Film vs. Digital | A Modern Day Comparison | Shooting Film, Part 3 of 5
Film vs. Digital. It’s become clear that it’s no longer a matter of technical quality or megapixels. Digital is the norm of the industry. In many ways, it has “won.” But there are still a select few photographers who shoot 100% film even today, in 2011, and they are standouts in the industry. Jose Villa, Jonathan Canlas, Elizabeth Messina, and Tanja Lippert come to mind.
I was drawn to the look. I’ve described it as buttery and soft, the colors are just beautiful, and there’s just something qualitatively different about the look of film. But I wasn’t sure what the differences actually were. So in this post, part 3 of my Shooting Film series, I compare not only the aesthetics but also many other key differences between film vs. digital.
For the examples in this post, we’re revisiting Debby & Justin’s lifestyle session in the Mission District of SF.
1. Aesthetics. The Look of Film vs. Digital
First of all, this is not a scientific experiment. Many of my declarations of “winners” between film and digital are subjective, and many of the variables in my comparisons could be manipulated. For instance, color or grain could be changed in Photoshop to an extent. However, I still think all of these are useful baseline comparisons for understanding the differences between film and digital photography.
All of the film examples were shot on a Contax 645 with Zeiss 80mm/2.0 lens on 120mm Fujicolor 400H film and processed by Richard Photo Lab.
All of the digital examples were shot on a Canon 5D MkII with various lenses and processed by me in Photoshop.
Color:
The number one thing I hear about the look of film is that skin tones look great. Color on film is often dependent on specific film types. It is also dependent on the lab that processes it. But based on what I’ve seen, the hype is true. I prefer the color that comes straight from my film. Here are four examples of the color that came out of my cameras. The top two were film, and the bottom two were digital. See the technical specs above.
Film:
Digital:
Overall, my digital color on the bottom has a lot more red in it, while the top two film photos came out more yellow. Looking at the shady areas alongside the garages on the very left side of the photos, you can also tell that the film tones are colder (more blue) while the digital tones are again redder. Could I adjust my processing on the digital photos to match the film photos in color more? Yes. But again, with what I’m given, film wins.
Better color: film
Highlights:
Film tends to retain highlights without blowing them out or overexposing them. For instance, if you’re shooting with a very bright area within your frame such as a bright sky, you run the risk of overexposing the sky in order to get the correct exposure on your relatively dark subjects (especially if you are shooting your subjects backlit). If your highlights are overexposed, then they look completely white with no color information at all in that area. Many people don’t mind this look (myself included) but it’s technically a photography no-no.
Why is film better at the highlights? With film, exposure is all about a physical process of the film reacting to light coming into the camera. It’s actually a more common problem for film to be underexposed than to be overexposed. Exposure on film is more logarithmic than linear; that is, when you give it more and more light, it slows down in its reactiveness to the exposure instead of continuing up and reaching complete overexposure right away. Of course, the opposite is true for digital, because exposure is much more linear on a digital sensor. So if there is a very bright sky in your photo, it is probably going to be overexposed, and it will look pure white.
Here are two examples below.
Film:
Digital:
Now, pay attention to the right side of the pictures above, the highlights. Both of them probably look white to our eyes, but if I adjust the levels to see what information is actually in that space, we see this:
Film on left, Digital on right:
In the film version on the left, there is actually still a lot of information in that highlight, whereas in the digital version on the right, most of the highlight is completely blown out; no matter how much I bring down the levels, there is no information in the highlight; it’s completely white.
Again, film wins in this situation!
Better highlights: Film
Sharpness & Grain
In general, film has more grain than digital. And film grain has a specific look. Granted, I was shooting ISO 400 film vs. ISO 100 digital, but even digital images at ISO 400 are going to have much less grain than film. Again, grain is going to vary not only with the film but also with the camera, the lens, scan, and the post processing. But here are my comparisons from the basic edits I had:
Film:
Digital:
Film on left, digital on right:
In this first instance, the film actually appears “sharper” but also grainier. I would have probably sharpened the eyes more in post on the digital file. But you can also see the difference in grain in all the shadow areas. In this case, the digital file looks a lot smoother.
One more example.
