Great shots Roger S. 🙂

But guess what? I’ve found a fail safe way of archiving my photographs! Yes, a method nobody remembers in this argument (conveniently).

I print them. I turn my captured imags into photographs. And there we are, they stand a good chance of lasting. I have the exact same quality of prints made from neg, slide or digital file too.

And then….. 😉

or colour paper (which is made with dyes and dyes, as we all know, can, and do, change with time.)

Explain please why none of the stock libraries want film submissions now.

Convenience, speed, ease of transfer, all to the benefit of the bottom line. They have a business to run for profit. Digital allows profit to be maximised.

The last time I read anything of value in AP was long before I learnt about photography

Does this imply you have stopped learning about photography? 😉 I quoted this well respected author as evidence to back up a point. Always good practice, as opposed to a string of assertions lacking evidence or explanation as support. 😉

This author has an opinion, which I respect, just as you and I have opinions that obviously differ, which I respect, so further semantic sniping is pointless and will not add anything of value to this debate.

My intention in starting this thread was to provoke a reasoned exchange of opinion, which seems to have fallen by the wayside in the face of a digital is best, no argument, onslaught, in which actual evidence and explanation is sometimes lacking! And yes, I am guilty as charged in provoking and contributing to the more petty aspects of the argument. I think its known as playing devils advocate!

I am drawing the line here, in the hope that there is some information of value in the above……and with a reminder of ultimately what we all have a passion for. 🙂

Thanks for the link Snapper. It appeared while I was composing this. I will follow it up.

emulators mean you have no need whatsoever to actually keep hardware. Longevity of software or image formats simply isn’t an issue.

OK so how about this scenario? In 50 years time you find a CD with images written to it. It is the only means of recovering those images. How are you going to read it without the hardware? Or are you seriously suggesting that you will be able to software emulate a CD rom drive……..

Digital image capture is good in many ways; digital image storage has many advantages, but I cannot see evidence here of any serious and practical long term planning. Humans as a species are basically lazy…. It is all very well advocating software emulation and transferring data from medium to medium as newer types become available, but generally it will not happen.

Film is not the only way, or even the best way for all applications. However, it is the only way I can guarantee you will be able to look at a photograph in 50 years time, because the history of photography to date has demonstrated that photographs can survive long term: at least 100+ years.

I’ll say it again….processed film is the image. If it survives, all you have to do is take it out of storage and look at it. No compatibility issues; no hardware issues; no need for software emulation; no need for the hassle of transferring data from medium to medium, verifying that data periodically and inevitably losing some to corruption……And the evidence of the poor archival standard of current digital archiving media is emerging here already. 7 year old CDRs that are shot; 20+ year old tape cassettes that are failing. I have music cassettes that are younger than that, which are useless due to print through from being stored wound in one position for too long. I have 10 year old music CDs, which are produced by a different and arguably longer lasting process than home burnt CD media, that are showing signs of age, despite careful storage and handling and no heavy use.

On that evidence, I would say that the potential for survival of digital media is poorer than for film and that needs careful storage for a realistic chance of suvival.

Ah, now that actually gives me a chance to demonstrate one of the disadvantages digital actually does have – dynamic range, or lack thereof.

Now this is more the response I was hoping for in starting this thread! The opportunity to mull over the pros and cons of the two types of image capture, and for all here involved in taking aviation pictures to perhaps learn something of advantage. 🙂

Geoffrey Crawley (AP 12 February 2005) states that at this stage of digital capture’s evolution, the tones and colours possible can at least equal the film negative/positive process if not the reversal process. Elsewhere, it is generally quoted that a good DSLR sensor has a dynamic range of 5 stops; here for example. That is the same as for transparency film. A sunny real world scene might typically have a dynamic range of 7-8 stops and the maximum possible is 10 stops. Obviously, without careful exposure, something has to give and that is usually the highlights; be it with digital or transparency capture.

So digital capture has the look of negative/positive colour film with the restricted dynamic range of transparency, a good reason why it is not yet true film quality.

Blown out highlights can look worse with digital capture because of how the sensor responds to luminance; at the extremes there is a definite on or off point giving a sudden jump to pure black or white. Film’s response to luminance is by chemical reaction, which tails off gradually at each extreme. The transition to pure black or white is smoother and more perceptually acceptable.

Either way, the real problem is how to capture the dynamic range of the scene convincingly and without loosing highlight detail. This is done by appropriate exposure and post capture or scan processing. The well known rule for transparency exposure is ‘expose for the highlights’, while for digital capture it might be thought to be the same, but is in fact more usually quoted as ‘expose right’. This is fully
explained here It works for scanning too.

I would suggest that the better metallic look in my shot is because of films ability to render fine tonal distinctions more accurately than digital capture, especially transparency film, and due to careful post scan editing. I multi-pass scan to yield the equivalent of 14 bits per channel colour data and then carry out all but minor adjustments in 16 bit mode. Something similar could be achieved from a DSLR by using RAW format capture and exporting this, via Camera Raw or similar, in 16 bit mode. I also use various other well publicised techniques to boost apparent dynamic range and to mask contrast, with the aim of a more perceptually pleasing tone distribution.

Incidentally, and this is intended as a constructive observation, I notice that when your image is imported into Photoshop, there is a marked shift in contrast and saturation; both increase to the improvement (I think) of the picture. Could it be that your original was left in the Adobe RGB colour space when saved for web use? I had a similar problem, until I realised that web browsers assume an sRGB colour space and do not recognise ICC profiles. It took two years to work that one out! 😮 However, I stand to be corrected on this observation.

Less to do with the image capture and more to do with the woeful production standards of most modern magazines methinks.

Never intended to suggest anything else.