Picture-taking - sad what we now accept...

[MikeP]

The Luddite in me demands I post this...

We were in Panama recently and I shot pics at the canal with both my digital DSLR and and an old Leica M6 shooting Velvia 100 (slide film). I posted a few pics on this site. Yesterday I had the slides developed here in Mexico City (got them the same day - pretty cool),

So now I have current and essentially identical shots within seconds of each other of the same subject - one shot on digital, one on film. Boys and girls, there is no comparison. The slides have far more resolution, much better color, and none of those horribly blown highlights that digital produces regularly in high contrast scenes.

Yeah, I know, film is a PITA compared to the instant gratification of digital but it's another example of how convenience has become far more important than quality.

I can't post a comparison because scanning the slide just "dumbs it down" to digital, losing much of what's there. But both my wife and I were amazed at the difference. It's the first time in at least 10 years that I actually carried a film camera around on travel. I almost wish I hadn't. As the old saying goes, ignorance is bliss.

 

[Boatsb]

Film is still the preferred format of true professionals but the ease of use for the digital makes it tempting.

 

[ThirdHatt]

I believe it Mike. It's kinda funny to me, because when you posted the thread about the 60' Hatt going through the canal you posted a pic of yourself and your beautiful bride at the locks. One of the newcomers to this site made a crack about "nice camera" and I immediately thought, had this newbie been around here long enough to know the MikeP that we know, he would have known that you appreciate the finer things in life, things of quality. Right then I knew that whatever "old school" camera you were wearing around your neck was surely a good one that takes incredible pictures. Your post confirms my suspicions!

Glad you guys had fun. We have enjoyed exploring Panama and transiting the canal. What a beautiful country. If you ever get the chance, spend some time with the Kuna Indians in the San Blas islands on the Caribbean side, south of the canal. Some of the nicest people, pristine beaches and clear weaters for fishing and diving. The San Blas islands are FAR nicer than the Las Perlas islands that are on the Pacific side southwest of the canal.

 

[rsmith]

Sorry but slides just suck. I used to carry around a carrosel projector to give presentations for selling our equiptment. Big heavy POS and in the middle of the presentation the thing would jam or load 2 slides. If you left the slide in too long the bulb would burn it. Good riddance IMHO. Personaly I think lens and optic quality have more to do with pic quality unless your using a large format camera.
BTW my father (as every one was in the 60's, any one remember going to the neighbors for a boring slide party of their last vacation?) was a big slide guy. I have a ton of family and boat pics I want to convert but I'am afraid to send them out. I was in a drug store the other day and a guy was screaming his head off about them losing his family pics. Any recomendations?

 

[lumina]

Hi all,

I have a 22 year old Canon 650 EOS and it is kick ass compared to today digitals i don't care how many pixels they have.

Fully fast auto focus.. use it all the time.

Have the photos put on disk for transfer to pc. No comparison to originals

 

[ppat324]

Sorry but slides just suck. I used to carry around a carrosel projector to give presentations for selling our equiptment. Big heavy POS and in the middle of the presentation the thing would jam or load 2 slides. If you left the slide in too long the bulb would burn it. Good riddance IMHO. Personaly I think lens and optic quality have more to do with pic quality unless your using a large format camera.
BTW my father (as every one was in the 60's, any one remember going to the neighbors for a boring slide party of their last vacation?) was a big slide guy. I have a ton of family and boat pics I want to convert but I'am afraid to send them out. I was in a drug store the other day and a guy was screaming his head off about them losing his family pics. Any recomendations?

When my husband died, I put all of his slides onto 5 DVD's. I took the slides to walmart and they did it for me. I am talking over 1000 slides. most of these pictures were in b/w. The quality is not the best but I dont know what type of film or camera he used in 1968. I do have some AMAZING pictures of Viet Nam, thou.....ppat

 

[Boatsb]

PPat the goofs at Wallyworld are not the ones to trust the pictures that matter to you. I know it will be more expensive but there are professional photography studios that will do a much better job. They can also do restoration and other processes much better as they have a much larger set of "tools" and some have very talented people doing the work. It's your call on what you value for the "special photos" and what are everyday ones.


FWIW I did get to play with a large format 60 MP ( yes 60 mega pixels ) on a Hasselblad camera. Wow what detail. What sharp lines. What a huge file.

Film is an organic format and has some very specific properties. It also has the ability to add grain that we may subconsciously like and it smooths images a bit.

The imager size will also play a role in depth of field and depth of focus. Digital photography is like solid state amplifiers. More accurate sometimes but not always more pleasing.

