Recently I have been looking over some of my old black and white negatives and found on some of my contact prints that I am really interested in the un-edited, grainy (sometimes scratched!) images I have taken. The digital versus film debate has made me question some of the basic image re-touching I do on a daily basis to my images. The one above was taken with my digital camera and has only been darkened to bring back some detail in the womans face, but it does remind me of the negatives I have been looking at recently - the blown out whites especially.
Let me know what you think of this photo.
Well you can make digital look film ish. I shoot FP4 and HP5 still to this day, but blowouts are almost never an issue on b&w film, rarely on colour negative either. Film has a lot of headroom highlight end, digital does not it's got a lot shadow end, where as neg film does not like to be starved of light.
ReplyDeleteI'd have to say as a film fan, b&w film is unique and pretty much unmatched to my eye. A lot depends on how you scan it, a weak scanner will lose highlights, a good one won't!
Very true Barry! I have a medium format camera and was thinking of breaking it out for a few Black an White films as I really do love the whole process..the viewfinder is just beautiful to look through - I could never sell it on.
ReplyDeleteYou are right about the blow outs, I guess I was thinking back to some film I shot with the Lomo and Holga..bit of a light leak here and there but looked very nice in parts.
All this talk about film is making me home sick for it!