We appreciate the joke, Fortune - or at least, I do.

Next time, try someone less well known.

Do you ever shoot any originals?

Fortune might have no need to do the manual and often hard labour of taking photos himself, as he might be working with some excellent photographers already?

Why do it yourself if there are a lot of experienced professionals out there who are usually most eager for any paid work these days. Being only a modest amateur hobby photographer myself, I'd even work for food but usually work for free...

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Folks, this is a wonderful thread. Just stumbled upon it. Started very wisely by Kalistofa on April 29th, 2009 and the last post so far was on May 1st, 2009 by L - G. Please let it not die There is much to learn and also to laugh about. In a small way I would like to resuscitate the thread.

Having been on both sides of the fence, too many years with films and chemical, and six years with pixels and megabytes, I think I do have a thing or two to say as learned through the hard knocks of life.

Upto about 3 years ago film, specially the slow fine grain film had the edge. For normal run of the mill stuff, like making A4 size prints on photographic paper, it would just begin to show the difference, that film was superior. Even the digital prints, made by injet printers were just no where there as compared to prints made from negatives in the wet darkroom.

However, the advent of new technology with high end full frame DSLRs and medium format digital backs the days of film are definitely numbered. For me it is sad, but for nostalgic reasons as I had started my career, so many years ago as a black & white printer, for years working as a freelancer in the darkrooms of some of the leading ad. agencies in London.

I can catagorically say that I can produce a far better print from the same black & white negative, after scanning it in a dedicated film scanner, working on the scanned file on the comp. and then getting it printed through a high end inkjet printer.

Guess for hobbyist, high end digital equipment is out of reach, unless financially loaded. For them film may still have an edge if large prints are required.

As mentioned by several people on the thread the plethora of advantages in favour of digital over analogue points the argument towards digital. Film will be around for academic and nostalgic reasons.

Just my two cents.

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Swapan Mukherjee
swapan@swapanmukherjee.com

how about colour? I have scanned colour slides in a slide scanner -- the images come out really grainy on the computer, much worse than a digital image or a print direct from the slide (haven't tried printing from a scan). What's the best way to get a decent image from a colour slide scanned into computer?

Minibeast,

I have not used a dedicated slide or negative scanner, but the graininess you are seeing is probably digital noise.

First, I suggest you check that the software you have installed for the scanner is compatible with your computer operating system (OS), and that you have installed it correctly.

If you are satisfied the software was installed correctly, I suggest you search on the Web under scanner brand name and model for people who may have had similar problems. They may have found solutions.

The software compatibility could be under three categories: connection (for example, USB 2.0); device driver (should be compatible with the OS); and the actual scanning utility (application). If there is a compatibility problem with any one of these, that may explain your results to date. There may be software updates on the maker's website.

Also you can experiment with settings within the scanning utility. You could also look at the question of monitor calibration. Basic calibration can be done with the freeware QuickGamma, although personally I don't find the interface very helpful.

If anyone thinks they have monitor calibration down, please post some advice.

If there is still time under the purchase agreement, I also suggest you ask for a replacement at the store, on the understanding you bought a "lemon." If you have any suspicion at all that the product is faulty, don't hesitate to get a replacement.

Above all look carefully at the device driver question, and whether there are updated software drivers on the maker's website.

You could also try using a different utility, such as any one of a number of image editing utilities. If the scanner is highly compatible, such as a TWAIN device, the images may be acquired quite easily for processing within the utility. Try this if you suspect the utility that was bundled with the scanner is crap software. There's plenty of it around.

Swapan wrote:



Well, maybe for more reasons than that, Swapan. There is a very interesting blog post and set of comments here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/jul/13/camera-club-love-film

Reading this, it seems that film enthusiasts are alive and well and forming online communities, and so on, determined to keep analog alive. With competition from digital, the cost of dark room equipment has fallen, apparently, and the entry barrier to the full film experience lowered.

I may have mentioned before that the elitists of what is known as the "art world," are also pro film. They are very frightened that anyone can now go into a store, purchase a quite good digital cam for a reasonable outlay, and walk out the next Henri Cartier-Bresson. This isn't just academia; this is the international art market, where film will be assumed to be superior to digital for years to come, based mainly on elitist snobbery.

Of course, digital is still in its relative infancy, but the pace of development over the past few years has been astonishing, driven to a great extent by the epic contest between Canon and Nikon.

Of course, you're not going to get the best out of your digital pics unless you post-process in software. It can be time-consuming, but it's also fun. Try experimenting with a few crops, blurs and image flips for example, not to mention converting your color pics to black and white.

Very interesting post, Swapan.

You're right kalistofa, the art world is scared that people can go into a camera shop and walk out as a pro photographer.
yes.

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Of course, swapan is right about nostalgia driving some of the continuing enthusiasm for film, and this seems to be the case with the "lomography" aficionados. And it's not just the Russian lomo that seems to produce "pics so bad they're good." At the Lomography store in Hong Kong, you can also buy Holgas and Dianas.

The Diana originated as a trash camera from Hong Kong, and its "idiosyncrasies" have now been lovingly restored. One of the latest Diana models features a pin-hole mode. You can use medium format film, as I understand it, or buy a 35mm back.

"The Diana was first produced during the early 1960s in Kowloon, Hong Kong, by the "Great Wall Plastic Factory", and was sold under various labels (often just a different stick-on nametag). Most were given away as novelties or prizes at fairs, carnivals, or other public events. In addition to the 'Diana' labeled cameras, there are over fifty similar variants of the basic design, some of which may have been produced by other factories and/or manufacturers." Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_camera

It seems to me that it is purely nostalgia that drives enthusiasm for the results you get with this type of "toy" camera. If instead I take some blurry shots with a 1.3-meg cameraphone, they just don't cut it.

Some lenses or lens accessories from Lensbaby allow you to achieve pin-hole type effects with a digital camera, but to me Lensbaby products seem vastly overpriced -- my point really being that you can achieve these types of effects, including the lomo look, in software.

You can try pinholing with a digicam by making a tiny hole in a body cap, and I've tried this with a Nikon D70. You have to operate the cam in Manual mode, and I would advise a little bit of transparent film on the rear of the cap, to (try to) prevent dust entering and settling on the sensor.

As I understand it, the smaller the hole the better, generally, and you'll have to experiment with exposure times, EV setting etc. The best I managed was a hole melted through the cap with a needle heated with a cigarette lighter. One website suggests the hole is best laser drilled, but I have no idea how to do this. Any ideas?

I can't resist adding these additional remarks from Wikipedia on the Diana: