Film Vs. Megapixels

Phrosty

Active member
This is one of the battles that has plagued man sience, well like the late 90's. Anyway what do you guys prefer, and why? Personaly i like digital. in the long run'it's cheaper, and pictures are easyer to manipulate, just a straight upload. (Yes, I know what a film scanner is) Right now with the 5 megapixel cameras they are just as detailed as film cameras. Even less megapixels will give you great results. But what does everyone else think?

'Get that shit outta my ass nigga!' - skipimp_ when he wrestled his dad.

Read my daily words of wisdom at the 'Don't click this' thread in non-ski gabber!
 
yeah true the amount of detail is basically the same if you look at the highest end digital cams. but do you really want detail? personally I like the softer look of film.

but the way to go right now is digital it's so much cheaper and the ski video market isn't huge.(especially for indi videos)

MD... Dain bramaged.

'I am now a moderator... and all I had to do was suck harveys cock! who would have guessed?' - Dave Pauls.
 
THe differences in the way they actually show an image makes film have a much better image quality. Someday pixels may match the grain size on film but thats a long way away. THe colors on digi come from the three primary colors, they are arranged close together to give the illusion of each color but they do not actually produce the true color. Thus film wins again, with modern chemicals film has virtually infinite color possibilities, different films are better for different colors and slide film is better than negative film. Too see the real difference in image quality you just have to blow up a picture, sure at 4 X 6 a digi picture looks good but even by the time it is an 8 X 12 you will see how far superior film is...as long as its printed at a good lab. Yes computer modification is good fun but it never will compare to true photographs, its like a cheesy reproduction. Go look at some old Ansel Adams photos, they are amazing and that was far before computers.

It boils down to what you want...if you are going to take pictures of just your friends and stuff like that then digital is probably a better bet for you. If you shoot superfast moving subjects, low light, long exposures, landscapes, macro shots, or anything besides what you do with a point and shoot then you want film.

Most movies that use film are scanned into and Avid, then editted then reprinted onto film...its a lot cheaper than cutting and splicing film.

Conformity, I'll never swallow. The world today full of pain and sorrow. Apathy, I'll never follow.

Stretch Arm Strong
 
The eye, however, is not as discerning when looking at a picture in the usual context as it can be when looking at things blown up. So many can also argue that a shot of around 9 million pixels would look as good to the eye as a 35mm shot *(that would be about 4 million or 4 megapixels)*, except when blown up very large and looked at quite closely.

It's important to note another key difference. Film, as an analog medium, does not record just 256 grayscales or the corresponding 16 million colours. And film scanners, even doing just 8 bits per colour, get 24 bits of data for every single pixel. Today's digital cameras only get 8 bits of data for each pixel and they guess (interpolate) the other 16. So the colour accuracy for even a scanned film image is better than the modern digital camera. Good film scanners can also extract more than just levels from 0 to 255. They can often go to 12 bits (0 to 4097) to detect much more detail in shadows, and provide more contrast. As such a film scanner gets as much as 36 bits of information for each pixel, instead of 8.

So really it's not so much an issue of amount of pixels (unless you're projecting it on a big screen) becuase you can get a digital cam with 4 megapixels (right?), It's an issue of colour details. And film wins.

MD... Dain bramaged.

'I am now a moderator... and all I had to do was suck harveys cock! who would have guessed?' - Dave Pauls.
 
yeah ansel adams was great I have some of his work rframed in my room. I hear what you guys are saying/pasting some of it makes sense. But Now digicams are over 5 megapixels, to me it seems more affordable to go digital. I dunno, i like my digi cam, it takes great pictures, It was only 500 bucks.

'Get that shit outta my ass nigga!' - skipimp_ when he wrestled his dad.

Read my daily words of wisdom at the 'Don't click this' thread in non-ski gabber!
 
yea i have a $500 digi cam also. i took it on my trip to ecuador, and it took some pretty good pics. they look really good on the comp, but i only got them printed in 4x6. for what i use it for, i think im better off with a digi cam. btw, i also use my parents canon slr.

 
fuck digital stills. I have spend many days working in photolabs and digital stuff looks NOTICABLY worse then a nice CLEAN slide scan. You can get insain resolution and color out of a slide where digi is still pretty lame. the closest camera I have seen to a film cam is this one from fuji
http://www.fujifilm.com/JSP/fuji/ep...rent=PRODUCT_CATEGORY_473510&product=43020209

I duno how to link stuff in here so I hope that works. Like 12 megapixels, takes some nice shots that you can actuly print around the 8x12 range and not lose quality. The cam is also spendy but if you have the right friends you can get your hands on one to play with and to take photos for your portfolio.

My main beef is people who buy cameras for the wrong stuff. If you want a camera to take pictures of you and your friends screwing around get a digi cam, it's more or less an upfront cost. Don't have to worry about film costs, or them withholding photos at the developing place. But if you want to make stuff look nice in print and to make money use slide film. If you want to make money you do need to spend it. I've had friends who use digital ready to make a few sales of there photos and had to cancel the agreement because they couldn't get there shot to the resolution.

thats my pointless ramble some of you probably won't read. enjoy

 
i know absolutly nothing about cameras in comparison to everone who posted above, but i will always take film over digital

_________________________________________________________

Proud Leader Of OA-a group for those addicted to oakley products.
 
12 megapixels? you have no idea what you are talking about.

'Get that shit outta my ass nigga!' - skipimp_ when he wrestled his dad.

Read my daily words of wisdom at the 'Don't click this' thread in non-ski gabber!
 
no... follow the link he put there.

-Produces 12.1 Million (4256x2848) recorded pixels or choice of (3024x2016), (2304x1536) and (1440x960) pixels.

MD... Dain bramaged.

'I am now a moderator... and all I had to do was suck harveys cock! who would have guessed?' - Dave Pauls.
 
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