Film/Digital

Barney

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Wayne
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In some areas and topics, youtube etc, it appears to me that there is a drive to try and make film photography images almost appear like digital images but with different Retro colours.

This end result can easily be achieved in digital processing with the addition of different types of grain and hundreds of different pre-sets which will provide a 1 click solution to image processing.

I love the old styles created by the films and am enjoying myself exploring the different film and developing combinations even though I have only tried a few.

Its almost like a badge, I shoot film.

Why Bother?
 
Making film look like digital? That's a new one on me. I do think that medium format is often so detailed it might as well be digital. But it seems to defeat the object really.
 
There's been a significant number of photographers for more than a century who have striven (probably not too strong a word) to make their photographs look more like paintings, or at least less like a photograph. I always think that this shows insecurity, a belief that somehow photography can't be art, unless it becomes something other than what it truly is.

Ansel Adams' first portfolio was called Parmelian Prints because his sponsor didn't think it would sell if they were called photographs.

So, possibly the same reaction in a different guise, a belief that digital is superior and film based photography has to be disguised, rather than painting is superior. But I have to admit that if I wanted my photographs to look digital, I'd take the straightforward route and use a digital camera to achieve it.
 
Thanks for posting your considerations, food for thought.

IT has left me pondering "is photographic art the content of the image irrespective of the look, or the look of the image without consideration to the merit of the contents."
 
I don't follow many YouTubers but I see the opposite, the analogy guys are proud of using film and some of the digital guys are going for a grainy reduced colour palette look
 
I don't follow many YouTubers but I see the opposite, the analogy guys are proud of using film and some of the digital guys are going for a grainy reduced colour palette look

I do follow a few YouTubers and I agree, I have rarely (if ever) seen anyone try yo make their film look digital but I have seen many (myself included) try to make their digital files look like film. Surely that one makes more sense? They like the film aesthetic but without the ever increasing expense.
 
I've not noticed people trying to make their film work look like digital.

The last few years (unless something specific like Milky Way, night skies etc) I do much less editing than I used to. I use a pretty regular profile/preset for my Sony images sometimes with added masking editing.

My Fuji images are sooc jpegs or again a LR profile with no editing aside from maybe a straighten and sometimes an exposure tweak - I never play with HSL, colour grading, masking or anything as I like to treat them as a digital film experience.

My film images just get a straighten/crop. I try not to touch anything else as they are how they are, even if they aren't perfect.
 
I've occasionally had youngsters tell me that they think film is supposed to look grungy and grainy and lo-fi, and that clean, sharp, low grain film photography looks "too digital" to them. They're entitled to their opinion, but my personal feeling is that they're just doing film photography badly. I love it that my thousands of Kodachromes shot over several decades are as clean and sharp as any digital photo I've ever seen.
 
Making film look like digital? That's a new one on me. I do think that medium format is often so detailed it might as well be digital. But it seems to defeat the object really.
I agree.

However, I'd go further and say that, if a viewer notices the technique, the subject and framing are failing to make the image interest that viewer.
 
I've occasionally had youngsters tell me that they think film is supposed to look grungy and grainy and lo-fi, and that clean, sharp, low grain film photography looks "too digital" to them. They're entitled to their opinion, but my personal feeling is that they're just doing film photography badly. I love it that my thousands of Kodachromes shot over several decades are as clean and sharp as any digital photo I've ever seen.

I don't generally look at YouTube videos, other than ones related to large format, so I haven't personally seen anyone trying to make film look like digital or digital look like film. But if some people are mangling film photography to the point that it's "grungy and grainy and lo-fi" then I can easily see why they would want to make it look more like digital (which in this case would then be "more like film photography" as well.

What I have noticed are lots of references to add ons, plug ins and what have you to add "film effects" to digital - which seems to be a tacit admission that film brings something to an image that digital doesn't (although users of such products probably think that they are "downgrading" the image...).
 
