Is Film Quality Better Than Digital Quality?

Question

just trying to decide what to buy

Answer 1

Film quality is much better than digital quality, not only in resolution, but also in the number of colours that can be stored and in the tonal range. So, if you are after quality, go for film.

Having said that, in many cases quality is not that important. There have been beautiful photos taken with very primitive cameras. A successful photo is not one that uses the best material, but one that moves the observer.

If you're a beginner, choose a camera that will help you learn. Digital is convenient and can help you learn quickly, as long as you don't blindly trust the automatic settings of the camera. Buy a camera that allows manual override and take note of what you do.

Answer 2

In small format cameras, i.e. 35mm SLR, digital quality is approaching film, and I think you will eventualy see digital quality equal film, but you're going to be paying a lot for a digital camera that can do so. For most non-professional photographers, the difference between film and digital is hardly worth mentioning.

The one advantage I see with digital is that you have instant access to you pictures. You know if you have a good shot, and if you camera can show you the histogram of the shot, you have some idea of what to do to correct any problems. With film, you really don't know what you've got until you have your film developed.

I recently made the move from film to digital. I bought a Nikon D200 and I couldn't be happier with it. But the D200 is a high end DSLR.

If you are just starting out in photography, I would strongly suggest you start with a 35mm film camera. Master it, and master the basics of photography. If you think you might want to move into digital at some point, look for a 35mm system that has lenses compatible with their digital bodies. Nikon is a good choice, as is Canon -- although if you want to move into digital, make sure you get a Canon EOS film camera as the old FD lenses don't work on the EOS bodies.

Answer 3

Here we go.... Well it depends who you're asking. Ask one photographer I know and she will tell you film is better. Ask me and I'll tell you digital is better.
Because we can all argue til the cows come home and never actually come to an agreement, I'll tell you my reasons for believing digital is better than film.

For a start, unlike film, I can shoot an image and have it printed in minutes at perfect exposure and white balance every time.

Now for the finer points of digital. No matter how good the film is, there will always be grain when printed in large format. Good digital SLRs produce clean images. And as far as resolution, a 12MP Nikon or Canon rivals medium format. I won't say digital has a higher resolution but from what I've seen, the images are cleaner.
Oh, and what about dynamic range? surely film is better. No. Not exactly. My Nikon when shot in raw gives me 14 stops to safely work with and more if I need it. In the real world, we only need between 7 - 9. Really good film produces about 12 stops of reasonable detail but we're pushing it a bit when it comes to 14. Honestly though, none of this matters if the photographer is good enough to make the most of 8 stops.
And time and time again I have heard die hard film photographers say that film has better colours. OMG I'm getting so sick of the ignorance. One type of film gives this colour. Another type of film gives that colour. Etc etc. Well digital can give whatever colour you flippen well want. Yes it CAN immitate any film. And the rubbish I hear about digital being unable to reproduce black and white film, that comes from film photographers who know nothing about digital and how to use it.

I know nearly every photographer who reads this will give me the thumbs down but I don't care. Film is over. Get over it. Otherwise we should all throw away our cameras and only use paint brushes.

Oh and by the way, before you give me the thumbs down, go test everything I have said for yourself instead of assuming.

