Pre digital days, please shed some light for me

[Loswr]

I never liked kodachrome, Why did it get so much rave? I never understood that.

I blame Paul Simon.

I wonder if that gave Nikon a boost, as well? :-X

 

[Ew]

I still miss shooting Velvia 50 for landscapes and Ektachrome for portraits. Those were the good days. ;D

I never liked kodachrome, Why did it get so much rave? I never understood that.

Every once in an ektachrome dream I wake and create a color profile to try and match the old joy ... But no, it's not the same ...

 

[distant.star]

I still miss shooting Velvia 50 for landscapes and Ektachrome for portraits. Those were the good days. ;D

I never liked kodachrome, Why did it get so much rave? I never understood that.

Something old, something new
Something red, something blue

The blue team liked Velvia and Ektachrome. The red team went for Kodachrome.

When I started scanning my 30+ year-old slides, I found the Ektachrome washed out, some of it just gone. The Kodachrome looks like the day it was shot.

If I had to, I could go back and live in a Kodachrome world.

 

[RLPhoto]

I still miss shooting Velvia 50 for landscapes and Ektachrome for portraits. Those were the good days. ;D

I never liked kodachrome, Why did it get so much rave? I never understood that.

Something old, something new
Something red, something blue

The blue team liked Velvia and Ektachrome. The red team went for Kodachrome.

When I started scanning my 30+ year-old slides, I found the Ektachrome washed out, some of it just gone. The Kodachrome looks like the day it was shot.

If I had to, I could go back and live in a Kodachrome world.

I shot kodachrome for alittle bit, and the few slides I do have are just as ugly now and they were 30 years ago. :

Here is a old ektachrome scan on a Epson v500. Its not perfect but these were stored badly.

 

[unfocused]

Getting back to the original post. I think the answer is pretty straightforward.

Pre-digital meant that film and camera were two separate things. You bought a camera and you bought film to go into that camera. The variety of film available far exceeds the variety of sensors currently available. You had slow speed, fine grain B&W (slow being about ASA 25) up to "fast" 800 ASA, with most people shooting 400 Tri-X. Maybe not the best, but it was the most readily available and sold the most in the U.S. at least. Then you had color print films and color slide films, all in various flavors of speed. Not to mention Tungsten and Daylight versions.

In addition, you had many different film formats, from large sheet films to tiny drop-in cassettes, all with a variety of speeds.

Today, every camera uses only one "film" and that's the sensor. It has to do everything and it is part of the camera (no changing sensors at least for now). B&W, color print, color transparencies, high speed, low speed, tungsten, daylight, etc. all in one sensor. So, really, it should come as no surprise that there are a few (and really it's only a relative handful of varieties of sensors that are available) different flavors of sensors.

One more thing. The quality of that sensor, even in the smallest formats, vastly exceeds the quality of most films. In the old days it was generally conceded that even the cheapest lenses would outperform the film's resolving power. Today, sensors are pushing the limits of what lenses can resolve.

Bottom line: The choices in film that consumers used to make are now incorporated into the camera. So it should come as no surprise that cameras need to offer more variety for consumers to choose from. After all, who wants less choice as a consumer. I certainly don't.

 

[Rocky]

my first real SLR that I bought was the 450D, so before the age of digital how did Canon differentiate its model line up feature wise? I mean back say year 1998 the determiner of IQ was the lens and film and the paper that it was printed on. My point is, why have so many sensors across a brand's line up, with 1DX sensor, 5D3, 5D2 and then the rebel line up of sensors, if all camera's just over a decade ago had the same ability to capture light correct? So what you pay for then is build quality, FPS, and metering etc.

It all bolts down to two item: Money and Requirement. Use existing Canon lineup as an example: On the FF, we have the IDx and the 5DIII with different sensor, different resolution, different physical size and different feature. So if you are into FF then you have your choice depends on your requirement and how much you want to spend. The same goes to APS-C with the 7D, 60D, T4i and Xsi. Then between the FF and APS-C that is another choice. In order to get the most out of FF execellent lenses are required. So everything is more expensive with the FF body. On the other hand, APS-C serves another purpose. For people that never make 20X30 inch print It is an excellent media. It is cheaper than the FF with less requirement on the lens (using the best part of image circle). Also for the "bird shooter", a shorter lens can be used.

