Film: The Real RAW
Taken from a link a former photo student of mine sent me! Need I say more!
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/real-raw.htm
He brings up some good points, I don't agree with everything he is saying, but I couldn't resist from posting it!
Yeh for Film! (Which is what I write on my envelopes every time I drop film off at the professional lab for processing - yes, I am a photo geek, I know).
A digital raw file is not an original image.
A digital camera's raw file has already sampled and quantized the image, which loses information, while film retains the original image to be retrieved at any time in the future.
I'm consistently amused by innocent hobbyists who go through the aggravation of shooting digital camera raw files just to get what they think is marginally better technical quality, or the ability to go back and do it right a second time, but who completely forget that if you're willing to shell out this extra effort, you could shoot film and get better results today, and even better results tomorrow.
Film is the original raw, and holds far more information than any digital file from a camera sensor.
20 years from now we can re-scan our film and get 2029-level image quality.
The Wizard of Oz was shot on film in 1939. Today it looks great on Blu-Ray High-Definition DVD.
All we had was radio in in 1939, so how did they know how to make High-Definition DVDs back then? They didn't, but by having the forethought to shoot on film, they knew they always could scan the original raw film images with better equipment in the future. This way we always get results which are to modern standards, regardless of when something was shot.
With film, we always have our original images.
With digital raw files, your images are forever locked into technology that was probably already obsolete as you shot them.
Digital raw files are not the original image. Digital camera raw files are merely approximations of the image before it hit the sensor.
At best, digital raw files are a close approximation of what came out of a sensor, not what went in. Digital raw files have already folded, spindled and mutilated the original image with the limitations of that era's technology. Digital camera raw files have already limited the original image in at least three different ways.
Film capture gives you at least three more degrees of freedom in extracting your image than digital camera raw files do.
Archiving film always allows you direct access to your original living, breathing live images at any time in the future.
If you demand the best quality for serious subjects, and don't mind investing a lot of time to get it, then step all the way up to film.
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/real-raw.htm
He brings up some good points, I don't agree with everything he is saying, but I couldn't resist from posting it!
Yeh for Film! (Which is what I write on my envelopes every time I drop film off at the professional lab for processing - yes, I am a photo geek, I know).
A digital raw file is not an original image.
A digital camera's raw file has already sampled and quantized the image, which loses information, while film retains the original image to be retrieved at any time in the future.
I'm consistently amused by innocent hobbyists who go through the aggravation of shooting digital camera raw files just to get what they think is marginally better technical quality, or the ability to go back and do it right a second time, but who completely forget that if you're willing to shell out this extra effort, you could shoot film and get better results today, and even better results tomorrow.
Film is the original raw, and holds far more information than any digital file from a camera sensor.
20 years from now we can re-scan our film and get 2029-level image quality.
The Wizard of Oz was shot on film in 1939. Today it looks great on Blu-Ray High-Definition DVD.
All we had was radio in in 1939, so how did they know how to make High-Definition DVDs back then? They didn't, but by having the forethought to shoot on film, they knew they always could scan the original raw film images with better equipment in the future. This way we always get results which are to modern standards, regardless of when something was shot.
With film, we always have our original images.
With digital raw files, your images are forever locked into technology that was probably already obsolete as you shot them.
Digital raw files are not the original image. Digital camera raw files are merely approximations of the image before it hit the sensor.
At best, digital raw files are a close approximation of what came out of a sensor, not what went in. Digital raw files have already folded, spindled and mutilated the original image with the limitations of that era's technology. Digital camera raw files have already limited the original image in at least three different ways.
Film capture gives you at least three more degrees of freedom in extracting your image than digital camera raw files do.
Archiving film always allows you direct access to your original living, breathing live images at any time in the future.
If you demand the best quality for serious subjects, and don't mind investing a lot of time to get it, then step all the way up to film.
Labels: Photos, Random Rambling, Teaching, Words of Wisdom
posted by Caroline Houdek at 11:55 PM
2 Comments:
I agree that film has certain things going for it. However, it should be pointed out that the reason things like The Wizard of Oz look good on Blu-Ray in 2009 is because the images, from film, can be scanned, quantized, processed, manipulated, color saturated & corrected, mutilated, and all the other things digital gives us. I'm sure if we found an old projector, spooled up the original master of The Wizard of Oz and watched it, it would look like complete crap. :) So, the case could be made for important works, for which the ability to archive and rescan later (likely at great expense), to be shot on film. However, for Joe the snap-shot-shooter, cost and connivance likely outweigh archivability.
Yes Matt, tis true, digitally fixing, manipulating, etc takes time and is costly, but at least it's an option. If The Wizard of Oz were not shot in film (mostly because digital wasn't invented yet [a student wrote that in a paper once and it's still funny]) there wouldn't even be the option to fix it up to 2009 standards, it would live as the original quality.
And true, the regular Joe snap-shot shooter does not care. One thing that should be mentioned is that with the advent of photo, as it became more widely used even the common man was able to know what his ancestors looked like, which we now take for granted (from the introduction of "The Photographer's Eye," but in the 1800's knowing this was not the case. So now, in 2009, with the common man/woman shooting digital pictures, and often never printing them out, with a couple bad computer crashes or PC viruses (we'll get into the Mac vs. PC debate at a later date) those photos will no longer exist and the common man/woman will not know what their immediate ancestors looked like. ...at least it's something to consider...
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