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What is it about film that makes you or another photographer choose it?

Theodoros,

I'd like us to focus on where film is essential or advantageous, as in my two examples above. That's what we'd like to assemble from the diverse experience and tastes we all have.

Asher

But MO on this has been answered long before Asher… Whenever it's the media to achieve the "look" on the print that one aims for… not "like the look", but the actual look! …In fact, I think that Richard Learoyd's image that you posted before, it suggests the same…

img103siteb.jpg
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
But MO on this has been answered long before Asher… Whenever it's the media to achieve the "look" on the print that one aims for… not "like the look", but the actual look! …In fact, I think that Richard Learoyd's image that you posted before, it suggests the same…

img103siteb.jpg

So you believe the"presence" of the "Learoyd" portraits is in fact the Cibachrome direct positive film medium! Is that your position. We still have to address the special nature of his lighting, choice of lenses and narrow DOF. As Jerome points out, with standard DSLR's we can use the same lenses as we do for the matching film camera. Do portraits end up recognizably different.

IOW, is my adoration of RL full size direct prints attributable in any way to some uniqueness in the medium. I feel it's connected but this could be by delusion.

Now the B&W image you shared above is film or digital and what does it demonstrate in the special choice to use film instead of digital.

Maris has esthetic and cultural personal reasons for shooting film. I have practical examples, but the facts of the use of emulsion v. sensor are secondary to the design of the camera, quiet shutter or one shot extreme super-wide angle perspective and coverage.

So do you think the film medium has distinct qualities for any purpose you can relate to?

Asher
 
So you believe the"presence" of the "Learoyd" portraits is in fact the Cibachrome direct positive film medium! Is that your position. We still have to address the special nature of his lighting, choice of lenses and narrow DOF. As Jerome points out, with standard DSLR's we can use the same lenses as we do for the matching film camera. Do portraits end up recognizably different.
IOW, is my adoration of RL full size direct prints attributable in any way to some uniqueness in the medium. I feel it's connected but this could be by delusion.
No Asher… It's not what I'm saying, What I'm saying is that another reason he used film on this shot is because he thinks the portrait works better with film... I don't think he shot film for the shallow DOF, but rather that the imperfection of the media exposes the subject more... The DOF could be achievable using my Contax with the Zeiss 140mm f2.8 wide open too (notice that he has focused on the shoulder?)… IMO, he wants the grain on the background to be present and he has focused by "fine tuning" the DOF he wants.


Now the B&W image you shared above is film or digital and what does it demonstrate in the special choice to use film instead of digital.
It's film, isn't it obvious? …I wanted the grain in the HLs and lens ghosting is recorded different on film than on sensor...

Maris has esthetic and cultural personal reasons for shooting film. I have practical examples, but the facts of the use of emulsion v. sensor are secondary to the design of the camera, quiet shutter or one shot extreme super-wide angle perspective and coverage.
I agree on image area (said that in my first post) being a factor to choose film sometimes...

So do you think the film medium has distinct qualities for any purpose you can relate to?

Asher
Film or digital, It all has to do with the look one desires on the final print.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
But MO on this has been answered long before Asher… Whenever it's the media to achieve the "look" on the print that one aims for… not "like the look", but the actual look! …In fact, I think that Richard Learoyd's image that you posted before, it suggests the same…

img103siteb.jpg


So,Theodoros,

If we want that look, we must use film? Aren't the highlights written by the lens? Surely I can get that grain with DXO film pack? Are you sure one can't get the result so close that it would be near impossible for all but forensic study to recognize the deception just on picking up a print? Maybe Peter Fettermen, the print expert in Santa Monica would catch us red-handed, but otherwise, I think we should be O.K.!.........or I'm mistaken? If so, then I'd be happy as I'd like to discover all the verifiable qualities that make film obviously it's distinct medium from the appearance as opposed to our inside knowledge.

BTW, in that picture above, I think focus was on her left eye and hair. That's his usual manner of working!

Asher
 
img103siteb.jpg


So,Theodoros,

If we want that look, we must use film? Aren't the highlights written by the lens? Surely I can get that grain with DXO film pack? Are you sure one can't get the result so close that it would be near impossible for all but forensic study to recognize the deception just on picking up a print? Maybe Peter Fettermen, the print expert in Santa Monica would catch us red-handed, but otherwise, I think we should be O.K.!.........or I'm mistaken? If so, then I'd be happy as I'd like to discover all the verifiable qualities that make film obviously it's distinct medium from the appearance as opposed to our inside knowledge.
Asher, I think my opinion on all the above has been covered on my first post back to No:12, besides, I think that for a photographer to achieve the look he wants on a photograph, he has to print it himself having the whole process under control with what he visions in his mind.