Film:
Digital:
Film on left, digital on right:
Based on this example, I think film tends to soften hard light. Look at the shadows cast by her eyelashes– soft and feathery vs. individual lines. Again, the film is grainy; you can see the texture of the grain as if it’s a layer of ground glass over the image, but it’s not unpleasant, depending on your taste. However, the digital file is much more crisp and clean. It’s definitely a matter of preference and also depends to a certain extent on the scan quality. I’m torn on this one. I prefer a little less grain, but I love the soft shading over crisp hard lines. So… it’s a tie?
Better Sharpness & Grain Look: Undecided
Overall Aesthetics- Film Wins.
Basically, film wins on color, highlights, and I am undecided about the grain/softness. But overall, based solely on the aesthetics of film vs. digital, I have a strong preference toward the look of film. Not everyone feels this way, but I think film wins. I will give the caveat that film’s strong point is the brightly lit, often backlit outdoor look that Jose Villa has made his signature style. If you were to look only at film shooters’ indoor, dark ballroom high ISO photos, I doubt you’ll be convinced that film looks better than digital.
2. The Process/Experience
Shooting
Buying film, storing film, and loading film are all definitely more difficult than dealing with their digital memory card counterparts. Just the act of loading film is intimidating enough to keep plenty of people from attempting to shoot film (myself included for a long time!). And even after you load it, there’s a much steeper learning curve of figuring out how to shoot properly so that your photos turn out reliably. There’s no instant LCD feedback that assures you’re doing things correctly. Most film shooters also use external light meters (handheld devices that take light readings) instead of trusting their cameras. Again, this will vary depending on your gear, but a lot of film cameras are manual– manual focus, manual settings, etc. Other film cameras have less controls but more variation/unpredictability. So yes, digital is definitely easier to shoot.
One more thing– when you load a roll of film, you are tied to that particular film speed for the rest of your roll. So you have basically no way of moving between very dark spaces and bright spaces unless you have multiple cameras on hand. Digital cameras are equipped to adjust to changing light conditions all the time.
Better Shooting Experience: Digital.
Post-Processing
The major difference here is that when you send film off to be developed by a good lab like Richard Photo Lab in Los Angeles, it comes back FULLY READY TO GO! You can choose to have prints made, or you can (like me) have the negatives scanned. All of the images you have seen in the examples above were developed and scanned by RPL and came back just like you see them here. I may have done a bit of brightening here and there, but that’s it. And they look amazing! Is this a quality inherent to film? No. Because it does take a good lab to make it look this good. In the next part of this series I’ll be comparing two different labs, and you’ll see what I mean. But when you do send it to a good lab, it comes back beautiful and blog/client-ready!
As for digital, you can definitely send your digital files off to be post-processed by an external company too. But a lot of photographers, myself included, do their own post processing in Lightroom and Photoshop. It’s a basic trade of time vs. money.
And I will point out that the reason why (I think) film is extra viable now as an option is because in truth, what you’re getting from a lab like RPL is the best of film AND digital– you can actually have an analog thing perfected through digital means, and then you get the convenience of having the digital file as your final image. It’s no longer either or. It’s actually the best of both worlds.
So it seems like film processing is great, but there are two major drawbacks. One is time. Especially if you are mailing it off, it will take 1-2 weeks before you see anything, whereas a digital preview is instant, and retouching can happen as fast as you can make it happen. The other major drawback of film, of course, is cost. Which will be our next topic.
Better Post-Processing Experience: Digital. I do love being able to just send film off and have it come back all wonderful, but factoring in the time and the money, I think Digital still wins. For the cost of film processing, you can probably pay to have more digital files processed, maybe even to mimic a filmic look, and probably get it faster too (but I haven’t actually tried, so I don’t know).
Overall Process/Experience- Digital. Pretty much everything about shooting digital is easier and faster. Of course, I haven’t mentioned the “magical” experience of shooting film, which probably wins people over more than the convenience factor, but I personally think digital is still so much more usable overall.
3. Cost
Film is definitely more expensive than digital. By far. Here are some lowball estimates for the cost when you shoot film:
At minimum, to buy a single roll of Fuji 400H 120mm film and process and scan it at medium resolution at Richard Photo Lab, it would cost
$5.09 (film) + $18.50 (process+scan) + $9.90 (shipping there & back) = $33.49! For a total of 16 photos!
If you were to save on costs by buying in bulk, 5 rolls is $22.22, with 16 frames on each roll.
That’s $22.22 total, $4.44/roll, $.28/photo.