The recent marketing efforts to sell poor digital cameras (with sensors from dashcams) as having a “film vibe”, at a ridiculous price, probably causes some less-experienced photographers to think that film photographs look absolutely terrible. Add a few noisy/weird colour filters into the mix and job done.
 
The most frustrating part is that people are spending £2-300 on “film look” digital cameras with awful sensors when they could spend £50 on any SLR from the last 50 years and put the other £250 into film/development and get actual good results.

If someone wants to shoot digital, pretty much any digital camera from the last decade will produce good results. In contrast, buying a camera with a sensor smaller than pretty much every level of mobile phone on the market, wrapped up in a cheap plastic shell, with a cheap sprung “analogue experience” winding lever that tries to excuse the fact it’s terrible by calling it “film vibe” is the definition of wasteful.

I’m looking at you “Yashica” brand usage with £550,000 of Kickstarter backing and the majority of backers will receive it and complain that it’s a cheap knockoff of an SLR with a tiny dashcam sensor..



Sorry, rant over :0)
 
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To add to the other comments, I've never seen anyone trying to make film shots look like digital either. I've occasionally seen comments about certain film photographs having a digital feel, perhaps because a fine grain film has been coupled with a sharp lens, but that's different. I see loads of stuff about getting a film look with digital, and there's a whole industry dedicated to doing so (with Fuji actively building film stock simulations into it's digital camera range).

I came across a video last night with someone trying to replicate 35mm Tri-X with a digital camera, which was quite interesting.

View: https://youtu.be/ZsKNICiDOyM?si=5O__Kb_EXRyGlP8i
 
I went to a photography exhibition in London earlier this year, it portrayed the UK through the seventies and eighties and was almost certainly all shot on film. If a similar exhibition had shown images from 1980 to 2010, I would still have gone to have a look even though there would be a mix of film and digital.

What I did not, and would not have done, is examine the photographs in either exhibition to see whether or not they were shot on a film or a digital camera; I just wouldn't have cared, it wouldn't be relevant.

IMHO it's the image that counts, how the exhibitor came about it would be his or her business; my job, is to go along and observe the results and praise or criticise as I see fit.

If I go to an art exhibition of paintings, I don't spend time looking closely at the picture to see if the artist used a flat or round spatula for the oils or what sort of canvas it's on, I just look at the painting to see how I feel about the image portrayed.

If a photographer wants to shoot film, good luck to them, it is their choice, if they want to do digital, the same.

To me, it is always the end result that counts, what it looks like, how it makes me feel.
 
Going to stick my head above the parapit here! I DO try to make my film shots look like digital images. I love the film process as it's far more involving but I prefer the 'clean' digital look; sorry.

'Tis said "confession is good for the soul", though I might cynically add "if not for the reputation" :D

Depends in part what you mean, as I prefer sharp to fuzzy and don't like grain...
 
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This discussion has made me wonder just how much of a "film look" my film shots have got, and how much of a "digital look" the digital stuff has got. So I've just had a look through my snaps from 2022, the last year that I routinely carried both a DSLR and a film SLR using the same lenses on both (nowadays I usually only carry one format at a time). For some shots I can tell straight away whether they are digital or film, but for others I genuinely haven't got a clue. I'd have to go back to the original files to find out for sure.

One thing's for sure though: there are some photos from that year that I now think are good ones, and others that I'm not so keen on anymore, and whether they are film or digital has got nothing to do with it.
 
Film is very dependent on the conditions, I think. I've had scans back that are noticeably finer than some other shots on a roll. And yes, even to the point of them being very digital like.
 
Just a small point: if you scan a film negative, isn't it now a digital image?!

Yep, a scanned negative is a digital photo using an analog intermediate. I'm shooting a roll of Ektachrome at the moment, so with that one it will be pure analog photography when I look at the slides on my lightbox, but if I decide to scan any of those slides then they'll become digital. And at that point I will feel free to use every tool that Photoshop has available to edit the digital version to make it look how I want it to.
 
