So, is FILM better than DIGITAL or is DIGITAL better than FILM?

This "tip" is adapted from a question and answer session I recently had, both verbal and email.

Ah, like so much in life, the answer is "it depends". And I make MY decisions on when to use each based on which I think is better for the purpose. But many people have a concern that Film is always better than Digital. I would like to address this issue primarily in this article.

Yes, I understand the concern. That is why it took me 5 years before I made the jump to "mostly digital" myself. And the jump was VERY well thought out. If any of my terms below are “too technical” please ask an I will give a less technical explanation.

My primary camera currently is a Fuji S2 Pro camera. It uses a hex pattern (instead of Canon and Nikon’s square pattern). The RAW files are 12 megapixels. But most reviewers rate it as equivalent to Canon or Nikon at 9 Megapixels. The 6MP hex pattern is, in my opinion, also better than the 3MP Foveon technology (the 3 layer silicon where RGB are captured at every point, aka Sigma Digital cameras). Now, someday, when (hopefully not if) Foveon ever gives a 6MG with RGB at every point, then that will be as good as a 12MP Canon/Nikon.

I use ICC correction to give the highest possible quality color. I use the ICC at the monitor and printing stage (I do print some of my own work) and the Professional lab I use uses ICC on their printing to carry the quality through.

Believe it or not, when I show clients a variety of images at various resolutions and print sizes so you can see “the effect” on paper they now all say that either they are identical, or they say the digital is better. I have been showing the results for 5 years but it is only since Sept 2003 that every customer and I - I was one of the last - agree that the digital results are as good or better than film.

Caveat 1: My comments on Digital being the same or better ONLY applies up to a 20x30” size (Montages/Collages excepting). For larger images than that, Film is still superior and I use a view camera that has 4”x5” film in it. Wonderful camera. Takes a long time to get set up to take a picture (see my technical notes on the website) but it is truly wonderful to use when you can afford say 30-60 minutes for the initial setup and 15 minutes per pose thereafter. For practical reasons, this is most often used for commercial work.

Caveat 2: For very wide angle work, I still use film. For example, I photographed a wedding (a real wedding not a joke) in the “littlest Church in the World”. This is about a 9 seater church. For that I used Film because I needed a REALLY wide angle lens to do the wedding justice.

The cameras I currently like the best use an image chip that is physically smaller than 35mm film. This is fanTAStic for most wedding work. All lenses, even the best Nikon lenses are best in the centre and a little – albeit very little – less quality on the outside edges of the circle – meaning the outer corners. By having the chip smaller you use the BEST part of the lens instead of the whole lens. Also, you get a “more telephoto” effect from each lens. This has several benefits, but the most significant for A WEDDING is that the lens maintains it’s aperture size so that the camera can focus faster – the bigger the aperture, the more light, the faster the camera can auto-focus or the human eye can manually focus. So my f2.8 28-80 lens becomes an f2.8 45-120 – a perfect portrait lens! And no one makes a perfect portrait lens like this or anything close to it with an f2.8 or better aperture! Instead you have to switch to f3.5 or 4.5 and lose the fast focus. Also, I like creative use of focus control. I like throwing it “wide open” to keep the focus plane small so that YOU are the star in the picture and the background – especially for the pre-wedding “preparation” shots that invariably have a “messy” background that has no value for the photo. For these I switch to a very wide aperture 50mm lens – but it is a 75mm with the small frame image chip – again, a great portraiture length lens.

There are some “full frame” digital cameras, but they lose these advantages of the smaller frame so I would only consider a “full frame” digital camera as a “backup” or “limited use” camera. For the one benefit of the full frame, which I have only needed once in the last year, I consider full frame cameras to be a huge disadvantage.

>What kind of "special effects" do you use?

I would prefer to say “What kind of special effects do I create”<g>.

I start with simple ones which include retouching of facial (primarily) blemishes.

Next I like to have some “soft focus”. In the old days (Circa August 2003<g>) I would shoot SOME photographs in film using a soft focus filter, SOME with a “blended edge” soft focus filter, SOME without any soft focus filter.

