Digital vs Film
November 20th, 2007
I’ve been shooting with film since I started learning photography officially. Before that I was using crappy digital cameras. I’m always happy about the color & dynamic range of color negatives & I don’t think I’ve seen any digital photos look as good as film. But I’m going to do my thesis & my teacher Larry suggested me switch to digital. A canon 40D is what he recommended & I can afford. He said I can get better result shooting with a good digital camera & doing the right way. He’s going to teach me how to do it in digital. He switched to digital about 2 years ago, & he totally believed in digital now.
I know if I work in digital, it will be way more efficient & practical in the future. & maybe I’ll be forced into digital anyway cause the school’s color machine is dying.
My problem with dslrs is I don’t trust them. I have a Nikon D70 & the quality is so poor that I rarely use it. Although people have been telling me digital is good but I haven’t seen any digital photos that have the quality of film. & I searched the camera, it’s 3888 x 2592 pixels. If I output it at 254 p/i, the size is only 10″x15″. Right now I’m using 6×4.5 & 4×5, although the largest size I can print with enlarger is 16″x20″. I even like the scanning files better than the RAW files.
So if you know about digital, show me some real good examples of digital photos. I really love the color of ANNIE LEIBOVITZ. Those colors look so dense that it almost feels like dripping, creamy & greasy. Yummy!
I think she used digital in her latest work which the color is not so good anymore (but still better than other photographers).
Maybe I just have a very perticular taste for color or I haven’t seen the real good digital photos.
November 25th, 2007 at 10:56 am
i’m in a similar dilemma too. i’m not quite satisfied with digital quality but i wonder what new kind of pictures i would make with it.
November 25th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
What’s the attitude both of you and your teacher to the retouching things? I mean the color of the digital photos, and as I know some of the great photos did a lot of retouching, so I’m wondering what’s the point of insist so called “original color”.
And even though, you use film, you have to scan these films, you have to do lot of adjusting, through scanner, computer, printer, so, I’m also wondering what’s the “original color”… that’s my confusion.
November 26th, 2007 at 1:10 am
Yeah! I got a comment from Ye Rin. Thanks.
I’m not opposed to retouching at all. The thing I want to figure out is which one will be better for me as the raw material. I agree with Ye Rin that digital & film are different. They make different images. I think I should quit trying to make digital look like film, 1. it’s impossible, 2. it’s gonna get worse. more detailed discussion in Chinese is here http://www.douban.com/group/topic/2220954/