Digital photography vs. film photography by D'Lynn Waldron, PhD

I have been a professional ethnographic and travel photographer and portrait artist for over 50 years, and I have been involved with the development of the technology used in digital imaging since 1984.

The technology for digital imaging is evolving at an awesome speed! Soon there will be palm-sized digital cameras with which you can take very high resolution still images and full HD video, with the GPS location embedded, and surf the internet via WiFi, so while on holiday in London, you can go on-line and check free stuff on Gumtree for what's free nearby, the best places to shop, and a good place to eat.

I do photo-digital art and digitally painted still and animated portraits for the movies, television specials and print media. But my favorite work is doing the photography, audio and video of symphony orchestras, especially my home town's Santa Monica Symphony which was again this season honored by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.

I could not do the work I do now in available light without digital imaging technology, though there are things for which film is still superior

FILM vs. DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

IMAGE QUALITY

BLACK & WHITE FILM is the only way to produce art quality B&W prints because the image is a single monochrome silver halide layer. The grayscale from a digital camera is a desaturated RGB that was created by sensors, and it takes significant adjustments in Photoshop to do a half way acceptable job of imitating B&W film.

COLOR FILM gives a superior image quality especially when compared with digital at the higher ISO sensitivity settings which are needed to get an image in low light. With film, the colors stay smooth in the dark areas. Digital images become speckled with bright colors which is called 'noise'.

However digital has distinct advantages over film for most uses.

Cameras like my Rebel T2i with 18 megapixel images have the same number of pixels as the grain in ISO 200 color film, so resolution is no longer a question.

Digital cameras can get pictures in much lower light than any film can, however, as noted above, dark areas in the higher ISOs are speckled with bright colors. (See partial cure for noise below.) Additionally, as with film, image quality falls off rapid as ISO increases and at ISO 12,800 the image is unusable.

SLR vs. RANGEFINDER

Companies like Leica which made the M3 I still use after 54 years, continue to make the M rangefinder and S single lens reflex film cameras, along with the equivalents in digital cameras.

SLR cameras have a mirror that makes a very audible ka-chunk as it goes up and down.
Rangefinder cameras can have an almost silent shutter.

At concerts, I can only use an SLR up in the light or control booth, or backstage with the wings curtain between me and the audience, and only then during the louder parts of the music.

I would never take photographs from in the audience with any camera, but a nonSLR can be used from the back or side of the audience with me dressed all in black.

FILM vs DIGITAL IMAGING

I have a Canon film body that can use my Canon lenses, but with with the demise of Kodachrome, the only archival and the finest grain film, and my no longer using my dark room to make prints, I am all but entirely digital.

Unfortunately, digital cannot come anywhere near film for black and white imaging. Black and white film is a single silver halide layer. Digital grayscale is just desaturated RGB and can never be made to look as good as a print made from film onto paper.

Color film has one important advantage over digital images, there is no 'noise'.

'Noise' is the speckles of bright colors that appear in the dark areas of digital images and get worse the higher the ISO 'speed' (which is the sensitivity of the CCD to light.)

Digital images have several big advantages over film.

Digital has wider latitude, which is the amount of information visible between the lightest and darkest areas.
Digital can obtain an image in very much less light than film.
Digital memory cards are very affordable, can hold thousands of high resolution images, are tiny and are reusable.

With a digital camera you see the image immediately after you take it and with professional cameras you can enlarge any part of that image to the pixel level to check the focus.

Subjects always like it when they can see the image right after it is taken .

Digital images can be immediately uploaded, which often makes the difference in whether the event is covered or not in the media.

THE DARKROOM vs. PHOTOSHOP

Film can be shot through filters, can be 'pushed' in development to increase the information that is shown in dark areas, and given a long water bath before fixing to bring up all the information in the highlights. Prints can be made on various kinds of paper and through various filters on the enlarger, and there can be manual dodging and burning. But the results are not visible until the film or print is developed, which can mean spoiled film and wasted time in trial and error printing.

For every hour I spend with the camera, I spend 10 hours in Photoshop.

Cameras have white balance adjustment which can be left automatic, can be set according to the light from provided options, or fine-tuned with a white card. No matter which I use, I almost always do further adjustments in Photoshop. The quickest one (when it works on that particular image) is first to do Auto Color, which makes the white clean, but the rest of the image becomes unattractively 'cool', so I then use Fade to reduce the effect of Auto Color and restore some warmth to the image.

