"Jack, it is difficult to put into words what is essentially a visual effect, and if I tried I would probably come up with platitudes, but if you just go back a couple of pages, emmawest72 amd ManuelGF's images seem much less smooth, less polished than S2 or DB images, and therefore somehow more real to me. For some reason, the same difference in depth that I have no difficulty in seeing when I compare DB to DSLR images, I also see when I compare MF film to MF digital images. Of course, this is just my perception, and it does not have to be this way, but it struck me that in a thread with photographs taken with the most advanced technology available today, I was drawn mostly to shots taken with a technology increasingly doomed to commercial marginality.
"
Okay, I get it, but intangibles make for difficult discussion points
.
Okay, let's try to get it to discussion level content. Forgive the ambling preamble ...
For a quicker read skip down to the "Jack Asks Why" part. :ROTFL:
I've recently gone through the last agony of surrendering to digital. I sold of all my film cameras and my beloved Imacon 949 scanner... my darkroom is covered with cobwebs.
I freely admit that it was all sacrificed on the altar of ease and convenience ... and to add a third element, there is speed ... based on selling work as opposed to doing work. That the OP uses a Leaf back at "work" indicates a grasp of this concept.
To ease, convenience and speed, we can add internet criteria like
"pixel peeping" where film fares poorly compared to digital ... "
pixelized" grain is just plain ugly when "
peeped".
We photographers are more obsessed with these aesthetic nuances than most viewers are. Content tends to rule supreme there. Instant digital review, ability to freely shoot, and all that, favors content. IMO, digital has advanced content
in general ... where more shooters are improving at a
general level. This has nothing to do with the highly talented souls who would produce great content with either medium.
IF I were a more relaxed personality, IF I had more patience, IF I did not do work for money, I would probably still prefer shooting film. But I am none of the above.
I know this to be true because I am editing work for my new website, and an awful lot of the key shots were done on film. They please me more ... please my eye more, not someone else's.
Jack asks "Why"?
IMO (as unscientific as it may be), it has to do with how each medium renders light. Digital seems to regiment light to fit it's unwaveringly uniform element of recording ... the pixel. Film is plastic in it's way of flexibly conforming to light with its variable "grain".
In essence, there is a clinical aspect to digital that can either be pleasing to those so inclined, or lamented as a backward aesthetic step by those questioning it with their preconditioned eye.
However, I think the "clinical" or more antiseptic reputation of digital amongst film lovers is
magnified by digital shooters obsessed with that pristine technical quality, and striving to squeezing even more "technical perfection" out of their shots. IMO, this is more the rule than the exception these days just because of the more controlled, less vague nature of it compared to answering why something please your eye more than something else does. It's quantifiable. We prove our point that something is better than something else by demanding a 100% crop of a shot. We view work at the molecular level to prove our point. The only time I
EVER viewed film stuff like that was to focus the enlarger.
I think there are those who've embraced digital capture that have dodged that bullet. Their choice of medium, lenses and technique of understanding how to ply pixels to render light have yielded a third aesthetic that seemingly has the attributes of both film and digital ... at least to my eye.
Of Medium Format shooters on this forum that have accomplished that, my personal favorite is Jim Collum with his Leaf Aptus 75s (that used to be mine : -( It is all about how Jim has mastered the rendering of light that seemingly surrenders very little to the relentless regimentation of the ubiquitous pixel.
Your thoughts?
-Marc.
(attached: a film portrait, flatbed scanned in 2 pieces from an 11 X 14 print)