Some Thoughts on Film versus Digital

Introduction

Dear Readers, you may have noticed that you are seeing more film photographs here recently compared to a few years ago. I am an old geezer, so of course grew up during the film era. My dad used a handsome little Leica IIIC, which, at the ripe young age of 69, still works perfectly. My first camera in the 1960s was a Kodak Instamatic 500, a German unit that had manually-controlled aperture, shutter speed, and focus. My first serious camera was a Nikon Nikkormat FTn, which I bought in 1968 at Lechmere Sales in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Lechmere was a well-known discounter in the Boston area, but it closed many years ago. In subsequent years, I moved on to various other cameras, both 35mm format, medium format, and 4×5 inch.

The first digital camera in the family was my daughter's Kodak LS743 in 2004, a convenient little machine that took reasonable (but over-compressed) jpeg files. My first interchangeable lens digital camera was an Olympus E-330, which took excellent files. I now have a Fujifilm X-E1, which does an amazing job in most circumstances and produces RAW files that you can manipulate to your heart's content with PhotoNinja or other software.

The vast bulk of people around the world use digital. Digital imaging is convenient, quick, and usually "accurate" technically. They can take thousands of pictures on a weekend, sort and process with their workflow, upload them to Flickr or wherever, and then???

Back to Film

All right, you are probably wondering: with all the advantages of digital, why have I reverted to the primitive, messy, clumsy, inconvenient, slow, low-dynamic-range, toxic, and expensive chemical recording medium?

• I like the way film depicts my typical subjects. Urban decay calls for black and white film. 
• The resulting pictures do not look digital!
• For awhile, I experimented with DxO FilmPack software, which offered film emulation modes to be applied to digital files. But this bothered me. Why emulate something when I can use the real thing? Why emulate anything in life when the real thing is available? (Like the paddle shifters on the steering wheel when what you really have is a car with automatic transmission.)
• I am awed by the technology used in the mid-20th century to manufacture film and build wonderfully precise mechanical cameras. 
• Film is the result of more than a century of chemical technology, refinement, and incredibly precise industrial engineering. 
• I like old cameras. They are fun and feel solid and stable in the hand.
• Using old cameras is a deliberate and slow process. It is valuable to test yourself with something that makes you think just a little bit harder (paraphrased from Hamish Gill on 35MMC). You can't spray and pray as with a digital camera and then mess around with software to see if you made a meaningful image.
• Being comfortable with the old technology, why not continue to use and share this knowledge? Why throw it into the dust bin of history just because it is no longer trendy among the masses?
• Possibly using black and white film today helps my pictures stand out. After all, millions (billions?) of digital snaps are taken daily. And they all look alike. Just look at the ubiquitous wide-angle, over-saturated, HDR-looking, exaggerated-sky, elevator music landscapes you see on the upload sites. 
• Film may be the media that survives the decades, providing you or your family store the negatives in a climate-controlled home and avoid floods and fires. Digital media? Maybe, but only if someone periodically saves the files to whatever is the new and current storage media. The "cloud?" Think about it....

Despite denials by film-hating trolls on equipment web pages like Dpreview, there has been a revival of film usage around the world. It will not again become a major business as it was in the 20th century, but Kodak Alaris is even reintroducing Ektachrome slide film. An article in Popular Photography shows what an astonishingly complex and precise process is required to produce this little 35-mm-wide piece of sensitized film stock. This new production follows a century of chemistry, experimentation, and mechanical engineering excellence; there is nothing primitive about it! The Phoblogger presented an interesting interview with Richard Photo Lab in Los Angeles about the revival in film use:

Phoblographer: What do you believe to be the biggest edge or selling point of film photography today?
Richard Photo Lab: There’s probably two big selling points for film. First, film has a way of turning you into a better photographer. It is not a magic gateway to better images, but it slows you down and makes you more cognizant about things like framing and lighting and composition—every frame counts! Second, lots of folks think that film is too expensive and that will be its downfall—but, they forget that the tradeoff for the upfront cost of film is the money saved (both actual dollars as well as time) in digital post-processing—an often overlooked expense of digital photography. Professional photographers can use that time to grow their business, book more paying gigs, or just focus on other priorities in their life like family, travel, etc.