To quote myself (sorry) in a submission to Professional Digital Photography magazine:

“Back in the days when I applied soft focus using a filter on the lens, invariably, if the customer liked the soft focus effect, the best facial expressions were in the sharp pictures, or worse, the customer didn’t like the soft focus – and it was the soft focus images that had the best facial expressions. With digital, the “better than film” choice is to apply the soft focus in the digital darkroom, especially since we can quickly and easily reduce the soft focus to selected areas of the photo-something we couldn’t do nearly as easily or as well with a physical filter. “

I have been working recently on an article which explains in detail how (for only a few thousand dollars<g>) you can set up a chromakey studio (I do, and it is transportable too) to allow swapping of backgrounds. Not ideal for every photo, but ideal for some. Of all the effects discussed here, these are the only ones that require advance planning. Specifically, we have to plan on taking some of the pictures with the chromakey background, and then we have to think about which potential backgrounds so I can set up the lighting to match the backgrounds. I have quite a few general backgrounds that use my “favorite” lighting setup so that there is as much variety as possible with the absolute minimum setup/shoot time.

I make heavy use of what I call “internal step up” frames and “edge” frames. You can see a few examples at:

http://photosbymadman.com/Photos/Main/GalleriesPhotoOnlyBT.aspx?G=DigitalBorderInternal

I have found these are a MAJOR hit with my clients. They add HUGE impact to the photos. They use the photo itself to provide the information for the internal mat.

Speaking of mats, I add mats and frames of all sorts. Some are dynamically created (using the image detail), some are pre-created. Behind glass, many of these look BETTER than the physical mats – and I stock the worlds best ones so it isn’t that I’m comparing them to crappy mats!

Jumping back to “in picture” effects:

I like using a “fast forward effect” which essentially blurs things outward to the edge of the picture. Back in the film days the way we would do this is to zoom in, or move the camera toward the object or the object toward the camera WHILE THE CAMERA WAS TAKING THE PICTURE. Then at the very end (using back sync flash) the flash would go off to give a fairly crisp image of the subject. Because this was so hard to do well and it took so many shots to do, it was almost never done for wedding photography. And besides that, note my choice of words “fairly crisp” – not “crips.” But with digital, we can have the subject “completely crip” and still have the fast forward blur effect. Another way to think of this is something like the Stars going by at warp speed in sci-fi movies.

I like using a “radial blur” which, instead of looking like “warp speed”, looks like a blur in a circle around the subject. I often combine this with the internal step up border.

Black and white is a fun one. In the days of film one had to “think” black and white. Had to think “which filter to use” and “what density”. It was a VERY specialized art and I did little b&w - although I did do some b&w with film (actually until the mid 70’s I think it was, I did everything in b&w – but for the past 30 years I’ve done mostly color)

OK but NOW – instead of having to decide IN ADVANCE, I can do it AFTER THE FACT. And while I carried for example, different shades of yellow filter with film, with digital, I now have 255 shades when working in 8 bit mode (255*256 in 16 bit mode). AND with film you had to use the same filter for the whole picture – but that was often not appropriate. Often you wanted one color for the sky and another for people’s faces. With Film I had to make a decision which was more important. With digital I can do both separate.

Now … once I have it in B&W, there are some nice effects.

Based on customer response, THE favorite is to take a picture b&w, then bring back some, or most of the color in the roses or some other “spot” color. Beautiful.

Or, I color with “pastel colors” back over important parts of the picture such as face or clothing. Not necessarily with a color at all like the original, but for a wedding – yes, most of the time it will be the original color or a shade similar.

Sepia is another popular choice. This is the old “tobacco” colored faded b&w photographs.

Multiple exposure – except Inever ever do it in the camera (even though my camera lets me.) Why? Because I have more creative control doing it afterwards and if I don’t like the effect, I can change it, I’m not stuck like I was in the film days.

Collages[1]/Montages[2] I love these. One of my favorite ways to do this is to take one main picture, and make it full frame. Then I fade it out about 25% (depends on the colors in the picture, sometimes with the blacks & whites of weddings I don’t fade it at all). Now I bring in smaller images. Of the same person/people, or of other people of importance in their lives. Each of the smaller photos will normally be given a bevel edge and brought into the photo. But not always. Consider:

Recently I was working with a couple getting married. As I talked with the mom’s existing daughter it was clear that she had a strong love for both her mom and her soon to be dad. So … I had her (the child) put her chin in her hands and think about her mom and Dad. She was looking upwards in a dreamy fashion. Then I created a soft mask in roughly a heart shape and put her mom and her new dad inside the heart mask and placed it higher up in the photo. The picture clearly conveys that she loved them both and it was the couple’s favorite. They told me “This one photo was worth the whole price of the photography.” (I chuckled and thought about doubling my bill<g>)

In summary, as the song goes “These are a few of my favorite “ effects (OK, so effects doesn’t rhyme with “things” – I’m a photographer, not a poet<g>)