my own photos and prints.
Here's why:
Scanning film with a drum scanner, sharpening it digitally, with digital output by laser diode or, more recently, super fine inkjet, eliminates an entire lens system from the equation. Lab-quality digital output blows away traditional prints for saturation and sharpness.
Now that we've been able to surpass the recording capability of film, there's no need for film anymore. Of course, there will always be regular old C-41 processing, just as traditional silver black & white is still around as a craft and a learning tool.
That said, I'm still shooting weddings on film, because the professional portrait films are designed for that purpose, and it will still be a couple of years before the cost of entry to these digital SLR cameras will be lower. At least I'll be able to keep my lenses!
This battle ain't over yet (Score:5, Insightful)
Pardon me, but the battle won't be "lost" until the local supermarket starts selling disposable 3M-pixel digital cameras.
Who needs disposable digital? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Pros and Cons of digital (Score:5, Interesting)
* 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.
How to get beaucoup dynamic range in digital (Score:3, Interesting)
flexibility in color response
To get increased dynamic range in digital, you can do the following:
Re:Pros and Cons of digital (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not?! Digital beats analog on the "artistic manipulation" front by miles and miles, specifically because of Photoshop. What other kind of "artistic manipulation" would you allow, other than software? We are talking about a digital medium here.
Yes, it's true you can do many analog darkroom tricks with chemicals and cardboard circles. But Photoshop does all of those, and many many more, more quickly, more easily, more repeatably and flexibly and cheaply and undo-ably . . . There are some legitimate reasons to argue analog over digital, but image manipulation is not one of them.
From a professional photographer... (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Pros and Cons of digital (Score:3, Funny)
How many times can you reuse those 3 rolls of film?
Only for _digital format_ (Score:5, Insightful)
Such a tired argument... (Score:2, Funny)
This says nothing of a CCD's color fidelity and rediculously sharp filter levels. Film still wins.
The whole argument of film vs. digital has already been beaten to death. There's a tool for each job and both film and digital have their place.
While we're at it, let's debate CD vs. Vinyl, Radio vs. T.V. and Theater vs. Home/VHS.
Enough already!
Pyramid
Digital cam surpassed scanner, not film (Score:4, Interesting)
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.'
Isn't this an indictment of film scanners rather than film itself? I seriously doubt any digital image can compete with the best developed-film photograph.
Digital images don't deteriorate (Score:3, Insightful)
I seriously doubt any digital image can compete with the best developed-film photograph.
Digital images can be preserved forever and do not lose fidelity over time. They may lose fidelity when initially compressed to JPEG2000, but this happens once and not continuously like film. An individual CD may deteriorate, but copying a digital image bit-for-bit from one storage medium to the next is lossless. Analog isn't.
Re:Digital cam surpassed scanner, not film (Score:3, Interesting)
Obviously you've never seen a LightJet print done from somebody like West Coast Imaging [westcoastimaging.com].
They do scan, using a Heidelberg Tango at 5000ppi but the result is far better than any optical print I've had the misfortune to glance upon. Do some searches at photo.net and watch more debate about the film/digital issue. Film isn't dead yet. And for good digital you have to spend far more money than most of us can justify. But within the next year or two digital SLRs will definitely be at the price/performance sweet spot that most people are looking for (at least those that currently shoot film SLRs).
You realise... (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
3 layer CCD (Score:3, Informative)
> 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.
As an astronomer and an amateur photographer... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
bigger isn't always better.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:bigger isn't always better.. (Score:3, Informative)
How would it be $7.46 per gig, if the DVD-R is 63 cents?
That's 63 cents for 4.7 gigs.
That's (roughly) 13 cents per gig.
Subjective vs. Objective comparisons (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Re:Subjective vs. Objective comparisons (Score:2)
bye bye film.. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:bye bye film.. (Score:2)
The same people that would have traded their brownies for instamatics (126), and then 110's, are going to cheap digital today.
These are NOT the people using Leica M's and Nikon F's, carefully selecting their film and paper, and being creative in the darkroom.
Average consumer just wants snapshots. Maybe a few of them will crop and fix contrast with photoshop LE. And your production houses are more concerned with productivity and reproducibility, than with the photograph as an individual work of art.
As an art form, digital photography will not replace film any more than film replaced oil painting. (Photographic portraits replaced oil portraits and made the portrait accessible to all classes, but that's just another commercial aspect of technology.)
Wrong, wrong, wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
film comparison (Score:3, Informative)
http://clarkvision.com/imagedetail/film.vs.digital .1.html [clarkvision.com]
Film still rules (Score:2, Interesting)
Need 10-16M three-color samples to rival 35mm film (Score:3, Informative)
Check out Roger Clark's analysis [clarkvision.com] for the details.
But how about longevity? (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
More than just resolution (Score:2, Informative)
Better than scanned film, you mean (Score:2)
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.
