Which is film?, which is Digital?..oh the fun is about to begin.

I'm thinking along the same lines as Karl, although he knows more about the scanners than I do. With what little of my film work I've either scanned or had put on a CD, I realized I don't see the pixelated edges. If I wasn't told one of these was film, I'd think they were both digital.

The only thing so far that occurs to me as a possibility is that the images are enlargements of part of a photo and in the process of enlarging them digitally, they both show a bit of pixelating. As Karl said, film can be more or less grainy depending on the film and the lighting conditions but the grain isn't the shape of pixels. So I'm not sure how a film image could end up with any pixelating as it's just not there in a film negative or print.

After careful analysis of the pictures, I deem the second one's pixelated noise to be a result of the compression that this site puts on photos and nothing to do with the scanning.

Us film camera lovers know that digital is inferior when it comes to edges and dynamic range and such. Sure printers print in a series of dots these days, but we don't let that stop us.

Colourful Photography wrote: After careful analysis of the pictures, I deem the second one's pixelated noise to be a result of the compression that this site puts on photos and nothing to do with the scanning.

Us film camera lovers know that digital is inferior when it comes to edges and dynamic range and such. Sure printers print in a series of dots these days, but we don't let that stop us.

Scotty wrote:

Colourful Photography wrote: After careful analysis of the pictures, I deem the second one's pixelated noise to be a result of the compression that this site puts on photos and nothing to do with the scanning.

Us film camera lovers know that digital is inferior when it comes to edges and dynamic range and such. Sure printers print in a series of dots these days, but we don't let that stop us.

Nice!!!!!!

Scotty wrote:

Alex wrote: I'm saying both shots with same camera that has some debris on sensor

I uploaded the same one twice on accident...zenfolio was being weird. Updated, now there's two different ones up.


Try again!

Ah ha! Cool shot Scotty... where was this taken?

So Scotty, when do we find out the answer?

As we are viewing the photos online they must both be digital photographs. One is a digital photo taken with a portable digital camera at the actual subject location. The other is a digital photo of the film original taken with a non-portable digital camera. With a good digital processing skill set it should be possible to make small examples like we see here indistinguishable from each other by the typical photo viewer.

This sort of example doesn't tell us as much about the intrinsic properties of film and digital as it does the difference in the photographer's or photographers' skills and resources when it comes to an all digital workflow vs a hybrid film/digital workflow. It shows me that Scotty and his friend appear to be quite competent with either.

Henry Peach wrote: As we are viewing the photos online they must both be digital photographs. One is a digital photo taken with a portable digital camera at the actual subject location. The other is a digital photo of the film original taken with a non-portable digital camera. With a good digital processing skill set it should be possible to make small examples like we see here indistinguishable from each other by the typical photo viewer.

This sort of example doesn't tell us as much about the intrinsic properties of film and digital as it does the difference in the photographer's or photographers' skills and resources when it comes to an all digital workflow vs a hybrid film/digital workflow.

Henry Peach wrote: As we are viewing the photos online they must both be digital photographs. One is a digital photo taken with a portable digital camera at the actual subject location. The other is a digital photo of the film original taken with a non-portable digital camera. With a good digital processing skill set it should be possible to make small examples like we see here indistinguishable from each other by the typical photo viewer.

This sort of example doesn't tell us as much about the intrinsic properties of film and digital as it does the difference in the photographer's or photographers' skills and resources when it comes to an all digital workflow vs a hybrid film/digital workflow. It shows me that Scotty and his friend appear to be quite competent with either.

You sir are wrong. Both were shot on location. One shot is not a portable cam taking a picture of a film picture.



P.S. I don't believe I'm competent either.

No 1 is film No 2 is Digital, one reason is the crop, I dont think Scotty would crop of the top of the Plane, also the quality of the photo is better in one and I stil think film produces better images than digital, just my tuppence worth for what its worth.

Scotty wrote:

Henry Peach wrote: As we are viewing the photos online they must both be digital photographs. One is a digital photo taken with a portable digital camera at the actual subject location. The other is a digital photo of the film original taken with a non-portable digital camera. With a good digital processing skill set it should be possible to make small examples like we see here indistinguishable from each other by the typical photo viewer.

This sort of example doesn't tell us as much about the intrinsic properties of film and digital as it does the difference in the photographer's or photographers' skills and resources when it comes to an all digital workflow vs a hybrid film/digital workflow. It shows me that Scotty and his friend appear to be quite competent with either.

You sir are wrong. Both were shot on location. One shot is not a portable cam taking a picture of a film picture.



P.S. I don't believe I'm competent either.

I think you missed what he said (or I'm misunderstanding what you said). He is right. If you are saying one is a film photo and the other is a dslr photo, the dslr is the portable and the film photo is taken with I non portable. Non portable being the scanner. We are looking at a 2nd generation digital image of a 1st generation image made on film. Technically they are both digital images.

Confession is good for the soul.

Karl Wertanen wrote:

Scotty wrote:

Henry Peach wrote: As we are viewing the photos online they must both be digital photographs. One is a digital photo taken with a portable digital camera at the actual subject location. The other is a digital photo of the film original taken with a non-portable digital camera. With a good digital processing skill set it should be possible to make small examples like we see here indistinguishable from each other by the typical photo viewer.