 

[jpthurston]

"Vastly superior"? To say a cheap point and shoot sensor is better than a large format fine grain film image printed well is specious. I make no argument in favor of film, but just put your apples and oranges in proper perspective.
I beg to differ on many points.
Having worked for a wafer fabricator, you don't just cut out more or less dies per wafer to get more or better.
Wafer yield drops significantly with die size and complexity regardless of end product. Its way more complicated than you think or allude to.
CCD chips were way noisier sensors than CMOS, but cheaper to produce, and had higher yields.
Sensor site size is way more important than total sites to image quality, especially when it comes to SNR problems.
Only recently have sensor producers been able to cram more sites with less noise on a FF sensor.
Image quality is also tied directly to the quality of the ADC chip and other camera circuitry.
Since there is a Bayer pattern issue and inherent interpolation, and a AA filter, these all can degrade image quality on a poorly designed camera package.
More megapixels just means a bigger print, but not necessarily a good image to print larger either.
Look at the first generation FF camera and the images were garbage compared to well scanned and digitally edited film captures.
If anything the improvements in digital editing are the levelers in the Film vs Digital debate.
In the computer industry we have had a very basic axiom...GIGO: Garbage In, Garbage Out.
My two cents worth from a film and digital shooter.

 

[DB]

My first SLR was an Olympus OM-10 (one of the most common affordable SLR's of the 1980s - a bit like the Rebels today), but my camera bag back then was bulging with accessories from ASA 25 to 400 film rolls, to Cokin filters and polarizers, plus a bunch of lenses from primes to tele-zooms and wide angles -> all costing from £50 to £200. As well as a lot of spare batteries for my power-winder.

Back then, camera bodies cost 4x or 5x the price of a good lens, unlike today. Film was not cheap either and prices varied wildly from the well known brands to generics.

However, unlike the ability to crop in PS today, in those days you could take a negative and with a Reducer/Enlarger (looked a bit like today's microscopes) you could take part of an image and blow it up to a full-size print and it would look perfect. I have a 7x5 photo still of my 19-year old nephew at his baptism where I was 30 or 40 feet away with a 220mm zoom and got a picture of him in his mother's arms, alongside half a dozen other people, but I isolated his little face and turned it into a full-sized print. Try 1600% magnification in Photoshop and look at all the square pixels.

I processed and developed all of my own colour film - had to cos' the labs would put stickers on my negatives saying 'wrong exposure' or 'unable to develop' if I had used colour filters e.g. red ones taking pictures of old castles for instance to create an effect.

Digital is a whole lot better in terms of high initial cost, but then low-cost in consumables. I guess the defining difference between film and digital is 'composition'. In the old days you thought about and planned your composition the night before. Now, with modern DSLR's you have opportunistic shooting at will, all of the time.

That is the consumerism part of modern photography, along with the desire to have the latest & greatest.

 

[rahkshi007]

Hi, i am newbie here.. i just 21 years old i think i used film when i was 13years old.. but digital surely nicer to be used... as long as the camera shooting raw, definitely can get nice picture.. here are some example of benefit especially photoshot.
The first one shoot with raw with 5dm2.. there are still plenty of dynamic range eventhough the model face is underexposed. i think that nowadays sensor keep updating is to trying to improve a better DR..

 

[paul13walnut5]

@DB

Digital is a whole lot better in terms of high initial cost, but then low-cost in consumables.

I can reliably inform you that the last entry level film SLRs (Nikon f65's, EOS 300x's, Dynax 5's) cost only a little less than what folk are paying now for cameras like the D3100 or 1100D, the budget DSLRs are probably cheaper in real terms than the last equivalent film era cameras cost.

At the top end it is a bit different, however, & decent lenses seem more expensive than ever.

 

[CharlieB]

I never liked kodachromeod th, Why did it get so much rave? I never understoat.

Kodachrome could be harsh in a lot of instances. It had outrageous detail in the shadows, tended to burn highlights easily, more easily than any other transparency film. But... if you could control the lighting, or you were shooting in good conditions... to me at least, it yielded results were pretty outstanding. The ultra fine grain of the 25 and even 64 variety was superior, and even the 200 speed had an interesting quality. You either loved it, and dealt with its shortcomings, or you hated it. I shot an awful lot of birds and scenery with Kodachrome 200, some of that in 120 size (talk about to die for these days!). You want to see something? Project a well exposed Kodachrome 120 size slide on a screen, one taken say... with a Hasselbled and 150 Sonnar. We just dont have that sort of thing at our disposal today.

