Film kills digital even at small enlargements

Digital photographs have been getting a good beating in the press lately, and many foreign-based professionals and fine-art photographers prefer the 'film look' over digital pictures. Never one to lose out on an opportunity to drag digital through the mud, here we go again! A local pro' shooter chastised us recently for arguing that enlarged photographs need not be viewed from an appropriate viewing distance of 1 meter or more, depending on the enlargement size. In fact we boldly stated that viewers should feel free to poke their collective noses up to a print to view the fine details. We were informed that we were talking collective rubbish. Poor fellow. He, of course, didn't realise that viewing his digital prints from a specified distance is necessary only because of digital's relative lack of resolution. You need to view a low resolution picture from far away to appreciate it. On the other hand, this is completely unnecessary for a high resolution picture.

The other bone of contention was that using a large format camera is a waste of time for enlargements smaller than 16x20". The pro' argued that at these enlargement sizes the digital print and the film print should look identical: that is, the resolution of the large film is wasted at small enlargements. We decided to test this, and we have provided one example of those tests. Essentially, using one of Canon's sharpest prime lenses, the 50mm f2.5 Macro, ISO 100, on a loaned and tripod-mounted 5D, we took some pictures. We enlarged the pictures to 12x18" and compared them to 16x20" prints from an 8x10 large format camera. Also note that the large format camera was at a disadvantage as we scanned the film on our cheap desktop scanner rather than on a professional drum scanner. A rather unscientific test, we admit, but this was just to find out for ourselves what the prints would look like. The bad news for the digital zealots is even at small enlargements the prints from an old 8x10 large format camera clobbered the digital prints. We mean, no contest. The people who printed the files for us could not believe the results, which, frankly, turned out to be a huge embarrassment for an expensive, and highly lauded digital camera. When viewed on their own, the digital camera prints looked fantastic, but as soon as the film pictures were placed next to them the digital camera prints suddenly looked muddy and lacking in detail by comparison. The staff at the photo-studio used a magnifying glass to spy beetles crawling up grass stalks halfway down the trail in the depicted film picture below. The digital picture only looked great when viewed from a distance, much less than with a magnifying glass.

The bottom line? Well, there are lots of photographers who take better pictures than we do, but when it comes to high resolution, archival photographs of Trinidad and Tobago no one can match us. And no, that's not pomposity personified, that's just the truth. If digital shooters want a digital platform that comes close, feel free to get a Phase P45 back for $45,000USD, camera not included.