Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/02/21
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I'm tired of contemplating "digital -- film, which is best". The debate has darkened the farthest reaches of my cranium. The nice midtone gray matter therein has been so overexposed it's now black (although not Gallerie black because if you zoom in you'll see artifacts). I give up. Film is dead. Digital wins. But while it's being embalmed, here are some reasons to still use film.. 1) Film is underhyped. At this point it's absolutely devoid of hype. I hate hype with a passion. It's the carrot in front of the cart. Digital is the mother-of-all-hype at the moment. If you want to know what's behind the hype, follow the money trail. It says follow me, again and again. Ask any leming where that'll get ya. Reminds me of the days when autofocus arrived on the scene. I jumped on board early. Not Nikon AF3 early, but not long after that. After buying 4 new bodies in 4 years I gave up and returned to my trusty Leica. Took me a couple of rolls to get back into the focusing swing of things. Hey, this manual stuff works!!!. I never looked back. I was too busy looking into the viewfinder making sure I was in focus. In the back of my mind I thought, "someday when the technology matures I'll buy AF." Well, that day came around last year. I bought an AF Nikon body because, as everyone knows, film cameras are cheap these days. Just like an aging, well you know, the worlds oldest profession....mature means inexpensive. I quickly discovered that I wasn't disillusioned because the technology wasn't mature. I was disillusioned because I don't like AF. I've come to realize that moments spent autofocusing are moments wasted. 2) Film is bigger. And when it comes to the surface area of capture, size matters. It matters even in those little unimportant areas like rendering backgrounds out of focus. Affordable chip size isn't going to get any bigger until there's a huge technological advancement. So the hypesters have convinced us that smaller is better. They refer to the chip as a 1.5 or a 1.6 to 1. Oh, that's the lens-focal-length-improvement-ration. And to think all these years I could have been using Minox film with my 600mm Nikkor making it into a Saturn Rocket. What everyone tries to avoid is saying that the actual surface area is s-m-a-l-l-e-r. They finally got serious professionals to accept APS as a viable surface size. 3) Film works. Finally, a totally rational reason. I know all the marketing people (a few of whom I'm certain reside on the LUG in disguise) would have us believe overwise, but film really does work for taking pictures. And it works pretty darn well. It's so mature it's boring. Digital isn't film. It's an alternative to film for some things. For instance, you can never make a fully analog image if digital is anywhere in the workflow. At somewhere along the way you've incrementalize the sine wave. You've lost information. You can drawn a line in the sand with film. With digital you draw points along a line. Which is better? Ooops, that's not what this is about. DaveR - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html