Digital/Film Ramblings
Before we got a cheap flatbed scanner, we used to send out our slides for scanning at a local 'photolab'. To put it mildly, the scans were always poorly done. We understand why Trinidadians are, by and large, dissatisfied with film photography: local 'labs' do poor work, and charge exorbitant prices. Digital has therefore become the saviour from the vagaries of shoddy 'lab' work.
It is very unfortunate that film has such a bad name in Trinidad, through no fault of its own. Few people realise that it requires a professional digital SLR of 11 megapixels and up to exceed 35mm film quality. Moreover, the new $35,000 (US) 39 megapixel Phase 1 P45 digital back, only just matches 4x5 film in quality and uprezzing is still required to equal the quality of a 40"x50" print from a 4x5 transparency. Nothing digital can come close to 8"x10" film yet. The catch is, that the critical component in extracting the maximum amount of information from a 35mm negative or slide requires a very good slide scanner. Right now, the ultimate in scanners is the drum-scanner, which is only available to professional 'labs' in the United States. However, our cheap Epson 2450 scanner gives us scans from 35mm slides good enough for 8x10 enlargements. The right scanner software is as important as the scanner used, and the industry standard is Silverfast Pro which we use and recommend.
An old-timer armed with a fifty-year-old 35mm camera and fine grained film will produce results that will humiliate your latest and greatest digicam output. That is, if your digicam costs anything less than $3000 (US). Seeing is believing, of course, and to our eyes, we prefer prints produced with our old film cameras rather than those we have produced from a Canon Digital Rebel DSLR (6MP). Sure, digital approaches 4x5 film now (although 4x5 film still retains far more texture in a recent online test, in our opinion) but will we spend $35,000 to get it? How much does a sheet of 4x5 transparency film cost in comparison? Less than $2. In the mind of a neophyte, digital's greatest advantage over film is that there's no film. We see things a bit differently.
The picture link below will load a before-and-after look at a film scan. The original picture was scanned by a local 'photolab' in Trinidad. Roll the mouse over the image to see the new scan done with our scanner. The new scan matches how the slide looks on a colour-corrected lightbox.