BTW, in that picture above, I think focus was on her left eye and hair. That's his usual manner of working!

Asher

As you well know Asher, DOF is greater at the rear of the subject than the front… Hence, if focus was on the eye, rear DOF would be enough to cover the whole face, yet here, the front shoulder is in focus, while the rear one is not, which wouldn't be the case if he would have focus on the left eye.
 

Jerome Marot

Well-known member
I know there's a presence in Richard Learoyd's life size direct print on Cibachrome.


Portrait-Richard-Learoyd-02.jpg


But is it due to the lack of makeup or hair styling, the timeless appearance, choosing a lens at 600mm or 650mm or else the medium or his lighting and can we do the same with digital? This is not a casual question. I'd really like to know. My prejudice and gut feeling is that it's due to the medium, the rich Cibachrome pigment colors in the direct exposure of the special medium with nothing intermediate and no editing. I'd love to learn from the ideas and feelings of others. Please no more definitions.

I am not entirely sure why you are asking these questions, Asher. But since it is you, I feel that you deserve a longer answer.


First: it is not possible to emulate one medium with another. It never is. I sometimes visit exhibition of B&W pictures in museums and they often use inkjet prints for older negatives when they don't have a historical print and want to print big. So I can compare analogue and digital prints of museum quality. They are pretty close, but I can still spot which is which with the naked eye. And colour prints are so far apart that no museum I know exhibits one next to the other.

The mediums are visually different. Not better or worse, just different. The same is true for the whole reproduction chain: lenses of a certain type will impact a certain rendering to the picture, films have their own ways to render colour or grain, which is different of the one of electronic sensors and each printing technology gives slightly different results. Even paper surface will look different. Moreover, for reasons I have already sketched on this forum, the size of the sensor or film will directly influence the rendering of the lenses.

So, it is simply different. This is not the question.

What is the question?

If the question is: "how can I get the same effect as a given photograph?", the easy answer is "use the same devices". Some people do that and it is the main drive behind the revival of film. People see, for example, images taken with medium format cameras in the 50s or 70s, get a cheap used Hasseblad or Mamiya, shoot film and get something that indeed looks similar. Easy enough.

If the question is: "can I emulate the effect of a given photograph with a different process?", the answer is more complex. I'll take the example of Learoyds' image since this is what you gave us.

If the question is "can we emulate the original as printed on Cibachrome?", the answer is no. I am old enough to have actually used Cibachrome, I still have some prints somewhere and I know very well that Cibachrome looks like nothing else. If the question is: "can we get something close to that small-resolution image above?", the answer is more complex. I would love to try. The image is deceptively simple. The light is extremely soft as in a painter's attic (if you remember the rooms with huge windows painters used at the turn of last centuries), although actually flash is used. The colour balance is generally cold and turns to excess magenta in the shades and mid-tones. That could be emulated with some effort in Photoshop. Highlights roll-off is peculiar (shoulder), that might be difficult to imitate. The depth of field, bokeh and general rendering of the lens is very soft and typical of large format, but medium format would probably come close. So we cannot emulate it exactly with digital, because we don't have a digital large format sensor and highlight roll-off is different with digital.

Could we emulate this with large format film? Well, you know more about large format cameras than I do, Asher, but I think that the main problem would be that no film has these exact colours.

But maybe the question was: "can we make a portrait that would be just as endearing as this one with a different camera?"

Here is a video where Richard Learoyd explains the process: http://lectures.icp.edu/archive/videos/2011/Learoyd2011.html




Edit: I'll probably be criticised for that, but I made some calculations after having watched the video and learned a bit more about the prints. The results made me realise that we can't discuss these pictures without having actually seen the prints.

The prints are something like 180x120cm. Cibachrome has a very high resolution, the limitation is the lens. A conservative estimate of the result is about 1 gigapixels. Of course, most of the print is out of focus, since the depth of field is about 5mm, but still… the image must look sharper than life.

I can barely imagine what the models would feel. You are here, in front of the camera, and you know that the instant the flash pop, you will be imaged for display in a museum (or a collector's house) in eternity. And you'll the imaged just as you are: people can get a magnifier and count the pores on your skin. This is insane.
 
Last edited:
1998
Never tried back.
I'm always looking forward, never backward. Passed is gone and future have some room for hope : D)
OK…. Let's have some fun with different questions then since most of different views are covered…

What digital equipment you think is the closest to "film look" out of all you've used Nicolas?
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
1998
Never tried back.
I'm always looking forward, never backward. Passed is gone and future have some room for hope : D)

Nicolas,

I'm amazed by how wonderful the sensors have become in the past 15 years. Today they are nothing less than marvels. Still, in looking forward, one does not have to use just one mode of painting oner's visions. Admittedly, there's little barrier to making the most wonderful images with any brand of modern digital camera.