Mike Johnston wrote an interesting commentary in The Online Photographer about the Magic of Photography. He noted that "it's the way photographs are physical impressions of the past which are always changing in their relation to the present."

Some Comparisons

Let us do an experiment. Here are digital and film views of the same subject, from which you can form your own opinions of which media depicts the scene more effectively. Comments are always welcome.

Oasis Motel, 11th Street (Route 66), Tulsa, Oklahoma, Fuji X-E1 digital camera

Oasis Motel, Kodak BW400CN film, Olympus Trip 35 with polarizer filter.

This is a motel on 11th Street in Tulsa, along one of the urban streets used by Route 66. The digital frame shows the red background behind the word "MOTEL." You lose that in the black and white film frame, but the cloud jumps out at you more prominently.

Closed car dealer, 11th Street, Tulsa. Fuji X-E1 digital camera.

Kodak BW400CN film, Olympus Trip 35 with polarizer filter.

Here we have an old car dealer on 11th Street. Color digital or monochrome film? Note the light was more dramatic for the B&W frame.

Ranch House Cafe, Route 66, Tucumcari, New Mexico, Fuji X-E1 digital 

Kodak BW400CN film, Yashica Electro 35CC camera

In this scene, the digital color file shows the faded blue of the truck, the matching struts of the sign, and the matching window frame on the cafe. But do we need that data? Is an old truck and abandoned restaurant better in black and white?

Last gas in Texas, Route 66, Glenrio (100° F, Fuji X-E1 digital)

Last gas in Texas, Glenrio (Tri-X 400 film, Hasselblad 501CM, 80mm ƒ/2.8 lens, polarizer filter)

Continuing with our Route 66 trek, Glenrio is a cluster of semi-abandoned gas stations and motor courts at the New Mexico/Texas border. It was hot, dusty, and dry. Color or monochrome?

Maria's Kitchen, W. Cordova Avenue, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Kodak BW400CN film, Yashica Electro 35CC, polarizer filter.

In the color digital image, the yellow of the hydrant stands out. The skies are dramatic in both versions. The rainy season in Santa Fe is fantastic for photography.

Valles Caldera, New Mexico, Kodak BW400CN film, Olympus Trip 35 with polarizer.

Here is a landscape as opposed to architecture or decay. Which works better?

Auschwitz I concentration camp, Poland. Fuji X-E1 digital camera braced on door frame. 

Auschwitz I, Poland. Kodak Tri-X 400 film, Rolleiflex 3.5E with 75mm Xenotar lens.

This is a more gruesome subject, the concentration camp at Oswiecim, Poland, where about 1.1 million prisoners were killed during World War II. Color shows the dingy yellow walls but monochrome makes you concentrate on the shapes and side lighting. The format is different, so this is not an exact compositional comparison. Which image tells the story more effectively?

Film and Artificial Intelligence

A recent article in the Nov. 12, 2018 issue of The New Yorker is pertinent for photographers and those of us who use film. The title is: "In the Age of A.I., Is Seeing Still Believing? Advances in digital imagery could deepen the fake-news crisis—or help us get out of it." It is about the pitfalls of Artificial Intelligence and digital imaging, and the problem of when people cannot tell what is real versus manufactured. Many people are now suspicious of still pictures that look too amazing to be real. But the dilemma runs deeper than this as to whether most people even care if it is manufactured (sounds like politics in USA in this era of non-critical thinking, ignorance, and stupidity). That is one reason why I have turned back to film. Despite its many flaws, the little piece of polyester and its gelatin coating shows exactly what the photons converted into an image. There it is, proof of what was out in front of the lens. That piece of film was witness to a piece of time and space, a time that will never return. You can manipulate it subsequently in the darkroom or, if it is scanned, with software, but the film was there.

Mike Johnston, author of The Online Photographer, wrote about how he used to call work with digital cameras "digital imaging":

"Years ago I tried to assert that digital imaging should not be called "photography," that the word photography described what we now clumsily know as analog or optical/chemical photography (I usually dislike back-formations), and that the new medium was sufficiently different that we should know it by a different name. I thought "digital imaging" or D.I. served just fine, since that had currency at the time. 

