Film v. Digital

m6 50mm summicron portra 400vc 3xND

THE FILM

So this is the quandary: I have a digital workflow and a film workflow running side by side.  I hear about the beauty of the leica.  how amazing the lenses are –leica glow, unparalleled sharpness.  I mean, come on, the cheap end of the spectrum is a 1972 f/2 for about $500.  No way some sigma 50 could come anywhere near this.  I’ve got a hasselblad 500cm with a lovely zeiss 80 on the end of it.  How film gives you the intangible “soul” or whatever that digital files will never have.  The latitude, the beautiful grain, yada yada yada.

Now all of this is tempered that to get the “beautiful” negative into something allowing me to edit and print, I must scan it.  Now this is where my huge conundrum comes.  I want to like film.  I want to be a film shooter.  I want to just have a bunch of rolls on me, two spare lithium batteries for the m6, a 35 cron and a 90 elmarit and have the ultimate kit.  Light enough to have my entire photographic kit on me and never feel it, and barely weigh more than the domke bag that holds it.

m6 50 summicron 3xND on portra 400vc

But I must scan film.  And this seems to be ruining everything in my film bag.  I’ve got a nice leica lens, a beautiful all black m6, develop my own tri-x and hp5+ and tmax and across and 120.  But the scanner is the hold-out.  I’m an instant gratification guy- that’s why I develop my own black and white.  Or at least at first.  But being able to push and pull film means I’ll be a principally black and white shooter anyways at any given time.  I haven’t gotten into c-41 as I don’t trust my temperature holding skills.  But I have to have my films back in an hour.  Just the way I do it.

But I just can’t get the results out of my film that I should.  My scans, about the same size as my digital files don’t hold a candle on the sharpness that I get from my native digital files.

m6 50 summicron hp5+ shot at 1600

THE DIGITAL

So what camera makes my leica glass look bad? Probably any decent DSLR these days.  Mine happens to be a D700.  Of course I was obsessed with going full-frame and figured this would make my pictures amazing.  You know, no crop factor makes amazing pictures.  The reason that I say any DSLR and not any decent lens, is that I shoot with a nikon AI-S 24/2.8 that to me is sharp as a tack.

d700 24/2.8 AIS

This file is, compared to the film version, superior in every way that i can tell.  It is sharper, it has no dust on it, the color is better, and it is not a heavily compressed tonal range from using brutal levels while scanning setting black and white points.  This is a 14 bit converted full frame nikon file and it is amazing.  There is no ND filter as I can select my ISO and shoot at 1/8000 if needed.  Amazing.

The color is so easy to get good.  Perfect fidelity to capture time.  And it seems almost ok that I can’t shoot color all that well on film.  To ignore the color and work on my tri-x and hp5+ seems acceptable.  But here’s another problem:

d700 sigma 50/1.4 @ 2.8 1/2000

This is an amazing conversion.  The film version of this shot is a joke.  It is disgusting.  Thus, i guess what i need to do is try someone’s Nikon Coolscan 9000.  I need to know that film can be as sharp when it is not subjugated to such a weak link in the optical chain like the v500.  I just need to see what greater fidelity to the negative looks like to see if film is worth the headache.  Because right now, I’m having trouble justifying film. I really want to.  The kit is light.  I can have it anywhere.  I love the rangefinder.  i love how small it is.  I love the reputation.  I want to love film.  But I don’t at the moment.

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