Answer 4

Generally speaking size for size digital sensors produce less noise and produce better dynamic range than an equally sized piece of film. For most people this doesnt mean squat. If your target is to produce 4x6 photos that you can stick into scrap albums then yes I would suggest going for a low to mid range DSLR.
However, if quality and size of your prints are of essence, then go for film, but not 35mm. 35mm is great if portability and speed are of essence but by no means is it the best film format to which all other formats are judged. If quality is important(not speed) get a camera that shoots 4x5, 5x7, or 8x10 or for that matter a medium format camera will do just fine. Just to make a comparison a good 4x5 negative is equivalent in megapixels to as low as 50megapixels to as much as 200megapixels depending on the film and development. 8x 10 film can approach a megapixel equivalent of around 800megapixels, however, if you were to have a ccd sensor of an equal size theoretically you should get better quality, but the problem is that you would need a huge media storage device to save such huge files, and most likely the sensor would need a huge battery and fan which would just not be portable. Oh yeah and lets consider price, a 39megapixel Hasselblad will set you back at least $35,000 so by that figure, an 8x10 sensor would be a few hundred thousand if it existed.
Simply put a $200 4x5 view camera with a decent lens will surpass a $35,000 in terms of quality. On the other hand a high end full frame sensor DSLR will meet or beat the quality you can get with 35mm film. I would suggest if you like quality get yourself a cheap 4x5 from keh.com, you cant go wrong.

Answer 5

Film is certainly capable of higher quality results, but much depends on the equipment. You might also want to consider whether you will be taking advantage of this increased quality.

For example, Fuji claim their superia 100 film can resolve over 100 lines per mm on 135 film stock (35mm film). At the minimum sampling rate for analogue to digital conversion, 100lpm would end up being the digital equivalent of 35Mp. However, there would be a lot of noise at this level that would not be present in the film, and you would probably want a much higher sampling rate to give better noise performance. At a 50% oversampling rate, this would be about 86Mp equivalent.

Equipment, operator skill and a whole host of factors are going to determine ultimate image quality.

Can you take advantage of this. If you printed at 300dpi, you could enlarge the image to be about 24" x 36", and 48" x 72" at 150dpi. These are fairly big posters! The biggest enlargement that I have made in recent years was A4. To get this at the equivalent of 300dpi you will need about 8MP, or 4MP at 200dpi. Certainly within the capability of the current crop of digital sensors.

Despite my love of film, modern digital cameras can get you as good quality results as you need for most normal circumstances, because you will not be using the full quality potential of film in most circumstances.

Answer 6

Simple
Digital is now better than film Period.

I have done enough side by side test to confirm this.

Now some would argue the that pixelation is more pronouced. This is simply not true. Unless one is shooting 8x10 or maybe 4x5, the grain of most film exceed that of the pixels when shot in the largest format possible. IE RAW
The other argument against it is that almost all film gets converted to digital anyhow via the scanners when using it for commercial purposes.

One does not need to spend tons of money for this quality.
My wifes little point and shoot canon elf was barely different then my expensive Digital SLR. I am paying the the ability to take massive amounts of pictures in a short amount of time with no lag.

Answer 7

From what i've experienced, film can have a much better quality than digital photos, as long as your focus and exposure are perfect. Also, as long as you're careful with your negatives, you will have them to use and reuse, for tons of different projects! As far as digital photos go, I am a photographer who does both, and love the quickness of digital, and the ability to manipulate things in Photoshop (which can also be done with scanned negatives). Although, be careful when saving your files digitally, when saved as a jpeg, the file loses quality after being opened repeatedly, since it is a compressed file, save them as at least a tiff to keep them as they were captured.

Answer 8

I wish I could vote twice for DaysOf SweetLight's answer.

I certainly share his feelings about the complete lack of basic photographic knowledge many digital owners simply don't have.

Digital photography encourages what I call the "Shotgun" approach: take 500 exposures and then spend hours reviewing them in hope that 20 or 30 might be worth keeping.

I love all my film cameras and will use film until its no longer available.

Answer 9

For SLRs its questionable whats better, but P&S cameras film is definitely still ahead in that game, as long as a decent camera is used like an Olympus Stylus Epic.

Although that doesn't stop me owning a digi I still prefer my Stylus epic.

I would also "highly recommend" getting a lab to print your pictures and only using ink jet when you need a picture there and then, its cheaper and its better quality.

Answer 10

Film is better, but it depends on the scanner used to make it digital. The scanner at my Pro lab is $US500,000, scans of film on that thing are far superior to a cheap DSLR sensor.

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