Why Film is Better than Digital

I always try to become a student of whatever I am doing.  I ran across some information recently regarding the relative size of digital camera sensors and film camera negatives. These areas are directly proportional to how much information they can hold and relay to a picture (print or viewing screen).

The above graphic was borrowed from a Wikipedia article about “Image Sensor Formats” and I thought it portrayed the information very effectively. It is not to scale but is proportionately correct.

The large “outer frame” represents a medium format camera sensor (Kodak KAF 39000) and is also roughly comparable to medium format film cameras although the 6x7 format would be a little larger.

The next frame shows the size of a 35mm negative and what is called “full frame” sensors used in high end professional DSLR’s. 

Then there is the APS-H (Canon) sensor used in some high end (but not full framed)  Canon DSLR’s. The next two, the APS-C sensors, represent the vast majority of the DSLR’s commonly used today. 

The smaller frames, including the Four Thirds System developed by Olympus and Panasonic are used by various compact and point & shoot cameras.

As you can see from the sizes of the negatives and sensors all of them must be enlarged to produce an image that you can see clearly and use. It is a basic principle of photography that the more you enlarge an image the more the image degrades. It has been long thought that the largest practical enlargement for a 35mm negative or corresponding digital sensor is about 8” x 10.”  That is why professionals use medium format or even larger format films and digital sensors to produce the best possible images for enlargement.

Since medium format and larger film & sensors are typically used only by professionals we will ignore them for our purposes here. It seems clear that the 35mm negative size and the corresponding “full frame” digital sensors, as the largest generally available to amateur photographers would result in the highest quality images, all other things being equal. Of course, when comparing film to digital images one must also consider the capacity of the sensor as well as the size. 

Many “experts” seem to suggest that it takes a full frame digital sensor with about a 25 megapixel capacity to equal the information capacity of a 35mm negative. The fact that only high end professional digital cameras costing thousands of dollars have this capability indicates that the humble 35mm film camera of yesteryear (with a good lens of course) is still a viable alternative for taking great pictures.  

Of course, as the digital sensor technology improves it will eventually surpass 35mm capability and get cheaper and cheaper while film and film processing labs will become fewer and more expensive. In fact Nikon just today announced their new D-800 full frame DSLR with 36.3 megapixel CMOS sensor. With those kind of continuing advances it won’t be too much longer before film photography becomes an increasingly rare and eclectic hobby shared only by a dedicated few.  

But for now at least I will keep taking pictures with my film cameras.

The Results Are In

Here’s a shot of Tony the “Camo Cat” nearly blending into the background. This one taken with Portra 400 in the Vivitar V3800N body with a 135mm lens set at f5.6 and 1/125.

The results of my investigation into the possibility of getting “wet processed” or true analog prints to compare with prints produced from digital camera files or scans are in. It “ain’t” going to happen!

The only lab I found that still does that kind of prints is in Newcastle, England and I am not 100% sure even about them. Either way I am not planning on sending my film back and forth halfway across the planet to get analog prints.

So where do I go from here? Well, I’m still going to shoot some slower (read that higher resolution) film to compare against the ISO 400 film I have been using and the digital pictures I take. I just got some Kodak Portra 160 and some Ektar 100. One of the main advantages of the Portra is according to Kodak it is specially designed for scanning the negatives.

I can’t wait to see the results.

Vivitar V3800N is a Good Shooter

Here’s a picture of my son Ian I took using my new Christmas present. Of course the lenses are the same ones I have been using but the Vivitar V3800N body offers some features my other bodies don’t have, like depth of field preview, multiple exposures, and a PC connection allowing a flash to be triggered without using the hot shoe.

This one was shot with Portra 400, using the 135mm lens at f4 and 1/500.

My only complaint about this used camera so far is that the light meter stays on all the time. The switch in the shutter button must be broken so that unless I loosen the battery retainer screw enough to break electrical contact when I’m not using the camera the batteries will drain completely in just a few days.

Kodak Portra 400: Latitude, Grain, And “Scanability” Combined | Shutterbug

Kodak Portra 400: Latitude, Grain, And “Scanability” Combined | Shutterbug



This link is for an excellent article I thought I would share. I like it of course because it is about film and there are very few of those around these days but it also confirms my admittedly limited experiences with Kodak's latest entry to the film market.

The author also claims that the quality of a 35mm negative is roughly equivalent to that of a 10 megapixel digital camera. I'm not sure how he arrived at that conclusion but it agrees with my subjective observations comparing images from my film cameras with those from an assortment of digital cameras.

This of course completely side steps the issue of "wet processing" versus digital & film scanning that I have been struggling with (although he does mention it in passing in the article) but highlights that fact that with the current consumer level of digital photographic technology there would seem to be little reason to favor film over digital other than perhaps personal preference.

Once you move into the realm of medium format photography, generally populated only by professional and serious amateurs, this is not the case. Here not only is film generally still providing better quality images than digital but doing so at an overall lower cost. Of course, since technology continues to improve and usually at exponential rates there's not much doubt that digital will soon overtake film there too and most pros are already using digital because of the many advantages it offers, not the least of which is instant images.

