lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

I was kinda saying that. I just used your earlier reply as a jumping in point to the other fellow that actually stated there is not such thing as a film lens. In your and my context (of Nikon & Pentax) they are fairly interchangeable as I stated. But all the camera companies now have HD lenses for their highest resolution sensored cameras. These lenses would exceed the resolution of film itself by far. A view camera lens is in no way "digital" quality.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Djedi

The point of digital is that the original images are made up of 0's and 1's, and saved as such on CD's or HD's. As long as you can access the storage media, the files will stay as they were the day you saved them the first time. Prints from that can always be re-made at any time.

Retina Loc: Near Charleston,SC

What do you think of Fujifilm's Classic Chrome film simulation?

Retina Loc: Near Charleston,SC

35mm was considered small and a compromise in quality in order to get flexibility and portability that was less practical on 120/220 and not possible with cut sheet. It was considered in some circles not unlike the much maligned superzooms of today. Today's FF cameras are more like yesterday's medium and larger format for photographers who need the best IQ and would rarely use 35mm then or a superzooms today when doing work that demands higher IQ. Not to detract from your post and observations about how much heavier electronic cameras can be, it just strikes me as odd to hear 35mm referred to as "full frame", unless it is being compared to the half frame 35 mm or the Minox.

tturner Loc: Savannah Ga

I think anything that advances the industry and art form is a good thing, it seems that Fun film has found a way to recreate the look of Kodachrome in digital. I once tried processing a roll of Kodachrome 25 with a home kit. Do not do this unless you really don't like yourself. I someone can produce the look of kodachrome with the technology of digital that's great, it opens it to a lot of people.

Djedi

Hee hee, I know what you mean- tried processing K25 myself. What a PIA!
Anyway, looking at the film "simulations": most involve various degrees of an increase in contrast and saturation. Just as easy to do in Photoshop or LR or PSP or any other digital "processing tool". Pretty much consistently the opposite of HDR.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

It's great to see this realization. Five !

Most top level performers balance their efforts with the advantages and disadvantages of their gear at some point, but the laws of physics apply equally to all similar gear. Respect those laws, and good results follow. As I said earlier, it isn't the medium, but the message that counts. Use what you like to send that message.

Retina Loc: Near Charleston,SC

Sometimes the medium seems to be at least part of the message when you see people spending hundreds of dollars to add vinyl scratch sounds to clean digital recordings. I wonder if there are filters that simulate film grain to digital photographs, but not curious enough to look it up. I'm not sure I really want to know.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

I migrated from black-and-white to color slides and then to color negative work. When I first got to color negatives, as a systems guy in a pro portrait lab, I learned what "exposure wimps" portrait photographers were as a group. Most of them knew very little to nothing about how to achieve the correct exposure for accurate scene rendition. The lab was fixing 90% of their errors, and they never even knew it, because the film had such great latitude. Our industry even used this to great advantage, by not relying on flash meters when setting up portrait cameras in schools. We had lighting diagrams and various lengths of knotted strings on the light fixtures that indicated distances (and therefore, f/stops and lighting ratios). That usually put us within a stop of normal, which the lab could work with all day long.

When the migration to digital imaging reached the camera in a big way (our lab was scanning film and printing digitally five years earlier), all hell broke loose! Photographers used to labs fixing their exposure errors FREAKED OUT when the labs could not fix their JPEG exposure errors. That was back in the days before Lightroom, Aperture, and other decent raw image post-processing software existed. I had said for 20 years that we had a dirty little secret in our industry that no one was willing to deal with. Well, in 2003, we had to start dealing with it in a big way! I left the production role I had in the lab and went into the field to train our photographer employees and customers.

At the Kodak Professional Imaging conferences in the early 2000s, many of us from Kodak's pro portrait lab customers realized that the exposure problem was UNIVERSAL. I sat in a room with about 75 peers from other labs, and we were all saying the same things... Color negative film had spoiled portrait photographers. They had become, or had been, lazy button pushers. JPEG color and exposure were terrible.

Suddenly, we had to become educators and teach our school portrait photographer customers things they did not want to learn... the HARD things they would have learned from the Zone System and from using color transparency and slide films, and the NEW things they had to know about color management and camera menu settings in an all-digital world.