Just a small point: if you scan a film negative, isn't it now a digital image?!

Yes, but a digital image of an analog original. It won't look the same as a photograph taken with a digital camera in the same way that, had digital cameras existed then, a photograph of the girl modelling for the Mona Lisa wouldn't have looked the same as Da Vinci's painting.
 
Is real life analogue or digital? :P

Use whatever you want and gives the results you want.

Personally, I'd love to go back to film (and, in an ideal world would go back to doing my own B&W D&P) but it's just got too damned expensive (and the last couple of print films I had done by post were... disappointingly handled.)
 
I've been using film for 60 years now. Had a brief foray into digital but didn't really get on with it due to the lack of developing/printing/doing it all myself for better or worse experience.
As for making digital look like film, if you want pictures that look like film then use film.
If you use post processing to make digital pictures look like film then your images are simply like many others on the internet - fake.
 
I've been using film for 60 years now. Had a brief foray into digital but didn't really get on with it due to the lack of developing/printing/doing it all myself for better or worse experience.
As for making digital look like film, if you want pictures that look like film then use film.
If you use post processing to make digital pictures look like film then your images are simply like many others on the internet - fake.

Fake? Surely they are just edited? Or developed?
 
I went to a photography exhibition in London earlier this year, it portrayed the UK through the seventies and eighties and was almost certainly all shot on film. If a similar exhibition had shown images from 1980 to 2010, I would still have gone to have a look even though there would be a mix of film and digital.

What I did not, and would not have done, is examine the photographs in either exhibition to see whether or not they were shot on a film or a digital camera; I just wouldn't have cared, it wouldn't be relevant.

IMHO it's the image that counts, how the exhibitor came about it would be his or her business; my job, is to go along and observe the results and praise or criticise as I see fit.

If I go to an art exhibition of paintings, I don't spend time looking closely at the picture to see if the artist used a flat or round spatula for the oils or what sort of canvas it's on, I just look at the painting to see how I feel about the image portrayed.

If a photographer wants to shoot film, good luck to them, it is their choice, if they want to do digital, the same.

To me, it is always the end result that counts, what it looks like, how it makes me feel.
To me, this emphasises the difference between two distinct activities: that of creating an image, and that of viewing an image.

I'm much more invested in the former as an exercise, which is why I use film in the main.
 
'Tis said "confession is good for the soul", though I might cynically add "if not for the reputation" :D

Depends in part what you mean, as I prefer sharp to fuzzy and don't like grain...
Stephen, put me in the spotlight :) with 35mm I find the grain to be too much on certain films such as HP5 & Kodak Gold but on 120mm it's acceptable, all IMO though.

I therefore process the film to reduce the appearance of the grain to try and give more of a Portra look, I hope that makes sense?
 
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I've been using film for 60 years now. Had a brief foray into digital but didn't really get on with it due to the lack of developing/printing/doing it all myself for better or worse experience.
As for making digital look like film, if you want pictures that look like film then use film.
If you use post processing to make digital pictures look like film then your images are simply like many others on the internet - fake.
I feel almost the opposite, and believe that digital allows me to do more of "it all myself" than analogue did, and although the mechanics are different, the thought processes behind the digital equivalents of developing and printing are similar.

The enormous advantage of digital over analogue is the control it gives the photographer over the image, especially with colour prints. And I get the same sense of excitement watching a print appear from an inkjet printer as I did watching a black and white print emerge in the developer, or lifting the lid of a colour print processor.

With digital I can get prints with colour, tonality, contrast and saturation that are a far better match to what I "see" than any colour prints I made in the analogue days: and at one time I was a photographer in a materials lab, where making prints with accurate colours was part of my job.