 

[Trojan]

You get what you pay for. The key IS mega pixels. Digital cameras are still improving. Most people won't spend the money to get quality digital pictures. The more pixels the better the pictures. The film camera with the proper adjustment will still out perform the digital for a while yet. But unless your looking to count the hair on a nats butt in flight.The good digital is going to do just fine. My son has digital shots of his paint ball gun with the paint ball leaving the gun showing the air blast and a clear paint ball. It's just like the old TVs the change from tube to LCDs. to Hi depth. I would believe that the public has not yet seen the same quality of cameras as the TV industry is now using. Just give them time and money to mas produce and your going to throw out that old film. I'll stick with my Sony and not have to bury my head in a blanket to add more memory ( change film ). Some people are still driving model A's and still stick there heads in the blanket. Hay your spats are loose. Whats that phrase, Die Hard.

BILL

 

[MikeP]

Where the film just blew the dig away was in it's resolution of shadow and highlight detail at the same time. Plus the contrast was much better. Shooting the same shot with the same settings on both, the digital blew out the highlights in the sky to capture any detail in the shadows. The film had them both there. I'm serious when I say that the difference in the quality in every way was immediately obvious. There was nothing about the digital images that was as good as, let alone better, than the film images.

Digital is great for posting pics and for taking 20 shots of the same thing when I used to pay attention and take just 1 or 2.

SOmetimes I wonder what the heck we're doing...

Did anyone every have to say "can you hear me now" on a wired telephone?

(I am not really a complete Luddite - I have/ use my Iphone, an Ipad, a Macbook, a Kindle, several Ipods, the desktop computer, etc. )

 

[Boatsb]

You get what you pay for. The key IS mega pixels. Digital cameras are still improving. Most people won't spend the money to get quality digital pictures. The more pixels the better the pictures. The film camera with the proper adjustment will still out perform the digital for a while yet. But unless your looking to count the hair on a nats butt in flight.The good digital is going to do just fine. My son has digital shots of his paint ball gun with the paint ball leaving the gun showing the air blast and a clear paint ball. It's just like the old TVs the change from tube to LCDs. to Hi depth. I would believe that the public has not yet seen the same quality of cameras as the TV industry is now using. Just give them time and money to mas produce and your going to throw out that old film. I'll stick with my Sony and not have to bury my head in a blanket to add more memory ( change film ). Some people are still driving model A's and still stick there heads in the blanket. Hay your spats are loose. Whats that phrase, Die Hard.

BILL

Bill you missed the point. Easier is not always better and you can not get the same look with digital as you do with film. There is no life in a digital picture like there is no life in a solid state amplifier and digital music. More pixels, and higher sample rates just mean more not better. That's why they still make tube amps and film.

 

[Pascal]

Lens quality is the most important element, far more than then howmmajy pixels you have... If the lens isn't great it doesn't matter how many mega pixels you have to capture the average image captured by the average lens.

The word LEICA is key in mike s original post!

I still have a pair of Canon F1 that use once in while

Scaning slides is time consuming but worth it. It helps if you have a retired relative, A few month ago i had my mother scan about 8000 slides dating back all the way to the 60s

 

[Trojan]

Some people still can't give up the past. I suppose the Hubble telescope is all film and all there space shots are junk. They have a little monkey up there sending back film canisters. Come on you old fogies give it up. Your just not with it. If you want to pay for it you can get the same quality pictures. Anyone over 50 cant see or hear as well as they could 20 years. So don't stroke me. Just about everything today is digital. If film was so grand they would not have closed up half the Kodak film producing plants. It's the same thing with music. You old farts can't hear any better than you can see. You just got to love your stamina. Keep on squinting and humming. You will get it. By the way tube amp sound is just about the capacitors they use and they get old and change there constant.

BILL

 

[rsmith]

" A few month ago i had my mother scan about 8000 slides dating back all the way to the 60s"
Sounds like elder abuse to me! LOL

 

[MikeP]

" Come on you old fogies give it up. Your just not with it. If you want to pay for it you can get the same quality pictures. Anyone over 50 cant see or hear as well as they could 20 years. "

This has nothing to do with "old fogies" or poor vision after age 50. All you have to do is look. The difference is easily seen. By your explanation, I shouldn't be able to see any difference because I am WAY over 50 but it's readily apparent.

You can't look at a digital pic on your monitor and compare it with a scanned slide/negative on your monitor. If you do that you are reducing the film's resolution dramatically because of the scanning process.

