> It really is unfair to compare today's digital to film that
> has over a century to be honed and refined. I certainly
> believe that the day will come when there is no difference.
> I don't think that day is today.
Hanging on the walls of my cube are eight photographs. Four of
which are film shots. Without exception you can identify the
film shot based on "look". Even the ones scanned and digitaly
printed!
By themselves, the digital camera shots are dramatic and just
fine. Georgous even. But compared to the film shots there is
just something missing. This goes beyond specifications.
There's something else in play that we haven't quite discovered
yet. No amount of photoshop work seems to help. We can jump
through hoops like LCE (Local Contrast Enhancement) which really
helps, but is still not quite there. LCE mimicks a lot of the
silver migration characteristics of film, but is a broad stroke
applied equally across the entire image instead of the dynamic,
adaptive characteristics of silver migration and uneven
development.
The point is, digital sensor technology is too "perfect" in this
imperfect world. The human eye is not a linear capture device
and we actually see the world closer to the way film sees the
world. Digital, being "better" is not "natural".
This reminds me of the early '90s when I was in the midst of the
digital audio revolution in the broadcast and recording
industries. We were able to create DA and AD converters which
were very clean and transparant. The editing and manipulation
were equally clean and transparant. You know what happened?
The sounds lost life. It wasn't until we added some grunge back
into the sound profile that things started sounding better. We'd
do this through multiple means, but until you did so, the sound
was thin. The algorithms were altered to fatten the sound up
and that pleased everybody but the garage-studio spec readers.
It seemed that the wannabees were more interested in "ultra
clean" than "what sounded right and sold".
Sound familiar?
What eventually happened in pro sound/broadcast is that those
algorithms were eventually removed as the next generation of
engineers took over. An argument can be made that the death of
the music industry began about that time. (At least two of my
algorithms still exist today as part of a very popular protools
plugin--but with the generational changeover, the whys and
wherefores is lost).
So, what we have right now in still imaging is the mad rush
towards "perfect" even though it lacks the intangible element.
If specifications meant everything, then why am I so enamoured
with a print from Bill Barber where he used a pinhole cap on an
E-1?
AG
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