For "technical/scientific" photography, digital makes things easier than analogue, but for "straight"* expressive photography it can make things more challenging. With digital, you can go well beyond the limitations of the film days, where you might have simply matched a colour film type to subject or vision( especially true if you were using transparency film). But with sufficient practice and effort (certainly no less than required with analogue) I can now make prints that more precisely match how I saw and "felt" about a subject than I could in the film days. Even though I am still learning digital and far from where I would like to be.

Most of my serious photography, professional and personal, has been with film, and I have fond memories of the process. If I had a darkroom, I might still do some film photography out of nostalgia, but only black and white. I wouldn't want to lose the control that digital gives with colour, or go through the hassle of making colour prints. Ironically, if I went back to film, it would be for the joy of using analogue cameras, but not 35mm (maybe a Leica M), it would be a Hasselblad, Mamiya 67, Linhof or Sinar, but I can't see it happening.

The control that digital processing gives you over the appearance of a print means that, within the bounds of your ability, and on a picture by picture basis, you can choose the "look" that best matches your subject and vision. It's the creative decision behind the choice of "look" that is important, not whether it has a digital or film look.

There isn't really a "single" digital look, even though there are things we associate with digital, and nor is there a single "film" look, even though, again, there are things we now associate with a film look. The joy of digital is that it can give any kind of look you want. There is nothing "fake" about a film look on digital; it's just a digital "look" that has some characteristics we associate with film. It only becomes fake if you tell people you took it on film.

I'm not in any way trying to persuade you to use digital, but your brief foray into digital possibly hasn't been long enough to fully appreciate the flexibility of digital.


* by "straight" I mean photography where the integrity of, and the relationship with, the subject is an important aspect of the photographer's vision for the photograph.
 
If you use post processing to make digital pictures look like film then your images are simply like many others on the internet - fake.
Many alternative opinions are available.

One is that the image, as it is shown, is all that matters to the vast majority of viewers. How it got to where they see it, is irrelevant.
 
What I did not, and would not have done, is examine the photographs in either exhibition to see whether or not they were shot on a film or a digital camera; I just wouldn't have cared, it wouldn't be relevant.

IMHO it's the image that counts, how the exhibitor came about it would be his or her business; my job, is to go along and observe the results and praise or criticise as I see fit.

If I go to an art exhibition of paintings, I don't spend time looking closely at the picture to see if the artist used a flat or round spatula for the oils or what sort of canvas it's on, I just look at the painting to see how I feel about the image portrayed.
Very fair point, though it's likely that at least some of the viewers of all those exhibitions would be very interested in the more technical, craft aspects of the pictures, technique, composition etc.

It seems quite a lot of us, maybe film photographers more than digital, are interested in the camera, the lens, the film and maybe even the development process. In my case, this is probably more than can be explained by trying to inform my own practice, oddly.
 
To me, this emphasises the difference between two distinct activities: that of creating an image, and that of viewing an image.

I'm much more invested in the former as an exercise, which is why I use film in the main.
In principle, I agree with your statement above and it does serve to show an example difference in motivation for photography. I sometimes take pictures to remind me of something, to create something personal that I can look at in years to come and remember. It might be pictures of a car, my dog or partner, changes in my garden; pictures like this are for personal use and would prompt nothing of note from an outside observer. But I also take pictures of strangers, of buildings, events, etc.; I take these pictures, not only for myself, but to try elicit a response from others--should they choose to look at them.
If I was lucky enough to be able to show my photographs in an exhibition, I wouldn't be showing pictures of my dog in the garden, no matter how technical the process, as it just wouldn't be interesting to a viewer, I would have to feel I was offering something more, something for people to think about, comment on and/or criticise,
 
I would have to feel I was offering something more, something for people to think about, comment on and/or criticise,
There are many reasons for mounting a picture exhibition.

Some are informative, some are commercial, some are ego trips, many are combinations of those mixed with other motives. What the viewer is after is more uncertain.

They may just want to get out of the rain. ;)
 
The biggest difference, really, is in the way the images are composed. Blow up a film shot and you get round areas of grain. Blow up a digital images and you get square pixels. Grain is far more pleasing to the eye than pixels will ever be.