I've never changed that opinion, but I learned to back off on it, because people didn't like it—in the early days of digital, any comparison of film vs. digital quickly devolved into a status dispute, and people on Team Digital were immediately and automatically prickly about imagined slights to their standing. They wanted the main word applied to their chosen tech. So "digital photography" it was. As Mad magazine used to say, Yecch." 

A reader named Andre commented on one of the The Online Photography articles, "the thing that impresses me most about the medium is that the film itself is a physical witness to whatever event was photographed. That is, actual photons from the scene physically altered the film. For me, that gives film a unique kind of authenticity: the film was present and bears an imprint of the event itself." Andre stated his thoughts eloquently.

More discussion on the topic of film reality versus non-reality is in a follow-up note in The Online Photographer. Comments to the note are erudite, mature, and well-considered, in contrast to what you see on Dpreview.

Standby for more film photographs in the future.

Old Friends (My Film Cameras)

• Kodak Instamatic 500
• Canon unknown model rangefinder
• Certosport unknown model
• Nikon Nikkormat FTn
• Nikon F (non-metered prism)
• Nikon F3HP
• Pentax Spotmatic (my wife's camera, in regular use)
• Pentax Spotmatic II
• Pentax Spotmatic F
• Pentax MX
• Leica IIIC (my dad's 1949 camera, in regular use)
• Leica M3
• Leica M2
• Leica M2 (family 1967 camera, in use)
• Rollei 35S
• Yashica Electro 35CC
• Olympus Trip 35
• Canon QL19
• Voigtlander Vito BL (my brand new $34 camera)
• Rolleiflex 3.5E
• Rolleiflex 3.5F (sorry I sold it)
• Rolleiflex 3.5E (in use)
• Hasselblad 501CM (in use)
• Fujifilm GW690II (in use)
• Tachihara 4×5" (limited use; I am embarrassed)

Closing Thoughts

Return to Learned, Mississippi (using film)

Gibbes&Sons is a venerable country store, in business since 1899, in Learned, Mississippi. During the week, the store sells souvenirs and munchies. But on Friday and Saturday evening, it hosts steak dinners. And it is popular - what a great way to reinvent! The gent in the second photograph said I was welcome to take a picture - I wish I had written down his name.

It features country-style dining. Share a table and bring your own wine or beer. The proprietors will provide glasses. Wipe your fingers with paper towels. My friends and I ate on the back porch, which was reasonably comfortable despite the humidity.

The back yard has some interesting sheds and bits and pieces from the old days. I did not see these when I visited the shop mid-week in 2014, so it was well worthwhile to eat out on the back porch. While my friends chatted, I walked around with the Hasselblad and tripod.

Back out on Main Street, there are a number of old buildings and one interesting Magnolia tree outlined by the fading light (I warned you readers that I would be taking more "pretty" pictures in the future).

This former country store sits at the corner of Main and Front Streets. I do not know if the building is used today or is just part of the ambience of Learned. It is a nice town and I recommend a visit. Go eat a steak.

The square photographs are from TMax 400 film, taken with a Hasselblad 501CM camera and the 50mm f/4.0 Distagon lens. I had not used 120-size TMax before and was testing a roll. I exposed it at EI=320. The frames from dark locations were underexposed, and I think this film suffers reciprocity failure as low as 1/2 second. TMax is one of the new technology films introduced in the 1980s with so-called tabular silver grains (similar to Ilford's Delta films). The TMax is remarkably fine grain, but I think I prefer Tri-X 400's tonality. Tri-X is more grainy, but with a 54×54mm negative, grain really is not an issue. I scanned the negatives on a Minolta Scan Multi medium format film scanner operated with Silverfast Ai software.

