FWIW ... I've given up looking at web pages like this. The results
presented are rarely definitive and generally questionable as to
intent, practice and methodology. Whether the question of
"analog" (why do people refer to film as analog rather than film? i
find that expression so annoying) compared to "digital" (and that's
in quotes too because the word 'digital' is used to mean so many
things it's almost meaningless) is such a broad question in so many
directions that it's problematic to even determine what criteria
ought to be used to measure performance.
I compare prints. Lots of prints. Prints from negatives or
transparencies, printed with traditional chemical processes, prints
from scanned negatives or transparencies printed with both chemical
and inkjet processes, prints from digital captures printed with both
again. B&W and Color prints too.
Depending upon size and the quality of the work done, one or another
print will look better to my eye. Good stuff from people who know
what they're doing, from either process, allows me to transcend the
technical discussion of differences and tend to the real work: the
photography.
You recall my most recent PAW image, a 2400 ppi scan from a 1983
negative?
http://homepage.mac.com/ramarren/photo/PAW6/large/06-half.jpg
I was at my class last night and put six photographs, printed to A3
size, on this kind of theme on the table when my turn came up. After
the first round of discussion (we're working on statements for an
upcoming exhibit), I mentioned to the group that one of the six was
NOT digital capture. There are three photographers and two painters
in the group. The information sailed over the heads of the painters
entirely (I find the painting community does not respond to the
technology of photography at all, they respond to color, light,
emotional content, etc) but the three photographers did an intense
study from that point on of each print. Only one of them correctly
identified this one as being a film image ... she found a tiny hair
in the image (that I've since cloned out... ;-). One of them told me
that he thought *all* of them were medium format TXP when he first
looked at them...
That's good enough for me. I want to get on with doing photography,
I'm confident that the medium I'm using is adequate to the task.
Godfrey