It's really simple - in the digital shot highlights and or shadows aren't there; in the film shot, they are. With your younger eyes it would be even more apparent!

Again, I can't post the slide but in this digital image the sky is badly blown out. In the film image of the same scene taken maybe 10 seconds later there's a great contrast of blue sky and dramatic clouds.

Thought I'd add - this old fogey switched totally to digital in the late 90's so it's not like this stuff is new to me. I revisited film out of curiosity...

 

[Hatattack]

Anyone shooting digital only I feel bad for you.


I shoot Nikon F6/F100/N80 for my primary cameras. Digital is only used for when carrying film isn't a option. Kodak Extar kicks digitals ass anyday of the week.

 

[krush]

Bad settings? Over exposed? I'm no photographer though

 

[Nonchalant1]

Sorry but slides just suck. I used to carry around a carrosel projector to give presentations for selling our equiptment. Big heavy POS and in the middle of the presentation the thing would jam or load 2 slides. If you left the slide in too long the bulb would burn it. Good riddance IMHO. Personaly I think lens and optic quality have more to do with pic quality unless your using a large format camera.
BTW my father (as every one was in the 60's, any one remember going to the neighbors for a boring slide party of their last vacation?) was a big slide guy. I have a ton of family and boat pics I want to convert but I'am afraid to send them out. I was in a drug store the other day and a guy was screaming his head off about them losing his family pics. Any recomendations?

Many new scanners include slide converters. Mine has a slide and strip film handler that makes it easy to scan negatives or positive images like slides and convert the to color digital, and they're not expensive at all these days. Go to Best Buy and ask.

Doug

 

[yachtsmanbill]

Bad settings? Over exposed? I'm no photographer though

I see the difference now!!

 

[MikeP]

Scanners that I can afford can't pull all the data out of a 35mm slide. THe best scanners around make a 40+mb file out of a slide; that's double what any digital camera in that frame size can produce and far greater resolution.

Re exposure of that digital shot at the canal - You can expose for highlights or you can expose for shadows. If there is a substantial amount of contrast, like that back lighting, there is no "setting" that can overcome the limitations of the recording media, whether its film or digital. But good film has a wider dynamic range than digital so it can capture a wider range of light to dark. If you had a powerful enough flash (there is no flash that powerful - at least that anyone could carry) then you could capture the shadows and the back lighting in that scene and expose them all "properly." Of course, you would be "making" the shadows into "not shadows" and that isn't what the scene looked like. If the sun had been behind me instead of in front of me, there would not have been that contrast and the digital shot would have looked fine contrast-wise.

My point is that the slide contains good sky detail/contrast while the digital shot does not.

Here's a digital shot of the same angle but metered to better expose the sky. Sky looks decent (not you, Sky, the pic of the sky) contrast-wise but the main part of the scene is too dark. In the slide version, the scene canal looks pretty much like the previous digital pic but the sky has detail (clouds/blue sky patches) like this one though brighter. That's the best example I can think of that shows one of the most obvious differences between film/digital

 

[Trojan]

Good answer Mike. The biggest problem in digital pictures is the lighting. The next is the resolution. As I said in the previous post the greater the amount of pixels you have,the better the resolution, providing you have the proper lenses installed for the image you want to take. Being electronic most digital cameras require lots of light day or night. Without proper enhancement through lighting your pictures will suffer. Taking good pictures at night is ruff. The film camera will out do most the digitals today at night. I almost never use my digital at night. I have to admit It's hard to get the quality pictures from most of the digital camera that are sold in most stores today. My Sony works great for most pictures. I sacrifice some of the quality for convenience. Good high end digital cameras are out there, but beyond my pocket book. Tripods are a great aid in getting the best still shots with a medium priced camera. A steady image is a big help preventing light movements on the photo light pickup sensors. Try it some time at night. Take a picture at night with pre- lighting and then take the same one with a flash only. Make sure you use a tripod. Don't get me wrong I think digital cameras are GREAT. I won't ever go back to film.
Reproducing sound with old tube amps is an art. Not many people will take the time to properly re-tune an old amp. It takes many hours and just changing a tube can mess it all up. Solid state is the best. I have built many audio amps for all types of audio applications. I designed a 28 tube 4 channel audio amp 35 years ago just when stereo was young. Removing the hum from the tubes was the hardest part. Lots of hours invested. But in the end you need the best speakers you can find to make it sound good. More than an amp. Solid state not digital is the best. I'm done This old fart is going to rest his eyes and ears.

BILL