Then there were the dye transfer prints from Kodachrome. Total manipulation. It was the silver based way of getting HDR prints. Done right, dye transfer prints were superior in all respects to anything else out there.

And on that note of wistful history... I'm due a bourbon, just because.

 

[bdunbar79]

It's the sensor. Could you buy 25,600 speed film back in 1988 and shoot low-light football at 1/2000s at night? Of course not. They didn't do it that way. DSLR's, namely the 1D X, is truly revolutionary.

Delta 3200 pushed 3 stops. (You set ISO manually at 6400 and then set exposure compensation at -2).

Don't like grain? Just shoot medium format or larger.

I never did it.

 

[DB]

@DB

Digital is a whole lot better in terms of high initial cost, but then low-cost in consumables.

I can reliably inform you that the last entry level film SLRs (Nikon f65's, EOS 300x's, Dynax 5's) cost only a little less than what folk are paying now for cameras like the D3100 or 1100D, the budget DSLRs are probably cheaper in real terms than the last equivalent film era cameras cost.

At the top end it is a bit different, however, & decent lenses seem more expensive than ever.

@ Paul

I can well believe it. There is a much greater price range today between entry-level -> mid-range -> top-end. When I lived in London, amateurs/enthusiasts mainly bought second-hand gear. I never bought a new lens until 2011! In 1990, there were dozens of camera shops (The Camera Exchange, Jessops in New Oxford Street, Chancery Lane + quite a few other small independent stores dotted around the City) that sold predominantly 'used' lenses, plus they were happy to take older lenses as trade-ins - a bit like PC game stores nowadays. If you bought a lens on a Friday, used it over the weekend and didn't like it, you just exchanged it for something else the following Monday and it might have cost you a tenner (at the outside). I imagine that Edinburgh & Glasgow were very similar with specialist stores that have probably disappeared. To be replaced by Harvey Norman, Dixons & Argos...where the staff couldn't tell the difference between an 'f-stop' and a 'bus-stop'.

 

[paul13walnut5]

I worked in a Jessops in Glasgow, our mark up was sometimes as low as 5% on new gear (SLRs lenses) but we made it back in filters, batteries bags and D&P. If we couldn't mark a used item up by at least 100% of buy in we didn't buy it in.

The staff price on used gear was excellent. I don't think I ever owned a new camera or lens before my 400D, it was stupid not to buy used, especially at the staff prices. Mitigated the crap wages, but then, when you're a student...

Went vastly downhill now, Jessops is like dixons except they sell less fridges. Staff have the coolest hair styles but i couldn't vouch how good they are with cameras

 

[7enderbender]

.
Wow, this is the kind of discussion that could go on for hours -- on bar stools!

Since I'm a teetotaler, I'm going to make one point -- then head for the door.

Back in the film days, the "sensor" was a very mature technology. There are a few people around today who will suggest film chemistry could be dramatically improved, but really that's just picking the fly scat out of the pepper when compared with digital imaging.

Today's optical sensor technology is not mature technology. Over the last 10 years this upstart has evolved so fast (consistent with all new technological applications) that camera makers have had a dicey time keeping up with it well enough to formulate consistent product offerings. Development has slowed a bit now (and manufacturers have also gotten more control over the "development" so their engineering and marketing folks can get some breathing room to establish the kind of baselines that money-making entities like corporations so adore.

Almost overnight we've gone from a mature technology with limited possibilities to a radically new technology with almost unlimited (longterm) possibilities.

It's been a hell of a ride so far!

Excellent points! And back in the days (and for the sake of argument let's stick to 35mm here, all lenses being equal) the distinguishing factors were a) build quality and b) features.

B is somewhat limited in reality once the basics are covered. Meaning, once you had a good metering system for a 3 or 4 different situations (including some kind of spot meter), decent shutter speed and a good viewfinder everything else beyond that is mostly for one-off situations or specific professional purposes.

Leaves us really with build quality and reliability. Example: when I got my first own camera my choices were a brand-new T70 or the AE-1 program used. Yep, already then people had noticed what a hunk of junk the plastic T70 was. Sure, it was all "space-age-80s-Colani-design" and may have had a few advanced features. But it wasn't fun to use and didn't appear to be build for what I ended up doing with my AE-1p...(25 years and two full overhauls later I still have and use it)
The picture quality for all practical purposes would be exactly the same with the superb Kodak and Fuji products available then (and a good lab in town, and later access to a DYI lab at my university). Same can be said when using the more upscale A1 and then the excellent F1 iterations: same pictures in 99% of the cases but a lot more fun to use and even more reliable. The T90 is its own animal and in many ways comparable to Canon's last film-SLR EOS 1-series.