Another important function in Photoshop, especially with symphony orchestras, is to balance the light on the large stage which is usually unevenly lit. I make a stack of layers of the original image and create layers with screen and with multiply. Then I erase down so what needs to be darkened is shown in a Multiply layer and what needs to be lightened is shown in a Screen layer.

In my days with film, before taking the photograph I went around picking up litter and moving things that I didn't want in the photograph. Now I do much of that in Photoshop with tools like Clone.

I often have to use my ability as a portrait painter to paint in foreheads and bald heads that are 'blown' to white where the musician is in a hot spot of light.

SHARPENING AND JPEG ARTIFACTS

Sharpening can increase apparent resolution by creating white and dark lines where contrasting areas meet.

This is an automatic part of jpeg compression unless it is done at the very highest setting, 12, which is virtually lossless. This setting is better than what is available in most digital cameras, which do not go above 10, meaning there is some small amount of artifacting, but not enough to be seen in normal use.

Jpeg artifacts and sharpening are HIGHLY undesirable in faces because pores become craters. I always turn off sharpening in digital cameras and put the jpeg compression setting as high as the camera allows.

RAW images do not have sharpening or white balance applied and they are uncompressed and are therefore at least five times the size of the highest available jpeg setting. Because of the time to save to the card, only the latest cameras and the highest speed memory cards (6 and above) allow any form of burst shooting with RAW

Some digital SLRs can be set save the image in both its RAW form and as a jpeg for convenience.

SHUTTER SPEED VS. MEDIA SENSITIVITY VS. APERTURE

I never use anything but full manual settings, which in an SLR can all be changed manually and very quickly.

Every image and every situation has its best combination of shutter speed, ISO sensitivity to light, and aperture.

Shutter speed determines how fast something can be moving before it blurs- a conductor's baton can usually only be stopped at a 500th of a second, but I rarely have enough light for faster than a 250th without degrading the image.

ISO determines how sensitive the CCD is to light, but each increase in sensitivity reduces quality and increases the color speckles called 'noise'. I do not like to go above 800 ISO when photographing a symphony. At 1600 ISO the conductor looks like he has colored speckles on his black tail coat, at 3200 it is confetti, at 12,800 everything is covered in sequins.

The Rebel T2i has an algorithm that reduces noise, but at the cost of sharpness. I use a procedure in Photoshop that at least blends out the color of the speckles. I apply Gaussian blur to the amount that the color is all smeared together. Then I got into Fade and make the Gaussian 100% but only on Color. The sharpness returns but the hues of the speckles are blended out. It is still not the smooth tones one gets from film, but it is an improvement.

Aperture is how wide the iris in the lens is opened and that along with focal length determines depth of field. Depth of field is the distance in which the image is in sharp focus. The more wide angle the lens the greater the depth of field. Telephoto lenses have a very shallow depth of field. With the conductor I need enough depth of field that he stays in focus when he leans towards the camera, out over the first violins. With my 85mm 1.8 Canon lens I usually cannot get away with less that f 2.5.

This combination of ISO 800, 250th of a second, f 2.5 is usually a stop under depending on how much I have been able to aim and adjust the stage lights before the concert, so I take the image into Photoshop and do one stop of Screen.

Color transparency film maxes out at ISO 400. Color negative film goes up to ISO 800.
B&W maxes out at 3200 push processed, but 400 is about the highest film for good quality.

When I use auto focus is is always on spot setting, and for the conductor I have to set a manual focus and leave it because he he moves around so much that the camera would be constantly changing focus to the background beyond him.

STORAGE & OBSOLESCENCE

All media must be properly prepared, handled and stored or it will not survive

Silver halide B&W film is 'archival' and can last for centuries.

Kodachrome color transparency film is considered 'archival' and has already lasted for more than half a century in my files without any loss of quality.

All other color films are subject to color shift and fading. How fast that happens depends on the storage conditions and the particular film stock.

Anything stored in digital form is subject to format obsolescence, and to media deterioration. Updating the file type and putting the images on fresh discs every four or five years is very advisable. A hard drive is no place to keep an image safe.