When Film goes Bad (expired Ektar 25 film)

Former Edwards High School gymnasium, Magnolia Street, Edwards, Mississippi

I finally used the last of my stock of long-frozen Kodak Ektar 25 color negative film. It was quirky and a bit hard to use, but had a unique color palette. As a test, I bought two rolls from a fellow on eBay who claimed they had been refrigerated. I tried one of the rolls and it was fine. Then I bought two more rolls from another seller who honestly said he did not know the storage conditions. Many of these expired films come from estate sales, where a buyer opens an old camera bag and finds film. This time, the film was clearly ruined. Of a roll of 12 exposures from my Rolleiflex 3.5E, most were grossly underexposed, and I could only extract 5 frames. I used an exposure index (EI) of 12, but possibly if I tried EI 4 or 6, I might have saved a couple more frames. Regardless, I discarded the other roll. Really, it does not make sense to buy expired color film stock unless the seller can guarantee it has been frozen.

Expired black and white film is more forgiving because, of course, you do not have a color shift. I am still using 3-decade-old Kodak Panatomic-X film, which has been frozen all this time.

Crossroads store, Old Port Gibson Road, Reganton, Mississippi

The venerable Crossroads Store in Reganton, on Old Port Gibson Road, has been in business for a century. It is an example of the type of country store that once served farmers and workers who did not have access to a car in an era before strip malls and supermarkets. The day I took this picture, the store was hosting a crawfish boil, and everyone was having a good time. They invited me to eat!

Unoccupied house on Old Port Gibson Road, Reganton, Mississippi

Templeton Grocery, Jack Road, Hazelhurst, Mississippi

Templeton Grocery, Jack Road, Hazelhurst, Mississippi

The old Templeton Grocery at the intersection of Jack and Dentville Roads, northwest of Hazelhurst, is another example of an old neighborhood country store. This one was sheathed with asphalt shingles. These were similar to roof tiles and were equally durable, and were often made to resemble bricks or stone. Asphalt sheathing was popular mid-20th century but now is typically associated with low-income neighborhoods or old industrial or mill towns in the northeast.

Shack-Up Inn, Clarksdale, Mississippi

Finally, we have a frame from the Shack-up Inn in Clarksdale. This is a Blues-oriented inn where the guests stay in old farm silos or shotgun shacks. I had tried a roll of Ektar 25 from an eBay vendor who claimed the film had been frozen. Most frames turned out all right, but some clearly showed that the film had aged. Too many years have gone by since Kodak discontinued Ektar 25. Sadly, it is time to move on to a contemporary medium format color negative film.

These photographs are from a medium format Rolleiflex 3.5E twin-lens reflex camera with a 75mm ƒ/3.5 Schneider Xenotar lens. All frames tripod-mounted. I scanned the film with a Minolta Scan Multi film scanner at 2820 dpi.

This is no. 02e of my irregular series on Abandoned Films.

Footloose around Vicksburg, Mississippi, with Kodak Ektar 25 Color Film

Dear readers, I had one last roll of the long-discontinued Kodak Ektar 25 color negative film in 120 size. I loaded it in the Hasselblad and wandered around Vicksburg. The Ektar is quite contrasty, so I prefer to use it when the light is overcast, or, best of all, foggy or rainy. Vicksburg offers plenty of topography and interesting architecture, so we will take a semi-random tour around town. (Click any photograph to enlarge it).

Clay Street, Vicksburg, view east, 250mm ƒ/5.6 Sonnar lens.

Let us start this short tour with Clay Street, a major east-west thoroughfare. This is the first view of Vicksburg that many tourists see when they exit I-20. A friend called this the ugliest street in America. That is a bit harsh, but much of it certainly qualifies as the typical ghastly American commercial strip with crummy fast food joints, steel buildings, car parts stores, and Dollar stores.

My friends at Warfield's Servicenter kindly let me take pictures. They have kept the family cars running for many years. Highly recommended.

Jackson Street, Vicksburg, view east, 250mm Sonnar lens.

Three blocks to the north is Jackson Street, which still retains its brick paving blocks. Many of the houses are a century old. The photograph shows how the street follows the hills and valleys of the local terrain.

Walnut Street is also in the oldest part of town. This is a 1992 photograph I found in my archives.

Veto Street runs from Monroe Street (behind me) west towards Mulberry Street. It is an odd curved road. Did a streetcar once run on it? This 1992 photograph shows the Warren County library in the distance. I took it from the roof of the former Vicksburg Hospital. The hospital was demolished two decades ago and the Vicksburg police station in now on this footpad.