What about long-term storage? (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re:What about long-term storage? (Score:3, Informative)
But that ain't a long-term solution. Perpetual admin in the only real way of insuring that my data stays safe, but I consider photos in particular to be important enough to deserve additional safeguards.
So, I have my photos printed (about 40 cents a shot). If they're really good, I send duplicates to my mom, who keeps them in a drawer with the mararoni art I did when I was 3. Pow, I figure I'm at least as safe as film now...
35mm film, maybe (Score:2)
Film vs. Digital (Score:2)
For $5000 I can get a good medium format camera which puts me in the 100 megapixel range.
Issue is deeper than quality alone (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:Issue is deeper than quality alone (Score:3, Informative)
Even with a 3 megapixel camera, I frequently have to wait for the CF card to finish storing the data before I can take another picture. Yes, many cameras have a "burst" mode, with lots of internal RAM to hold the images so that they can be written out to the card later, but even then, there is a limit to how much that write-behind caching can do for you. At some point, the RAM fills up, and you have to wait for the flash card to catch up. With a good 35mm SLR autowinder, you can snap several pictures per second until you run out of film, with no waiting.
If film was dead... (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
What about dynamic range (Score:2)
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
--
Digital Photography for Posterity? (Score:2)
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 [dcresource.com] 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 [handcoding.com] 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 [dotphoto.com] to 40 [printroom.com] cents each. And, that works out to about the same price-per-print as getting regular film developed [mysticcolorlab.com]. 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 [dcresource.com]. 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).
I'm not a photographer (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
But what about tasting the chemicals? (Score:3, Funny)
(DC, if you read this, get in touch man! It's been too many years...)
The camera body is an issue... (Score:3, Insightful)
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
you can't compare digital and film image quality (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Just do the math. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Did you do the math? (Score:3, Informative)
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 [dpreview.com] is built with a standard Nikon SLR lens mount. The Canon EOS 1Ds [dpreview.com] 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.
I can't believe the hype! (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:FILM HANDS DOWN (Score:5, Informative)
Film certainly does not provide resolution at the "atomic" level.
The resolution of high-end consumer digital cameras now matches or exceeds that of typical consumer 35mm film.
The biggest advantage that film does have - it will continue to enjoy for some time to come - is dynamic range. You can't even come close with digital. No digital camera - even the most costly professional models - came come anywhere close to the dynamic range of consumer 35mm film and print material - let alone that in an Ansel Adams or Weston print. (And that was the film technology 50 years ago!)
Re:FILM HANDS DOWN (Score:3, Interesting)
All that cargo-cult science is all well and good, but I will tell you this as a photographer. Recently, we went to Yosemite National Park, and took photographs with a year old "pro-sumer" camera, a Nikon E-995. Aside it, on another tripod, was my trusty Nikon N90, which is the rough "pro-sumer" equivilant of the E-995. Pictures were made at the same time, with the same relatiove composition in the same light. And the prints from the film that came out of the darkroom had higher acutance and a world more contrast than did the digital, in every single case. Not even Photoshop could make up the difference.
Film indeed has grain structure, and the higher the "speed" of the film, the larger the grains, which gives them more surface area for photons to react faster. Hence, in film, faster film is "grainier" than slower. As for reactions taking place on an atomic level, actually it is at a molecular level.
I am at work at the moment, but once upon a time, I did the math and compared a typical ISO 100 film, T-MAX for example, and counted each "grain" (lump of silver halide) as a pixel. Roughly, according to Kodak's data, a properly exposed and developed T-MAX 100 film would have about 14 mega-grains, or megapixels.
But then there was a major, major rub in the favor of film: there was a huge variance, about a magnitude, in the size of the grains, which seemed to be roughly evenly distributed. This gave the film at least a magnitude of contrast advantage over digital pixels, as the pixels are all the same size.
actually, dynamic range must be pretty impressive (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:FILM HANDS DOWN (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't buy that: how many stops of dynamic range does slide film have? Not to mention that with digital you can do really interesting things like taking multiple exposures of the same scene and combining them for some really impossible-to-repro-with-film results.
this [tawbaware.com] out for example (check these 5 composite images)
let alone that in an Ansel Adams or Weston print.
you're talking apples & oranges here: those prints have been hand-developed, dodged, burned and so on, you can do the same (increasing apparent film dynamic range) in photoshop and print the results if you so choose.
A master with the film camera, will probably produce masterful digital pics very quickly, if you look at the pictures of the week on photo.net, you'll probably see some stunning digital shots, which would have been just as stunning in shots on film, and sometimes even more so due to the possibilities inherent in a digital imaging workflow.
Re:FILM HANDS DOWN (Score:5, Funny)
Re:FILM HANDS DOWN (Score:3, Insightful)
Good general purpose film properly developed will resolve about 100 lp/mm (line-pairs per millimetre). That's about four orders of magnitude larger than atomic dimensions.
Re:FILM HANDS DOWN (Score:2)