Most else in between and during the early phases or digital has issues in my mind. Why? Because the selling point was "digital (and digital is better!)", silly features, the emerging AF-revolution, etc. Build quality suffered. And I want to say: in large parts it still does. None of the stuff is build to last when you're supposed to "upgrade" every 2-3 years to new "features". Sure, along the way we finally got half-way decent full-frame (meaning 35mm equivalent, which is the smallest usable format really) at a price point that is a little more digestible. So at least we can match 1980s film quality now. Yeah. Small wins. Would I want to compare my 5DII to an F1-n? Naw, not really. But in all fairness, the 5DII is more like a 21st century AE-1 for that matter. Only it won't last 25 years. Neither will any of my ridiculously expensive "L" lenses while I see no reason why any future grand children wouldn't still get a kick out of my FD glass. Just look at how the 24-70L version 1 apparently devolved into the 24-70L version 2. And now perhaps we'll see a brand-new "6D" - which (if any of the rumored features (!) are turning out to be correct would bring me back to my T70-AE1p shootout back in 86 or whenever that was.

Have a great weekend everyone.

 

[Rocky]

Look at the first generation FF camera and the images were garbage compared to well scanned and digitally edited film captures.

Thanks for telling us that the 1DIIIs (first FF by Canon) is garbage.

 

[SiliconVoid]

Look at the first generation FF camera and the images were garbage compared to well scanned and digitally edited film captures.

Thanks for telling us that the 1DIIIs (first FF by Canon) is garbage.

{1Ds}

 

[paul13walnut5]

+1 SiliconVoid beat me to it.

 

[Rocky]

Look at the first generation FF camera and the images were garbage compared to well scanned and digitally edited film captures.

Thanks for telling us that the 1DIIIs (first FF by Canon) is garbage.

{1Ds}

Thanks for the correction. I agree that with 11 MP, It cannot beat the fine gain film.

 

[SiliconVoid]

my first real SLR that I bought was the 450D, so before the age of digital how did Canon differentiate its model line up feature wise? I mean back say year 1998 the determiner of IQ was the lens and film and the paper that it was printed on. My point is, why have so many sensors across a brand's line up, with 1DX sensor, 5D3, 5D2 and then the rebel line up of sensors, if all camera's just over a decade ago had the same ability to capture light correct? So what you pay for then is build quality, FPS, and metering etc.

In short: Different equipment price points to meet different consumer demands.

It is no mystery that larger sensors, sensors with the greatest performance specifications, and bodies providing all the features any photographer could need/want also costs the most to produce, and are not needed by every user. Digital photography technology has allowed manufacturers to actually tailor the operation and output of the cameras to meet different user demands and budgets.


Long version:
At the lowest price point, Rebels for Canon, the manufacturer focuses sensor design and implementation more on the criteria of needed output (jpg) - even if it impacts the cameras base (raw) performance. Features will generally be only those necessary to provide functionality and competitive marketing (albeit gimmicky features sometimes). This is not to covertly produce an inferior product, but because the typical purchaser at this price point will not need or desire post processing to get the results they are looking for.

In the middle price tier (Enthusiasts, and Semi-Pro) where the output demand can go either way, the manufacturer will focus sensor design and internal processing to provide the best aspects of both types of output. In addition features will be greatly expanded providing full control over the camera operation, and with reasonable accessibility such as dedicated buttons instead of diving into menus.

At the top tier you will typically find almost all features provided, and implemented in such a way that use of the cameras menu system may not be needed at all other than relatively permanent, optional, changes in camera operation. In this tier you will typically also find the best unhindered raw performance due to this sectors reliance on post processing - mainly because the images are turned over to production/marketing departments to be culled and processed - although jpg output is not worthless by any means as some professionals are satisfied by that output.

To continue with the film camera analogies; Think of it as if film cameras were made in such a way that they could only use one brand and/or speed of film, and only had certain features dependent on what film version you purchased. That certainly would not satisfy the needs of every photographer and there would have been a need for several versions of every model to appeal to different users. (Fortunately that was not the case.. )