Former "Colored Motel," US 80, east of Mount Albans Road, 50mm Distagon lens.

Before the interstate was built in the early 1970s, Highway US 80 was the main road between Vicksburg and Jackson. Just east of the intersection with Mount Albans road, a pink motel is almost covered with kudzu. In the early 1980s, you could still see a big sign stating "Colored Motel." Somewhere in my negatives I may have a photograph, but that is a project for another day.

East of town on Culkin Road is the former Culkin Academy. It has been empty for at least two decades. A worm farmer rented the premises for a few years.

In downtown Vicksburg, the neighborhood near the junction of Marcus Street and Halls Ferry Road is known as Marcus Bottom. Many of the cottages here have been demolished over the years.  This photograph is from the Halls Ferry Road bridge where it crosses Stouts Bayou.

These shotgun houses are on East Avenue. The slope in the foreground drops down into Stouts Bayou.

Grammar Street once had 10 or 12 of these little shotgun houses. Only two remain now. Even a decade ago, they were pretty nasty.

Union Avenue descends from Sherman Avenue south towards the Vicksburg Military Park. This is not the Union Avenue within the park, but possibly it once connected in the era when there were multiple park entrances. And this outside Union Avenue is a bit odd. The west side is City of Vicksburg, while the east side is Warren County. Residents on the west get their water from the City, while residents on the east get it from Culkin Water District. The old Chevrolet and the house with blue tarp roof in the photographs above are in Warren County.

I found a 2010 photograph of this same Bellaire. Since then it moved across the street to the Warren County side.

Ford Road, Vicksburg, March 16, 2018

Near the flood crest, March 16, 2018.

Young Alley (off Ford Road), March 16, 2018.

Finally, here are some scenes from the spring flood, when high water forced some of the residents in the Ford subdivision to evacuate. The crest on the Vicksburg Gage was 49.90 ft on 03/16/2018 (from the National Weather Service). This area west of North Washington Street and just north of the Anderson Tully wood mill has always been vulnerable to flooding. Over the years, many houses have been bought via a FEMA program and demolished.

These photographs were taken on Kodak Ektar 25 film with a Hasselblad 501CM camera, with 50mm, 80mm, and 250mm Zeiss lenses. All pictures were tripod-mounted. The film was expired and the colors are off. My scanner software does not have a profile for Ektar 25, so I use the Ektar 100 one instead. Is it "accurate?" Who knows? Can you really remember how the scene looked weeks after you were on the site? If you want boring perfection and "accuracy," use digital.

This is no. 02d of my irregular series on Abandoned Films.

The Mississippi Delta 12b: Return to Clarksdale (with Ektar 25 film)

Shack Up Inn, Clarksdale, Mississippi, Kodak Ektar 25 film, Rolleiflex 3.5E camera, 75mm Xenotar lens

During an Easter weekend road trip through north Mississippi, my wife and I stopped in Clarksdale.

We stayed at the Shack Up Inn, a blues-oriented inn/motel that houses its guests in cabins, silos, and shotgun shacks. It is quite comfortable, and the shacks have been rebuilt and are well-insulated (which was welcome during the night as a cold front passed).

Shack Up has accumulated a large collection of vintage memorabilia - perfect for the photographer with a Rolleiflex.

An unused warehouse was just north of the property. I looked for barn owls but did not find any.

Jade building on Delta Ave., Clarksdale

Deak's Mississippi Saxophones & Blues Emporium, 3rd St., Clarksdale

Art Deco Greyhound Bus terminal, now visitor's center.

I need to return to Clarksdale again and spend more time looking around. There is a wealth of cultural material to record. On my previous visit, wisps of snow and bits of sleet were falling through the gloomy winter sky. Maybe next winter....

The square photographs with brilliant color are from Kodak Ektar 25 film, exposed in my 1959 Rolleiflex 3.5E twin lens camera with a Schneider 75mm ƒ/3.5 Xenotar lens. Click any one of those frames to see the amazing detail. All of the Rolleiflex exposures were tripod-mounted. The duller and more "accurate" photos are from a Moto G5 phone. 

This is no. 02c of my irregular series on Abandoned Films.