[quote name='Pinhole' timestamp='1287660810' post='3716']
Actually, BC, my comments are not "repeated from an internet forum", but from years of experience using film (which I still shoot). I don't know about the science and the figures, but subjectively I see more shadow and highlight details in actual prints using low ISO film (either 35mm or 6x7) than my DSLR is able to reproduce.
[/quote]
Pinhole, if you do see more, I sincerely suggest you try to shoot to the right in digital, and not rely entirely on the inbuilt lightmeter, and convert RAW to 16-bit tiff or so while adjusting the curve in the process. This to get an s-curve, and shift the entire image towards a DR-range where all tonal values you need are still present. Essentially that is the same as we used to do when developing film in the old days, just that we could only see the result after the development process rather than during th eprocess, as we now can with digital.
I think one needs to tinker as little as possible when converting RAW to an image to actually do the processing on, but correcting exposure (development time), preserving the maximum tonal scale (exposure, development time and developer selection and dilution), making sure it becomes an s-curve adapted to the human eye (extra step due to the linear logarithmic nature of digital) are of the essence IMO.
From there on you should ideally get equal or better results than you did or do with 35 mm film. Not 6X7 yet, you'd need medium format to do that, although FF is getting close now (you'd need about 42 to 46 MP compared to a 6X7 frame).
Low iso B&W film still has a slight advantage over digital up to FF, but we are closing the gap very fast. At 100 iso we are there already, no problem. However, it does require different processing and different exposure than B&W or negative film in general requires.
Kind regards, Wim
Actually, BC, my comments are not "repeated from an internet forum", but from years of experience using film (which I still shoot). I don't know about the science and the figures, but subjectively I see more shadow and highlight details in actual prints using low ISO film (either 35mm or 6x7) than my DSLR is able to reproduce.
[/quote]
Pinhole, if you do see more, I sincerely suggest you try to shoot to the right in digital, and not rely entirely on the inbuilt lightmeter, and convert RAW to 16-bit tiff or so while adjusting the curve in the process. This to get an s-curve, and shift the entire image towards a DR-range where all tonal values you need are still present. Essentially that is the same as we used to do when developing film in the old days, just that we could only see the result after the development process rather than during th eprocess, as we now can with digital.
I think one needs to tinker as little as possible when converting RAW to an image to actually do the processing on, but correcting exposure (development time), preserving the maximum tonal scale (exposure, development time and developer selection and dilution), making sure it becomes an s-curve adapted to the human eye (extra step due to the linear logarithmic nature of digital) are of the essence IMO.
From there on you should ideally get equal or better results than you did or do with 35 mm film. Not 6X7 yet, you'd need medium format to do that, although FF is getting close now (you'd need about 42 to 46 MP compared to a 6X7 frame).
Low iso B&W film still has a slight advantage over digital up to FF, but we are closing the gap very fast. At 100 iso we are there already, no problem. However, it does require different processing and different exposure than B&W or negative film in general requires.
Kind regards, Wim
Gear: Canon EOS R with 3 primes and 2 zooms, 4 EF-R adapters, Canon EOS 5 (analog), 9 Canon EF primes, a lone Canon EF zoom, 2 extenders, 2 converters, tubes; Olympus OM-D 1 Mk II & Pen F with 12 primes, 6 zooms, and 3 Metabones EF-MFT adapters ....