This sort of example doesn't tell us as much about the intrinsic properties of film and digital as it does the difference in the photographer's or photographers' skills and resources when it comes to an all digital workflow vs a hybrid film/digital workflow. It shows me that Scotty and his friend appear to be quite competent with either.

You sir are wrong. Both were shot on location. One shot is not a portable cam taking a picture of a film picture.



P.S. I don't believe I'm competent either.

I think you missed what he said (or I'm misunderstanding what you said). He is right. If you are saying one is a film photo and the other is a dslr photo, the dslr is the portable and the film photo is taken with I non portable. Non portable being the scanner. We are looking at a 2nd generation digital image of a 1st generation image made on film. Technically they are both digital images.

LOL

Well comparisons on the web are always gonna have pixels. So you can't really say anything about the pixels in these shots and they shouldn't even come into the equation when trying to decide which one of these is from film and which one is from digital.

BTW I will say this for film. If you have a high enough resolution scanner (highest I've seen is 9600 dpi). You can get photos from 35mm film that are 100+ MP. Even more with Medium/Large format. But for 35mm film the maximum realistically is about 170MP (seems like a lot right, but it comes with a caveat...)

Thing is... you have to have a lens that can resolve that well, you need really good film stock and you need really good technique. Anything that high resolution is gonna show up any little flaw in your image.

This is all theoretical because you could just keep going up and up with an analogue medium like film. But when it comes down to it either our eyes hit a limit to what we can see or all that blowing up just shows how crappy your shot was in the first place. Also it assumes that the film shot managed to get all the details on there. Which is dependant on many things.

So in real life the advantage isn't as great at the theoretical calculations.

In real life, 35mm film is about equivalent of 21-24MP (assuming good film stock and technique). Mostly though a 12MP digital is enough to match film.

Also digital has generally surpassed film (a few years ago) when it comes to dynamic range. The max dynamic range you can get from film (and this is really pushing it) is 12 stops. The D7000 at base ISO has 14 stops. DSLR cameras have at least 8 stops and an not so great film stock will have about 6. So the "film has greater dynamic range" is now a myth sorry to say.

From one of my links:

This shows that the Canon 1D Mark II has a much higher dynamic range than either Fujichrome Velvia slide film and Kodak Gold 200 print film. Kodak Gold 200, in this test, showed 7 stops of information, Fujichrome Velvia 5 stops, and the Canon 1D Mark II, over 10 stops of information! Further image analysis shows at least 10.6 stops are recorded by the canon 1D Mark II camera (the full range of of detail in this image, Other testing of the noise level versus intensity shows the Canon 1D Mark II has 11.7 stops of dynamic range.

This is from a very old camera too. Now there's even more dynamic range in digital and film still stays the same (well it has physical limits that have been reached, digital still has some ways to go).

Film does have smoother drop off when it comes to overexposed areas though. Which is nice.

Light reading:
www.clarkvision.com/articles/film.vs.digital.summary1/
www.clarkvision.com/articles/dynamicrange2/

BTW I know which one is which already, so I don't need to guess.

ALSO: If you shoot film and love it. Go for it. It's all about the finished photo not how many MP you have or which one is smoother or has more dynamic range. Just use what you want.

Karl Wertanen wrote:

Scotty wrote:

Henry Peach wrote: As we are viewing the photos online they must both be digital photographs. One is a digital photo taken with a portable digital camera at the actual subject location. The other is a digital photo of the film original taken with a non-portable digital camera. With a good digital processing skill set it should be possible to make small examples like we see here indistinguishable from each other by the typical photo viewer.

This sort of example doesn't tell us as much about the intrinsic properties of film and digital as it does the difference in the photographer's or photographers' skills and resources when it comes to an all digital workflow vs a hybrid film/digital workflow. It shows me that Scotty and his friend appear to be quite competent with either.

You sir are wrong. Both were shot on location. One shot is not a portable cam taking a picture of a film picture.



P.S. I don't believe I'm competent either.

I think you missed what he said (or I'm misunderstanding what you said). He is right. If you are saying one is a film photo and the other is a dslr photo, the dslr is the portable and the film photo is taken with I non portable. Non portable being the scanner. We are looking at a 2nd generation digital image of a 1st generation image made on film. Technically they are both digital images.

I gotcha.

I still disagree with him about me being competent.

Scotty wrote:

Karl Wertanen wrote:

Scotty wrote:

Henry Peach wrote: As we are viewing the photos online they must both be digital photographs. One is a digital photo taken with a portable digital camera at the actual subject location. The other is a digital photo of the film original taken with a non-portable digital camera. With a good digital processing skill set it should be possible to make small examples like we see here indistinguishable from each other by the typical photo viewer.

This sort of example doesn't tell us as much about the intrinsic properties of film and digital as it does the difference in the photographer's or photographers' skills and resources when it comes to an all digital workflow vs a hybrid film/digital workflow. It shows me that Scotty and his friend appear to be quite competent with either.

You sir are wrong. Both were shot on location. One shot is not a portable cam taking a picture of a film picture.



P.S. I don't believe I'm competent either.

I think you missed what he said (or I'm misunderstanding what you said). He is right. If you are saying one is a film photo and the other is a dslr photo, the dslr is the portable and the film photo is taken with I non portable. Non portable being the scanner. We are looking at a 2nd generation digital image of a 1st generation image made on film. Technically they are both digital images.

I gotcha.

I still disagree with him about me being competent.