[Leica] Film/Digital

["Johnny Deadman" <deadman@jukebox.demon.co.uk>]

Hi all -- back from my trip to Canada (did anyone notice?).

Some points arising from recent posts.

1) Anthony equates digital with symbolic, but they are not the same. Any
symbolic representation can be digitised, but that does not mean all
symbolic representations are digital. For example, handwriting is not
digital. You may digitise the text it represents, or you may digitally image
the handwriting. In the first case, the information conveyed by the style of
the handwriting is lost. In the second, some information is always lost,
though this may or may not be significant. But both represent a lossy
conversion of the information to a different medium... as do both silver
halide and digital photography.

2) I have worked in broadcast media for many years. In TV production, except
drama, digital is the de facto standard and many film cameramen have made
the switch without great pain. As a director, I had no great pains switching
from 16mm to Digibeta, and post-production was far simpler. In general the
images were considerably better (16mm film rated @ 400 is horribly grainy).
However, I would still shoot on film where conditions were difficult (eg in
the rainforest or at the poles), where weight was a factor, or where
electricity might not always be at hand.

3) I now work in the movies. Here, whatever has been posted, 35mm film
remains and is likely to remain the standard for image capture, though
distribution will go digital within the next few years. There is no
discernible groundswell towards digital, despite Lucasfilm. One of the main
reasons for this is standards conversion: 35mm film can be standards
converted to NTSC and PAL and SECAM and remain at extremely high quality.
Shooting digitally, you usually end up originating in one system or another,
and conversion is inherently losssy. Moreover, it will be decades before the
entire distribution system is digital, and prints are cheap and easy to
make. Finally, piracy is already a nightmare, and Anthony is wrong to imply
that signing a digital image guarantees copy protection. It don't work that
way. All it allows you to do is establish who owns the image.

4) There is currently, for me, no competition between digital and film for
shooting. For a start, the M-series and its lenses are my cameras of choice,
and they aren't digital, so there. But even if a digital version of the M
with good enough resolution, priced identically, and available second-hand
(which is how I buy) came out, it wouldn't replace my existing analog
cameras (though I might well buy it). The reason is simply an aesthetic one:
the silver (fiber!) print is a medium like oils on canvas with a plasticity
and lushness that digital prints don't have. The greys of a good print are
simply erotic. This argument will only carry weight with 'art'
photographers, I know, but it matters to me.

5) Having said that, for most other purposes the attractions of shooting
35mm, developing yourself, then scanning the film and outputting digital
prints are enormous, and I can perfectly see myself only using the enlarger
for exhibition/display prints.

6)