Film vs Digital

Film versus digital, is the digital era finally proving itself?

This assignment was very interesting to me. I have been letting my 35mm film camera behind when going out to shoot since I first got my hands on my digital SLR. I thought for sure that the technology of the newest digital cameras could, without a doubt, overpass the image quality of the classic film camera. But this exercise changed my mind.

1. Color. In all scenes the film captured more colors than the digital camera did. In the example posted here, the skin looks way more alive in the first image, there are different colors on the face , red and pinks and suchs, creating an image that is way more rich and real looking. In the digital picture everything looks desaturated and flat. Film wins.

2.General Contrast. Contrast seem to be quite equal in all images. There is a good difference between the darks and the brights. I would say that film equals digital in this category.

3.Latitude. Once again, I would say that film does a better job at capturing the tonal range in the overall of the images. There are more visible details to be seen in the highlights and the shadows appear to have more depth to them.

4.Sharpness. I don't know if my pictures were sharpened in the lab, but I can see that the 35 mm pictures are sharper than the ones taken with my digital camera. I thought that digital images were supposed to be sharper.

5.Resolution and Fine Detail. The cd that the lab gave me contained image at 72 ppi resolution but I know that film grain is a thousand times sharper than that. But already at 72 you can see that the image that came from the film negative contains details that are more visible. Just look at the furry collar on the winter coat.

6. Atmosphere. I think film images are richer in color and contrast and that they contain a finer resolution in details. I find that the film has some kind of warmer feeling. The digital images appear so flat and desaturated in comparaison to film but I think that can also be an interesting look.

After doing this exercise I realize that film still captures more visual information than the digital process can. The pictures look more vivid and real and the details are sharper. Film also seem always to capture life in a unique way, it is probably because we have grown up looking at images taken with film cameras and our memory of the images just makes it more real for us now, but there is a big difference. Enough for me that I will start carrying my film camera with me again when I go on shootings.