Topic: Film vs digital

[Indofunk]

W/R/T over/under exposure. I think we all know this, but I like seeing hard evidence

https://petapixel.com/2019/05/02/film-vs-digital-this-is-how-dynamic-range-compares/

[Faintandfuzzy]

I'd say the dynamic range of film and digital are both so good that it is splitting hairs trying to decide what meaningful differences there are now. 

[cs1]

My conclusion is this: just bracket 10 stops (no matter if it's digital or film) around what you think is the right exposure and at least two shots will turn out just fine.

[Francois]

And then stack them together to make the ultimate HDR image 

[EarlJam]

I've come to the conclusion that I need to expose digital in the same way I shot transparency and under-expose 1/3 stop. I still feel I get more consistent and predictable results from film, though.

[Francois]

You're right in a way. Sensors do behave more like slide film than anything else.
In my now old Nikon DSLR I have a CCD sensor that has about a 3 stop range. Come to think of it, I probably should recharge the batteries as I haven't even used it in about a year.

[everydaylanre]

Shoot film during the day and digital at night to take advantage of over/under exposing benefits 

[Late Developer]

When I shoot digital, I use the viewfinder histogram and "expose to the right" - that is, expose as bright as possible without reaching the white point. This is a technique I saw demonstrated on some YouTube video or other and, at least to me, it makes sense for general daytime photos because it's easy to reduce exposure and bring back shadow detail without adding noise. It also doesn't oversaturate and lets you control saturation by adding rather than reducing which, for me, seems to deliver better results.  Underexposing digital files and then increasing exposure is fine if it's only a stop or so but, much beyond that and (dependent upon the sensor) noise and other artefacts start to become apparent.

With print film, I just shoot it at half the box speed (overexpose by 1 stop).  Slide film (which, when K64 was around was my main film type) was shot at ISO 80 or 100. I haven't shot slide for a while but I've got a couple of packs expired of 220 Fuji Velvia 50 which I'd like to use up this summer.

[Sandeha Lynch]

A landscape photographer who used to shoot slide film on 4x5 once advised - if it's more than a 5 stop range, pack up and go home.

Probably good advice for Velvia but not pertinent for digital.  Given how different Fuji and Kodak are at dealing with colour, and how different each of them might be for the colour palette I want, I'd use a digital sensor every time except when I specifically want the looks they offer.

It would be hard trying to replicate the Ektar look using ProH400 ... and vice versa.

[hookstrapped]

Dynamic range is overrated...or, at least, technical capabilities available shouldn't always be utilized.

https://youtu.be/zCOI7bYDPrM

[Jeff Warden]

Dynamic range is overrated...or, at least, technical capabilities available shouldn't always be utilized.

https://youtu.be/zCOI7bYDPrM

I agree. Dynamic range and megapixels both sell cameras, but neither do all that much to improve images unless the very point of the image is dynamic range and/or size. That was a nice video.

[Francois]

All I have to add to this is : don't you just love HDR?

[hookstrapped]

 Not to hijack this thread, but I like the take here

https://www.casualphotophile.com/2019/05/29/why-i-shoot-film-even-though-you-didnt-ask/

[Francois]

This is quite true.
I have a friend who's son is a mechanic. He told him to never buy a car that has a lot of electronic gizmos. At the garage where he worked, somebody accidentally connected the battery wrong on an SUV. It fried ALL the sensors within a split second. Result: over 40,000$ in damaged components.

My neighbor dumped two laptops on top of the recycle bin. Both were broken. I picked them up not being able to bare seeing things like that go in the trash. On one, he had broken the plastic power button cover. Took me an entire afternoon to take the darn thing apart and glue back the plastic button in place. I reassembled it and to my surprise it worked just fine. Since he had removed the hard disk on this one, I burned Puppy Linux on a CD and gave the whole thing to charity. The other one, somebody had tripped over the poser cord and it caused some plastic damage. I took it apart, ordered a new power cable on eBay and somehow managed to fix it (while breaking another piece of flimsy plastic inside... tape to the rescue this time). I kept this one.

A few years ago, I found a nice typewriter next to a trash bin. It's in perfect working order so I opted to keep it.

Last weekend when I went garage sale hopping, I saw a pile on the sidewalk with a sign that said "FREE". Found a surprisingly nice digicam in mint condition and it's Lowepro bag. The problem with it: only 6.1 megapixels...

So much of the stuff we buy nowadays can be considered disposable. And I find this to be a definitely sad thing as it says a lot about both the world we live in and the state of the planet.

[Bryan]

Last weekend when I went garage sale hopping, I saw a pile on the sidewalk with a sign that said "FREE". Found a surprisingly nice digicam in mint condition and it's Lowepro bag. The problem with it: only 6.1 megapixels...

Sounds like it needs the UV filter ripped out of it.

[Francois]

Might try and rip the IR filter out. But I'll have to try it out as-is first.
I did rip out the filter out of two cameras. One of them was a real pain to re-assemble as I had to re-solder some tiny wires. The other was so cheap it was easy to do, but I lost infinity focus in the process (IR doesn't focus at the same place as regular light).