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Other articles in the "Opinion" series CanoScan
4200F Film
vs. Digital
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Before looking into these claims, we need some kind of reference as to exactly what digital photography is. This can be the first trap to catch the pro-film society as it is generally accepted that any image, no matter how captured, once digitised falls into the category “digital photography”. This makes the act of scanning a transparency digital photography – as at this point it can be digitally manipulated just like an image that has been captured by a digital camera (which is in fact and analogue process, the sensor captures analogue waves, the same as film – which are then digitised in the camera). There is also the issue of printing, which even if you use film and take it to a regular photoshop for development is likely to be printed using a digital printer. So to define exactly what is conventional and what is digital we can say that a conventional print must have been captured on film, developed in chemicals and printed using an enlarger and a chemical process. Anything else (with the possible exception of the printing process) is digital photography. Now we know what we are comparing, let’s examine some of the claims that film shooters often aim at digital photography:
I suspect that the number one reason why this statement is made (and the only one with any weight) is the fact that digital capture offers the ability to review the image on a screen directly after capture. This allows the shooter to see if the image required has been caught or whether another go is required – if that is possible of course. This is an advantage, but again only one of convenience. The film shooter will bracket exposures, shoot many angles and orientations to ensure the image required is caught. This does not make him/her a better photographer or his equipment any more difficult to use – it just means he needs to spend more time at it and burn off more money. In the past when the image has really had to be spot on, professionals have used polaroids to get instant feedback, now they have a screen. Again just convenience.
“digital manipulation means you cannot trust an image to be a true representation” – this is my biggest gripe, it is for the most part a wildly inaccurate statement in as much as it infers that with film the image was always a truthful representation!!! It is true that the possibilities for extreme manipulation of a digitised image (so we are not talking about digital cameras here, an image shot on film and scanned can have an equal amount of manipulation applied) exceed what is possible in the darkroom. By extreme manipulation I mean removing or adding fundamental elements of the image through composition. It cannot be argued that this is a concern where the image has to be truthful to the scene, such as photojournalism, but in other cases it opens a whole new area of the art – if you successfully add or remove fundamental elements then you are doing no worse than staging the composition prior to shooting. This is a fine line and also quite rare. Apart from this extreme manipulation, the digital manipulation that 99% of photographs undergo alters the image no more than what would be possible in the darkroom. Overall exposure adjustment, dodging and burning, contrast adjustment, toning, spotting are all procedures from the darkroom, which can be duplicated in imaging software. I just don’t see where the difference is in terms of the end product. Yes in a darkroom you have to handle chemicals, you have to put up with the smell, usually working in a confined room. You have to learn many techniques and skills to ensure correct exposure, correct paper selection, manufacture tools to assist in local exposure adjustment – but in order for you to do this you must first know what you want the end image to look like. In a digital darkroom there are the advantages of working in a more pleasant environment, but the vision of the end image is the same. The path to get there differs, you have to learn how to use your software to make the very same adjustments your darkroom counterpart would be making. So, although the technical skills differ, both methods require technical skills be mastered, but the artistic vision remains the same.
As I pointed out at the start, this is not a crusade to support either film nor digital, the simple fact is that the artistic skills required to take a photograph of quality remain the same – there are some specific technical differences to consider when deciding how to take the shot, but that is true between different cameras of the same medium. In the end the decision to choose one media over the other comes down to personal preference and other influencing factors, such as speed of delivery to a client. There are of course bigger differences in the processing of the images, but again this is a choice of preference and/or necessity. I myself choose the digital route for both capture and process. The reasoning behind this is quite simple, and has little to do with the comparative quality – I desire control over my images from shooting to printing and, in my current situation living on a temporary basis in each location, I cannot transport all the necessary darkroom equipment from location to location. This leaves me with only two choices, to let someone else process the film and do the printing or take my digital darkroom in the shape of a laptop. The former is not an option as I would lose control over the quality of the final print. As I choose to process digitally, it then follows that I may as well capture digitally, rather than carry additional loads of a scanner – which is only viable if you can have the film processed reliably, not so in these locations. When
the time comes to have a more fixed base, I will certainly not abandon
digital, but I will mix it with shooting film and processing in a darkroom
– after all, both have qualities and strengths of their own, and
provide two interesting paths to a similar product.
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At
the outset I want to state that this editorial is not to convey whether
I consider digital to now meet or exceed film, in fact it is exactly that
topic of debate which enrages me. It seems that everyone has an opinion
on the subject, and most that I have read/heard fall on one side of the
fence or the other, and usually for the most inaccurate or inappropriate
reasons. However, the line of attack which infuriates me the most are
the claims of film users that digital in some way degrades photography,
making it easy to take great photographs and that images from a digital
medium are likely to have been doctored and not truly record the actual
scene.
“Shooting
digital is easier” – a tricky statement as it
has to be interpreted exactly what is meant by "easier", but
some assumptions can be made. Taking a photograph is a matter of recognising,
or staging, line, form, pattern, light, colour, balance – in other
words subject and composition. The better these are, the better the resulting
photograph will be. These elements reflect light onto the film or sensor
which records this information. The fact that one is recorded by chemical
process and one by electronic process is neither here nor there –
the information available for capture is the same. The pro-filmers will
step in and state that the camera sensor can be adjusted to be more sensitive,
or the software in the camera can modify the information from the sensor
to adjust colour balance. Very true, but this differs from selecting to
use a different film to increase ISO or alter colour balance only in convenience
– I don’t think anyone is arguing that digital is not more
convenient. If this is the basis of their argument, then surely the only
legitimate claims can come from those who use cameras without a built-in
light meter or autofocus. Dynamic range, (the difference between the darkest
and lightest points of a scene that a medium can capture) is a quality
which could truly make photography easier, at least in technical terms.
The limitation of a film or sensor to be only able to capture bright areas
of a scene 7 times brighter (for example) than the darkest before rendering
them white is truly a large part of the photographer’s skill. However,
when we look here we find that, currently, digital sensors have a slightly
smaller dynamic range than print film, meaning that the photographer has
less scope for error in his exposure settings. Transparency film (slide)
has an even smaller DR than digital, so it could be said that digital
capture is easier than transparency capture – at least in terms
of exposure.
Apart
from these differences, there is no difference in capturing digital to
film. All the controls remain the same – and these are only technical
differences which have no bearing on the artistic interpretation of a
scene – which after all is what we are concerned with. I would go
further to say that digital capture introduces some additional inconveniences
over film that really swing capture convenience back to film, namely storage
and power. A film SLR will run on one small battery for many thousands
of exposures, film is relatively cheap and can be purchased practically
anywhere. A digital SLR will require that you carry a charger, have some
electrical outlet to charge it and when your memory media is full –
you either need to return home to download, or carry further computer
equipment with you – hardly a convenience.
To
offer an absolute recording of a scene is a document, generally photographers
want to, and should be adding their own angle to the scene. This is what
makes photographs pleasing to view and what separates one photographer
from the next. For well over 100 years photographers have been using techniques
to alter the flat recorded image to enhance the viewing experience, and
the tricks and techniques to achieve this are as varied and successful
as those in the digital darkroom. Those who believe that digital photography
means that the saying “the camera never lies” no longer holds
true, should not have been so naïve to have ever believed it.