Film vs. Digital

(more coming soon)
film benefits

  • film is its own always-useful archive
  • film can be rescanned at higher resolution in the future
  • view cameras provide extremely large, high resolution source image with complete flexibility of lens movements and the whole scene captured at once
  • no concern about dust on the sensor destroying portion of the image
  • every spot has full color range, unlike bayer sensor’s interpolation of full color range
  • color range can be wider than digital
  • film’s response has built-in “knee” that preserves discernable detail in highlights without blowing out
  • no need for anti-aliasing filters to prevent moire with large pixels

digital benefits

  • today’s best sensors have better linearity, dynamic range, and signal to noise ratio than film
  • with such high s/n, lower spatial resolution is needed for same subjective image quality as film
  • today’s best sensors match the spatial resolution of film
  • for still life, a scanning back can be used with large format view camera and its lens motions
  • 12 megapixel 35mm full-frame size sensors clearly outperform 35mm film
  • no problem with film flatness or accuracy of film frame registration
  • immediate preview with live view and immediate review in-camera
  • no need for noisy, stinky, toxic chemicals or delay in development process
  • no concern about x-rays fogging film