Still, some of us just like film better. It's nice to know that someone is still improving film technology for those of us that use it and Kodak definitely has a winner here.

The Quest for Knowledge Resumes

Some of us enjoy the holidays more than others. Here’s Granddaughter Mary who celebrates her birthday on Christmas day kicking back among the presents & wrappings and perhaps thinking everything is just perfect.

Well, the holidays are finally over and the family birthdays are taking a break for a couple months. LSU lost the big one and the Saints are out of the playoffs. I finally went to the doctor and got a shot and some meds to knock out whatever was plaguing me so I now that all the infections and distractions of the end of the year are over I can now get back to the task at hand.

Back before Christmas (December 20 to be exact) I posted my concerns about being able to tell the difference between analog photography and digital photography. At that time I noted that the pictures I take with film cameras are delivered and viewed as digital images because after the lab develops the film it is immediately scanned and the pictures uploaded to a web site and sent to me on a CD.

I went on to say that once I realized this dilemma the solution became obvious – get and compare prints instead of the digital images.  This however, is not as simple as it seems though because as it turns out most labs no longer make true analog prints directly from film. They scan the film and use the digital images to make the prints.

So while I do believe that analog photography can result in superior pictures what I have been doing (and most everyone else who doesn’t have their own dark room) is not really analog photography. It’s sort of an analog/digital hybrid and totally dependent on the resolution of the film scans used in converting the pictures from analog to digital.

Now as much as I love film photography it is certainly more trouble than digital and more expensive too. So if the results are no better than digital photography it begs the question – why do it? Before I consider that question in any depth I think I owe it to myself and all film photographers to at least try take an objective look at a real comparison of analog versus digital photography.

Towards that end I have started a search and sent out a couple emails to try to locate a lab that does real analog processing and printing. My goal is the have prints made the old fashion optical enlargement way directly from the negatives and compare them with prints made from digital scans of film and digital picture files and see if I can detect any noticeable differences in the quality of the various images. Ideally I would like to compare images of the same picture or at least the same subject and composition.

That’s the goal. First step – find an old fashioned lab. Stay tuned.

New Year’s Resolutions

Here’s a couple cool pictures of our New Year’s fireworks taken with the P-300 using the “Fireworks Mode.” This is one of the hardest things to do manually so I was really happy to see that mode on the camera and surprised to see how well it works. Unfortunately it took me a few tries to get the hang of it (of course I never, never, never read the manual first. I just wing it) so I missed the best of the fireworks.

I would like to make some grand and glorious promise to take more pictures or put up more blog posts or lose 50 pounds in 2012 but the truth is I hate New Year’s resolutions. If you or I really wanted to do something we would have done it already or we will do it as soon as time, money or opportunity permits. To arbitrarily say that just because it’s the start of a new year something should now be done that has been left undone thus far is foolish.

The truth is at this time of year the weather is just too crappy to want to get out and do much of anything. On top of that I have been a bit under the weather lately so even indoor activities (like writing blog posts) are being neglected. I will however resolve this year like last year, to post relevant information from time to time and continue my exploration of both film and digital photography and share my experiences with you.

Here are a couple specific areas I want to explore this year.

First, I do want to complete the pin hole camera kit I started and take a few pictures with it just to see how they turn out. I am skeptical as to whether this will be a long term fascination with me but I have always wondered about pin hole camera photography and now have a chance to check it out.

Second, although I am not generally a fan of double or multiple exposure photography I have some ideas about how to use that technique for exploring a couple really creative photographic ideas. My new Vivitar body and the Holga both are ideally suited for experimenting in this area so I will try a few and see what happens.

Third, I have gotten comfortable shooting ISO 400 film both in color and B&W because of the excellent exposure latitude in low light situations (and I hate flashes) but in spite of remarkable advances in the quality of modern film I readily admit that the best pictures are still produced by slower films. Therefore I plan to get back to shooting some film in the ISO 100-200 range. 

Fourth, I really want to do a more in depth comparison between analog and digital photography. To accomplish this I have to find a lab that still produces true analog images (see my Dec 20, 2011 blog post about why what I have been getting from my film lab is not true analog images), and for the most accurate results I have to use slower film as noted above. Assuming I am successful in this area it will be difficult to actually display the results since everything on the blog must of necessity be in digital format. For this reason you will to a certain extent have to just take my word for it unless you want to duplicate my “experiments” for yourself.

…and finally, I don’t believe I have even scraped the surface on the Nikon P-300’s capabilities. In this little gem I have finally found a digital camera that I don’t mind using and a complete discourse on the in’s & out’s of film photography would not be relevant without comparative consideration of digital’s capabilities.

So there it is – my non-binding, non-resolution New Year’s resolution to keep doing what I have been doing and would keep doing whether it was a new year or not – unless of course, I think of something I would rather do instead.

By the way, feel free to comment on the blog and let me know if you have any questions or would like me to explore any particular area of photography in fact (by actually doing something) or fantasy (by merely speculating and telling you what I think about it).