Adirpho

After nearly twenty years and the investment if many thousands of dollars, I am convinced that film and digital each have a rightful place in imaging; but that digital origination can never replace the aesthetic renditioned of film.

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

A lot of people have been saying that all along, also that digital will never reach the IQ and/or resolution of film! ( I also believe that)!

BebuLamar

So how do you use your film? If you use a scanner then a copy of a copy is better than a copy of the real thing?

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

Before I was willing to move to digital I sent some Kodachrome slides to a professional who made 3000x2000 scans. After carefully comparing slides to scans, I could find no detail on a slide that was missing from the corresponding scan, so I decided I'd move to digital once I could afford a camera with a 6 MP sensor. Today I am quite positive that modern cameras provide sharper detail than we ever got from film.

rook2c4 Loc: Philadelphia, PA USA

Perhaps similar to traditional painting versus digital "painting" with software, graphics tablet and stylus.

Concerning the aesthetics of film - when I shoot digitally, often I find myself editing the image such to resemble the look I get from film. Sometimes I can come close, but not quite. Then I shoot the same scene with film, and there it is. No further work needed.

From my analysis, one of the big differences between the two is how they render the highlights. With film, there is a visually pleasing glow to the highlights, subtly interacting beyond the edges of the highlight. Whereby digital has a harsher cut-off at the edges of the highlight, and less gentle luminosity roll off within the highlight itself.

cthahn

Never say never.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I shots lots of film over the years, but I'm glad I switched to digital, for many reasons. You might find the articles below interesting.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/filmdig.htm
https://petapixel.com/2015/05/26/film-vs-digital-a-comparison-of-the-advantages-and-disadvantages/
https://digital-photography-school.com/film-vs-digital/
https://fstoppers.com/film/why-film-vs-digital-non-issue-174448

FotoPhreak Loc: Whittier, CA

I started out with a 35mm camera but moved up to medium format (Mamiya 645) and eventually went digital. Last year I purchased a Plustek 120 film scanner to digitize my medium format slides. It has been very instructive to compare the film scans with my digital pictures. I honestly cannot say that I prefer one over the other. I really like the colors on the film scans. There are hard to describe differences in the sharpness between the scans and the digital pictures. I attribute much of this to the fact that the film grain is a bit random in comparison to a digital camera sensor. But I really don't miss my retired Mamiya 645 because the lenses were fixed focal length and rather pricey. In the digital world, I use zoom lenses that allow me to frame the picture much better. And I definitely do not miss spending time in my darkroom making prints. I now spend my time in my Lightroom, sometimes sipping a beer as I work. A while back, my daughter asked me to make her a print of a picture I had taken in Glacier NP in the 80's. I scanned it and had a large print made by an outside lab and the print was spectacular. So while I long for the colors of film, I really appreciate the convenience of digital.

Bill_de Loc: US

Has anyone here who likes the look of film tried using software to emulate film? I know there are long lists of film that can be applied to digital images. I've never had a reason to try it, but wondered if any film advocates have.

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FotoPhreak Loc: Whittier, CA

I have run across products that will emulate film, but I have never had any desire to use them. I have always shot fine grain film. The products that I have seen appear apply a 'grain' filter to make the pictures appear that they were shot using grainy film. Since I have tried to minimize grain in my pictures, I have no interest in these products. While I miss the subtle colors of film, the differences between film and digital are not so significant that I really favor one over the other. There are so many advantages to digital that I really appreciate and don't miss the film world all that much. It's like cars. There are several classic cars I dream of owning but today's cars are so superior to those classic cars in terms of safety and technology, I am happy to leave those classic cars to my dreams.

kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

After recently going back and scanning some of my old negatives, I was absolutely gobsmacked at how poor they are in terms of detail and dynamic range--this for both 35mm and medium format. I will never go back to film and good riddance. It was costly, fragile, took up loads of space for storage, subject to aging and monstrously difficult to manipulate in the darkroom, compared to what we have today. Some people say that there is a quality to horse carriages that you cannot get from today's automobiles. Those people are welcome to them.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

I will agree with you regarding rightful places. For those of us that have used film extensively will agree with its esthetic value and capabilities. I've run into people who have never used film and are only digital knowledgeable.

Though, if one thinks about it, film is digital and digital is analog.
--Bob

fourlocks Loc: Londonderry, NH

I agree with Kymarto. I spent last winter digitizing my old slides and I was amazed at how many of them I would delete today, if they were digital images. Even on automatic settings my Nikon almost always does a better job than I used to with my old Nikkormat and there's no comparison when I take the time to manually make all the settings. As far as the quality of the recording medium, I'll argue that while digital imaging is subject to hardware and software manipulation as the image is captured, film images were subject to the vagaries of the chemical coatings used. As I recall, I used to select Ektachrome if I wanted deeper blues and greens while Kodachrome was the choice for warm colors. How was that not a "manipulated image"? Fact is, even our eyes and brain "manipulate" the image we "see" so who's to say what something actually looks like? But that's a whole other discussion. For me, it's "go digital."

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

I scan mine. However, I don't see that as a copy of a copy. I see that the same as projecting the negative onto a sheet of photo paper. It's still the first iteration. Additionally, I still get more detail and information with film than digital.
--Bob

wmurnahan Loc: Bloomington IN

Digital will never be able to replace a real B&W taken with film and printed on B&W silver paper, where the black is created by an oxidized metal giving the finished picture a depth that an ink jet just can't replicate. Now for color, I don't see any advantage of film.