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Third Party Manufacturers / Re: Film is still hard to beat
« on: June 27, 2012, 09:30:58 PM »
Some days i'm in a film mood, some days I'm in a digital mood. The digital days outweigh the film days probably at least 100:1 these days, but I still have a film camera and some film waiting to be used.
My decision is based on liking to shoot black and white with chromagenic film now and then, I love xp2 and 400cn.
The grain is lovely, quite pronounced, yet doesn't get in the way of detail, quite unlike digital noise, the contrast and gamma scale is totally different too, and the biggest bonus of all: I can optically filter the lens.
When I've tried this on digital the results are very flat - post-processing being better for digital mono's- but a red or yellow or occasionally green filter over my lens renders my viewfinder 'momo' to all intents and purposes, certainly it makes it far more easy for me to see in mono: with an unfiltered viewfinder I struggle to see visualise a good mono shot.
There is the argument of shooting RAW with the mono picture style on (giving me a mono live view, but colour RAW if I really need to tweak) but I find this less immediate, ironically.
My shots on film tend to be more rigorously planned an executed, I think technical merits of the medium aside, film forces you into a different way of working : sometimes it's great to have space for 500 RAW files at 8fps. Other times it's great just to take your time. Not that this is exclusive to film users of course.
I'm not looking to be corrected as it really is just an opinion and it is what works for me, but thats the point, these debates always come down to which is 'better'. I reached the conclusion that they are different, and folk who write one off against the other are potentially missing a trick.
On the Beta / VHS debate (It really isn't the same thing, Beta / 16mm would be a better comparison) VHS won out because it was cheaper to make, had higher profit margins and the studios got behind it.
Beta was technically far superior (component colour vs composite colour) but the decks were more costly and the distributers never really got behind it.
I have a Sony J3 deck (pro betacamSP/BetacamSX/Digibeta) which still gets daily use and a JVC S-VHS deck which is used occassionally, normally for friends looking to dub their 1980's holiday videos to DVD.
Ultimately, Beta derived formats won.... Which reminds me, I have 2 rolls of S8 ektachrome I need to use up!
My decision is based on liking to shoot black and white with chromagenic film now and then, I love xp2 and 400cn.
The grain is lovely, quite pronounced, yet doesn't get in the way of detail, quite unlike digital noise, the contrast and gamma scale is totally different too, and the biggest bonus of all: I can optically filter the lens.
When I've tried this on digital the results are very flat - post-processing being better for digital mono's- but a red or yellow or occasionally green filter over my lens renders my viewfinder 'momo' to all intents and purposes, certainly it makes it far more easy for me to see in mono: with an unfiltered viewfinder I struggle to see visualise a good mono shot.
There is the argument of shooting RAW with the mono picture style on (giving me a mono live view, but colour RAW if I really need to tweak) but I find this less immediate, ironically.
My shots on film tend to be more rigorously planned an executed, I think technical merits of the medium aside, film forces you into a different way of working : sometimes it's great to have space for 500 RAW files at 8fps. Other times it's great just to take your time. Not that this is exclusive to film users of course.
I'm not looking to be corrected as it really is just an opinion and it is what works for me, but thats the point, these debates always come down to which is 'better'. I reached the conclusion that they are different, and folk who write one off against the other are potentially missing a trick.
On the Beta / VHS debate (It really isn't the same thing, Beta / 16mm would be a better comparison) VHS won out because it was cheaper to make, had higher profit margins and the studios got behind it.
Beta was technically far superior (component colour vs composite colour) but the decks were more costly and the distributers never really got behind it.
I have a Sony J3 deck (pro betacamSP/BetacamSX/Digibeta) which still gets daily use and a JVC S-VHS deck which is used occassionally, normally for friends looking to dub their 1980's holiday videos to DVD.
Ultimately, Beta derived formats won.... Which reminds me, I have 2 rolls of S8 ektachrome I need to use up!