Friday, June 19, 2020

Digital's advantages in color imaging

I realize that there are still many who find digital deplorable and many of these are instructors in schools. The reason is teachers are not real photographers who struggled with film's many quirks. I worked with film for over 30 years in various formats and have many good things to say but there are things we could never do with film. The ability to change color balance while keeping the same ISO or ASA as we used to call it is one example. If I were shooting Kodachrome and needed to balance for 3200 K I would have to change roll. I could have used filters but they would lose at least one stop. Try losing one stop on Kodachrome whose speed was 25! I will not mention reciprocity failure. The ability to use incorrect light balance as shown in the third image is also one of digital's advantage. All images were shot within a few minutes right after sunset. 
However, this mainly applies to color images. Black and white is a different story. Although we can emulate many films with software and convert images to black and white, the real weakness of digital is in the prints. I have yet to see a really good black and white digital print that can compare to one made in a chemical darkroom. The depth and tonality of these prints are incomparable. That is something I miss.



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