Process + Scan: Processing and doing a medium scan of five rolls at Richard Photo Lab is $92.50 + ~10.50 shipping (I’m guessing).
That’s $103 total, $20.60/roll, $1.29/photo.
So even in bulk, you are paying $1.57 for every frame you take, or $125.22 total for five rolls (80 photos).
As for the digital comparison, can you even imagine a digital memory card that only holds 16 frames? Probably not. A 2GB memory card holds a bit more than 80 raw files from a Canon 5D MkII, so for comparison’s sake, a 2GB CF card (~5 rolls of film) on Amazon is $12.95. Even if you were to add digital post-processing costs, there’s no way it would come close to the $112 more that the film costs. And besides, CF cards are reusable, so it’s not like you would buy a new CF card every time you take 80 more photos.
$125.22 vs. $12.95. Film costs almost 10 times more.
Yes, I’m leaving out camera and equipment costs and photo storage costs, and you could save by shooting 35mm instead of 120mm (which is what I will be doing!), but I’m still pretty sure film is more expensive in the end, by far. Even going to a local lab doesn’t save that much in the end (and again, I’ll talk more about lab comparisons in the next post of the series). The one thing that Jonathan Canlas points out is that when your cost of materials is actually higher, it will force you to charge clients more, and along with that comes a whole point of differentiation that you can work to your advantage. It’s a valid point. But this one still goes to digital.
Cost: Digital is better by far.
4. Ultimate Considerations- Film vs. Digital
What kinds of portrait photographers would be ideal film shooters?
- People who value the art of photography above the commercialization or the “cool” of it.
- People who love to shoot with natural light.
- People who want the look of film as their signature style.
- People who are ready and willing to charge a premium to cover the cost of film.
- People who can be very selective and disciplined about their shots.
- People who love all things vintage/analog to begin with.
What kinds of portrait photographers would probably hate shooting film?
- People who love off camera flash and likes a high tech/glossy/ultra modern photography style.
- People who like to take a lot of photos on rapidfire and select the frames to keep later.
- People who prefer flexibility and like to be all over the place/fast paced in their work.
- People who charge very little or can’t afford to spend a lot of money on materials & processing.
- People who want instant feedback on results.
- People who prefer digital everything overall.
Ultimately, I would consider myself the pragmatic film shooter. On many of these points, I fall under the “ideal film shooter” category. Most of all, I love the look of film. However, I would not want to shoot film all of the time, the biggest reason being cost, followed closely by the overall inconvenience. While film is beautiful for a certain look, it is also very limited and limiting. Plus, I am not actually one of the people who loves film for film’s sake or prefers all things analog. To the contrary, I prefer the flexibilty and the instant nature of digital, and I prefer the rest of my life to be digitized as much as possible (paperless organization. google docs, please).
So what is my solution? Ideally, I want to be able to mimic the look of film even in digital, so I can have digital work that blends seamlessly with film work. Before you say it cannot be done, I assure you, people are already doing it– my favorite photographer Caroline Tran, for one, shoots mostly digital, interspersed with film, and yes, it all looks cohesive. I do not think I personally would want to shoot an entire wedding in film, because I don’t want to have to buy or be running around with that many rolls of film and having to reload it constantly, and I don’t want to have the uncertainty of not knowing whether any of my photos would turn out or if I’d miss entire chunks of the day due to technical error. But would I want to shoot parts of a wedding in film? Sure! Would I want to shoot special projects or certain sessions in film? Absolutely. So in my ideal arrangement, I would get to keep the best of both worlds. I think it’s possible. I just have to figure out how to work my digital post processing to my advantage.
So that concludes my extremely long analysis of film vs. digital photography. To reward you for making it to the bottom of the page, here are a couple more examples from Debby & Justin’s lifestyle shoot in the Mission District of San Francisco. Film on top, digital on bottom.
Stay tuned for Part 4 of the Shooting Film series– when Richard Photo Lab and my local Oscars Photo Lab face off, and I explain which is the best buy! Then, in Part 5, one more experiment that integrates digital and film. You can look back to the previous parts linked in the “Related Posts” below.
About Anna: I am a wedding photographer based in San Francisco but always willing to travel! Come find me on Facebook for sneak peeks of my latest work and musings on photography.
Feel free to leave your comments, & critiques below!