I do still process my film shots as I get them scanned and sent to me as digital files. But I think I probably don't do as much to them as I'm tempted to do with digital shots.

The benefits of digital over film is the cost, get it wrong and you can just delete it - either in camera or when you see them on your PC. But also it's the latitude you get between shots.

On a holiday for example, you can shoot every single shot at vastly different ISOs rather than being tied to one for the whole roll.

Meaning the struggle of taking a shot outside in bright sunshine and then the next indoors in a low-lit monastery (as I tried recently with film) is far, far easier.

Or recently when I had some 400ASA film in and even at a shutter speed of 1000 and f/22, it was too bright to take a shot.
 
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Or recently when I had some 400ASA film in and even at a shutter speed of 1000 and f/22, it was too bright to take a shot.

This works out at an EV higher than 21. Were you trying to shoot into the sun over a reflective surface at the time?
 
That's why I carry a couple of filters in my bag. I'd have needed one for my digital too. I wouldn't have relied on the automatic ISO or shutter for that. There are some shots where the camera may need a hand. That might definitely have been one. Almost by default I'd have a yellow or orange filter on anyway, just to give those clouds a chance.

With 400-rated film, on box speed alone you're comfortable only up to about EV 19 at f/22 and 1/1000th second.

I'm really wary of the use of filters, but a couple of basic ND2s are no hassle to keep to hand, and expand the camera's range considerably without even beginning to think of their creative use (not for me, that one - I hate the look of graduated filters etc!).
 
The biggest difference, really, is in the way the images are composed. Blow up a film shot and you get round areas of grain. Blow up a digital images and you get square pixels. Grain is far more pleasing to the eye than pixels will ever be.

I do still process my film shots as I get them scanned and sent to me as digital files. But I think I probably don't do as much to them as I'm tempted to do with digital shots.

The benefits of digital over film is the cost, get it wrong and you can just delete it - either in camera or when you see them on your PC. But also it's the latitude you get between shots.

On a holiday for example, you can shoot every single shot at vastly different ISOs rather than being tied to one for the whole roll.

Meaning the struggle of taking a shot outside in bright sunshine and then the next indoors in a low-lit monastery (as I tried recently with film) is far, far easier.

Or recently when I had some 400ASA film in and even at a shutter speed of 1000 and f/22, it was too bright to take a shot.

I have seen someone else mention this recently. They carried an ND filter with them. That seems like a very good idea for moments like that.
 
I like to use old mechanical cameras and am willing to put up with the (frequent) disappointments that this brings.
Sometimes, I quite like the imperfections/look that older cameras/lenses/film can create and have recently made efforts to exploit this.
 
That's why I carry a couple of filters in my bag. I'd have needed one for my digital too. I wouldn't have relied on the automatic ISO or shutter for that. There are some shots where the camera may need a hand. That might definitely have been one. Almost by default I'd have a yellow or orange filter on anyway, just to give those clouds a chance.

With 400-rated film, on box speed alone you're comfortable only up to about EV 19 at f/22 and 1/1000th second.

I'm really wary of the use of filters, but a couple of basic ND2s are no hassle to keep to hand, and expand the camera's range considerably without even beginning to think of their creative use (not for me, that one - I hate the look of graduated filters etc!).

I often carry a 3 stop Haida in 67mm for all my Sony digital lenses - I'm lucky in that regard I guess. The X100f has the built in ND. And I have a 3 stop I made to use on the Mat 124g :)

The digital is often less of an issue anyway because of the faster shutters and lower ISO's.
 
I like to use old mechanical cameras and am willing to put up with the (frequent) disappointments that this brings.
Sometimes, I quite like the imperfections/look that older cameras/lenses/film can create and have recently made efforts to exploit this.
The Foma 200 Creative is really easy to stress in development.
 
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