Immediately, they had to learn about the quality and character of lighting for digital portraits. The hard-source lighting they had used with film to put "snap" in their highlights was wholly inappropriate for digital portraiture. We had to convince them to switch their 11-inch polished bowl aluminum reflectors or 22" soft boxes for 36 and 45 inch white satin umbrellas. We had to reduce their lighting ratios from 3:1 to 2:1. In short, we had to tame the lighting to match the more linear characteristics of digital sensors. We had to teach them to use white balance and exposure targets (to avoid buying expensive flash meters and color temperature meters). I held many of their hands through the learning process, and let me just say that it was "interesting." It was a lot like pushing rope or herding squirrels... They would stare at the proof that digital imaging could look as good as or better than film imaging, but then they would ignore the lessons of HOW. I read them Einstein's quote about the definition of insanity more than a few times... "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results..."

Eventually, our high-end studio customers figured out color management, raw capture, and post-processing, and the JPEGs they sent us that were processed from raw files started looking fantastic. It took a few years, but our retail school portrait photographers shaped up or shipped out, and most of our wholesale school portrait customers adapted well enough.

In the end, those who could not cope with change retired, found other employment, or (in a couple of cases) actually went INSANE. A few customers switched labs, hoping to find someone who could fix their crappy exposures. Some of them came back to us when they realized we knew how to help them with their issues, and we were more patient than the labs they went to. A few others left us to find a lab that would process their film, since we gave that up in 2007...

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Yes, you can simulate film grain (see attachments, ©2017 Bill Burkholder, all rights reserved), as well as practically every film stock ever made. There are software packages that give you virtually any film look ever achieved... even cross-processing C41 in E6 and vice-versa. If you can do it with film, you can fake it with digital.

Some mirrorless cameras (Fujifilm and Olympus make the best examples) actually have really good film simulation modes built-in. Of course, you can use them only for recording JPEGs. Raw images are always, well, raw. Some post-processing packages from camera manufacturers can duplicate the simulation modes present on their cameras, and you can tweak from there...

Most video editing software also has special effects to add film looks and even dust and scratches to a video. It's funny, because for years, digital restorations of old films have sought to REMOVE all those flaws, which have now come back as special effects...

Original raw processed in Lightroom to JPEG

(Download)

Original raw processed in LR and Nik Silver Efex Pro 2

(Download)

Djedi

GREAT narrative Bill!
I started as a High School portrait photographer back in 1977 for an outfit with 5 studios in the NY/NJ area. Unfortunately, most of the people who worked for Lorstan Studios received minimal training, and most of us were just photographer wanna-be's when we were hired, so had little commercial experience. They didn't hire accomplished photographers because they wanted too much money. I started at $1.80/hr, and there were few raises, so not much incentive to do better. Exposure issues resulted from our moving the lights to get a particular lighting effect (strong highlights) and then not returning them before doing another customer. Big X's on the floor showed us where the lights SHOULD be .
Focus was always an issue with the old, rickety 5X7 view cameras, cropped down 2.5" x 3.5" and using ancient Rochester lenses almost wide open with very little depth of field.
That was before digital was even a spark in anyone's mind, so we were safe from the issues you spoke of.
I tell that only to give an idea of how these graduation photo mills worked, where the only important issue was studio profit, and certainly not photographer education. I got out of that gig rather quickly and went out on my own doing antiques photography. But the digital transition must have seemed like total chaos for a while. Glad I wasn't there!
W

frank99

Since Kodachrome was never processable in anything but huge and expensive processing machines requiring precise and extensive chemical analysis throughout the process, you're probably referring to processing Ektachrome or other "E-6" chrome films. (Over the years, Kodak refined the process for their Ektachrome films, starting with Process E-1 and continuing to E-6 released in the 70's. Fujichrome, Agfachrome and probably other slide films were also made to be compatible with the Kodak processes, hence the generic term "E-6" films.) Kits of the chemistry allowed processing in the home darkroom, but as many discovered, it requires meticulous temperature regulation, the chemistry is short-lived once mixed up, and it's a real hassle for the casual or occasional user. Discontinued by Kodak a few years ago, there's now word that Ektachrome of some sort is due to be re-introduced in the near future. Good luck with that, Kodak (or whatever your sold-off film manufacturing assets are called.)

Djedi

You're correct. It was actually a roll of Fujichrome, now that I think about it. Swore never to do that again after the first time.
W

DickC Loc: NE Washington state

I still do both, would hate to give up my darkroom!!