Still, when you build, you do not have to use carbon fiber, burnt wood composite or stainless steel however much they are magnificent. One might want the look of rusted iron on Corten or else use stressed old wood!

I'm not advocating that film should be mainstream again. Rather I'm trying to recognize the qualities of film and it's "presence", where it's available, that might still be exploited for our expression of esthetics, or in the cases of convenience or sensitivity to wavelengths outside the visible spectrum perhaps.

Just ideas and feelings.

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I am not entirely sure why you are asking these questions, Asher. But since it is you, I feel that you deserve a longer answer.


First: it is not possible to emulate one medium with another. It never is. I sometimes visit exhibition of B&W pictures in museums and they often use inkjet prints for older negatives when they don't have a historical print and want to print big. So I can compare analogue and digital prints of museum quality. They are pretty close, but I can still spot which is which with the naked eye. And colour prints are so far apart that no museum I know exhibits one next to the other.

The mediums are visually different. Not better or worse, just different. The same is true for the whole reproduction chain: lenses of a certain type will impact a certain rendering to the picture, films have their own ways to render colour or grain, which is different of the one of electronic sensors and each printing technology gives slightly different results. Even paper surface will look different. Moreover, for reasons I have already sketched on this forum, the size of the sensor or film will directly influence the rendering of the lenses.

So, it is simply different. This is not the question.

What is the question?

If the question is: "how can I get the same effect as a given photograph?", the easy answer is "use the same devices". Some people do that and it is the main drive behind the revival of film. People see, for example, images taken with medium format cameras in the 50s or 70s, get a cheap used Hasseblad or Mamiya, shoot film and get something that indeed looks similar. Easy enough.

If the question is: "can I emulate the effect of a given photograph with a different process?", the answer is more complex. I'll take the example of Learoyds' image since this is what you gave us.

If the question is "can we emulate the original as printed on Cibachrome?", the answer is no. I am old enough to have actually used Cibachrome, I still have some prints somewhere and I know very well that Cibachrome looks like nothing else. If the question is: "can we get something close to that small-resolution image above?", the answer is more complex. I would love to try. The image is deceptively simple. The light is extremely soft as in a painter's attic (if you remember the rooms with huge windows painters used at the turn of last centuries), although actually flash is used. The colour balance is generally cold and turns to excess magenta in the shades and mid-tones. That could be emulated with some effort in Photoshop. Highlights roll-off is peculiar (shoulder), that might be difficult to imitate. The depth of field, bokeh and general rendering of the lens is very soft and typical of large format, but medium format would probably come close. So we cannot emulate it exactly with digital, because we don't have a digital large format sensor and highlight roll-off is different with digital.

Could we emulate this with large format film? Well, you know more about large format cameras than I do, Asher, but I think that the main problem would be that no film has these exact colours.

But maybe the question was: "can we make a portrait that would be just as endearing as this one with a different camera?"

Here is a video where Richard Learoyd explains the process: http://lectures.icp.edu/archive/videos/2011/Learoyd2011.html




Edit: I'll probably be criticised for that, but I made some calculations after having watched the video and learned a bit more about the prints. The results made me realise that we can't discuss these pictures without having actually seen the prints.

The prints are something like 180x120cm. Cibachrome has a very high resolution, the limitation is the lens. A conservative estimate of the result is about 1 gigapixels. Of course, most of the print is out of focus, since the depth of field is about 5mm, but still… the image must look sharper than life.

I can barely imagine what the models would feel. You are here, in front of the camera, and you know that the instant the flash pop, you will be imaged for display in a museum (or a collector's house) in eternity. And you'll the imaged just as you are: people can get a magnifier and count the pores on your skin. This is insane.


Jerome,

I'm indebted to you for the care you've taken in researching this unique and skilled photographer. As you can imagine, I admire his work. That 5mm of focus one does not realize in experiencing his giant works. Rather one feels the person in a timeless floating apparition, without limitation of today's fashions.

That exposure is of some 40,000 Watt-seconds from a barrage of giant strobes covered with filters to block out UV. The paper has an ISO 0f something like 1-2!! Worse, the color temp of the flash has to be managed with Decamired filters to get the right color temp, or one has wasted $50 of paper in one stroke!

That model has to be as great person. He does not really chat or get to know them, as I do with subjects! He knows little to nothing about their personal lives. He always pays them, but they are not trained models, just folk who catch his eye. That's how I find my subjects too! So we share one smidgen of workflow, LOL!

I've studied the prints in person, (they appear sharp as life) and interviewed him by phone on his methods. He's a really nice fellow!

Asher
 
Nicolas,

I'm amazed by how wonderful the sensors have become in the past 15 years. Today they are nothing less than marvels. Still, in looking forward, one does not have to use just one mode of painting oner's visions. Admittedly, there's little barrier to making the most wonderful images with any brand of modern digital camera.

Still, when you build, you do not have to use carbon fiber, burnt wood composite or stainless steel however much they are magnificent. One might want the look of rusted iron on Corten or else use stressed old wood!

I'm not advocating that film should be mainstream again. Rather I'm trying to recognize the qualities of film and it's "presence", where it's available, that might still be exploited for our expression of esthetics, or in the cases of convenience or sensitivity to wavelengths outside the visible spectrum perhaps.

Just ideas and feelings.

Asher
I guess that says it all… and with a very good example too! I believe that exploring the barriers (technically) of what does what and where the limits of a media are, is a very important process that a photographer must work on (along with the process followed) to include into his work (as it happens with all other arts).
It is "the look" of the print that one must achieve and that "look" differs from one project to another, perfection on "the look" though, doesn't always have to do with being better technically (having more res or more DR or colour accuracy or a "cleaner" result), but rather with achieving the visualisation of the photograph. If one thinks about it, Adams and Gursky have one thing in common, "the way they both work to achieve the print".[/I ]They both preplan every detail, they choose the tools, they direct the scene, they process the image as preplanned and then they print to achieve the result…. What is more, they make the whole process evident in the final print.
 

Jerome Marot

Well-known member
Jerome,

I'm indebted to you for the care you've taken in researching this unique and skilled photographer. As you can imagine, I admire his work. That 5mm of focus one does not realize in experiencing his giant works. Rather one feels the person in a timeless floating apparition, without limitation of today's fashions.

That exposure is of some 40,000 Watt-seconds from a barrage of giant strobes covered with filters to block out UV. The paper has an ISO 0f something like 1-2!! Worse, the color temp of the flash has to be managed with Decamired filters to get the right color temp, or one has wasted $50 of paper in one stroke!

That model has to be as great person. He does not really chat or get to know them, as I do with subjects! He knows little to nothing about their personal lives. He always pays them, but they are not trained models, just folk who catch his eye. That's how I find my subjects too! So we share one smidgen of workflow, LOL!

I've studied the prints in person, (they appear sharp as life) and interviewed him by phone on his methods. He's a really nice fellow!

He seems to be a nice fellow in the video I linked to.

And, obviously, the prints must be something extraordinary. But taking this process as an example for all film-based processes is akin to taking the CCD cameras in the Hubble telescope as an example for all digital-based processes. The sheer amount of resources necessary is beyond anything else I can think of.
 
And, obviously, the prints must be something extraordinary. But taking this process as an example for all film-based processes is akin to taking the CCD cameras in the Hubble telescope as an example for all digital-based processes. The sheer amount of resources necessary is beyond anything else I can think of.

Hi Jerome,

Couldn't agree more. It's horses for courses ...

And, if e.g. Ansel Adams would have had access to digital imaging, I'm 99.8% sure he would have used that to render his creative intent.

Cheers,
Bart
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Hi Jerome,

Couldn't agree more. It's horses for courses ...

And, if e.g. Ansel Adams would have had access to digital imaging, I'm 99.8% sure he would have used that to render his creative intent.

For sure, and he'd quote Nicolas, LOL, saying he only goes forward, not backwards!

Asher
 
i believe that film will be with us up to the "next digital revolution"… As long as colour is interpolated and sensors have BP filter to create colour, there will be people that will prefer to use a true colour image area even if the colour made is not of accuracy…. As far as Adams, I believe that if he had todays digital available, he would use it along with film depending on the project, I don't think that this status of photographers think the way we do with equipment… They rather direct their capture to be as perfect as possible having the print pre decided in their minds, especially with Adams, i believe that for his B&W work, he would use a B&W sensor for whenever he would decide on a MF camera, while he would use B&W sheet film for LF cameras….
I believe that the end of film will be (soon?) when all colour sensors made (at FF size and more) for single shot cameras, will be with true RGB pixels and then processing of RAW images will have a different approach than it has today… I see that having to work with "true colour" for most of my pro work for my still captures, the work required to process the file is much more accurate, much faster and of a unique quality, much like processing a digitised raw out of well exposed and developed film, only that the darkroom & scanning part is missing. I also believe that the image area size handicap of digital, won't be solved by having larger image areas than we do today, but rather with faster and wider lenses to match the image area and DOF that LF cameras can. As of true B&W sensors, I expect it to be much cheaper in the future and with more availability after "true colour" single shot sensors will be with us.
 
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