

Figure 1, “Encino” ©2014, Peter H. Myers

In 2005, I wrote an article called “Enough Already!” for another publication, which proved to be quite popular with readers. The article was about my return to shooting on film after having pioneered digital monochrome photography with the Kodak DCS 760m camera. At the time, many of us were making our first transition from working on film to digital capture. It was not surprising that users ran into difficult problems with early generation dSLR cameras, and some of us made a screaming return to film—at least for the short term.

But here it is in 2014, and I rather feel like a fool for once again returning my work to film. Nevertheless, those are the facts on the ground.

This column is not written with the intent of trying to convince a single living soul to return to film—which is quite beyond my means of influence. It is to illustrate a few crucial gaps with digital capture, which remain within the industry, despite digital’s vast success. It is enough to give one pause.

I have just come off of a five-year run of digital capture, mostly with the Nikon D3x, followed short-term with the Nikon D800e. My career emphasis has been on monochrome work, but these past years I had hoped to take my monochrome technique into the realm of color photograph—and I feel I had partial success.

But oddly, the entire time I was photographing with dSLRs, I felt little joy towards the task, nor towards the photographs produced. Though I was kept plenty busy nursing the technology forward towards my work goals, the uncomfortable truth is that I was not having much fun.

It would be easy to just suggest that at age 54, I am an old curmudgeon and that I am simply falling back to old ways. I certainly cannot deny my age or the solid use of film for most of my career. But, I think it would be an oversimplification to attribute my return to film once again as just being inflexible. No, it is rather apparent that there is an element of photography that I find magical with film, and not so with digital.

First, let us consider the lens. The lens is truly the basis of photography, creating a transformation of the three-dimensional world, and projecting it quite literally down to two-dimensions. Film emulsion is thick. It can be as much a 30um thick, which is the equivalent of 5 or 6 pixel-widths on a dSLR. The thickness of the film emulsion allows a cone of light projected from the lens to focus in-depth through the thickness of the emulsion as its light is slowly absorbed. The cone of light projecting through the emulsion is much more forgiving of the lens aberrations, and tends to create a smooth gradient from the focal plane, to the out of focus “bokeh.” The depth of the film emulsion literally makes it possible to capture depth in the photograph in a very real way. Oftentimes a film negative can be viewed at an oblique angle, and it is clear to the eye that the negative has a rather three-dimensional relief to its surface.

Whereas with dSLR image sensors, the image sensor itself has such a thin surface to form the image as to be totally unforgiving to the lens, it is as though the light from the lens has hit a “brick wall.” THUNK! In fact, one of the reasons micro lens arrays are put in front of image sensors is to mitigate the harsh lens-to-image sensor coupling. The problem with this “band aid” fix for dSLR technology, however, is that the micro lens array is far too thin to create much forgiveness of the lens.

There are many camera lenses that were designed in a different era that were extremely well regarded, which simply do not perform adequately with digital capture because of the “brick wall” image sensor problem. While it has spurred forward development of some super-high performance lenses specific to the dSLR era, they come at a price—both literally, and in regard to size and weight.

I will site a couple of low-cost lenses that have extremely admirable performance with film, but are regarded as “old school” with digital—the Nikon Nikkor 28mm f2.8 AI-S, and the Nikkor 50mm f1.2 AI-S. Unlike what is seen in today’s lenses, neither of these lenses was designed in an era with endless computer optimization, aspheric elements, nor exotic lens materials. Yet these lenses, when used with film as intended, produce spectacular results—and at a reasonable price point. No, a lens designer with a brain designed these lenses, and it shows in the results. Both lenses have a characteristic that does not show “strain” in the image structure, and might be best described as a “gentle breath” in performance.

Figure 1, above, is my recent image, “Encino.” It was shot with the Nikkor 28mm f2.8 AI-S at f5.6, to a Nikon FM3a camera body, with Kodak TMAX 400 film.

Figure 2, below, shows a composite sample of the scene, with the vegetation within the focal plane on the left, and then on the right as it fades off out of the focal plane and into the distance. Though difficult to fully appreciate without seeing the full resolution of the photographic print, the smoothness of the transition of the lens is quite apparent.



Figure 2, samples in and out of the focal plane from the photograph, “Encino.”

Another issue that film addresses quite clearly is in creating a gradual and predictable ‘low-pass filter,’ which prevents Nyquest aliasing of the high frequency components within the image structure. The common assumption in viewing film is that it has “grain,” when in fact the grain is basically a geometric low-pass filter—and it does so with grace. It is in knowing how to handle the grain during the digital scanning process, managing the grain with noise reduction tools after scanning, and then finally accepting the grain as a powerful part of the photographic image structure that one becomes empowered by it. Grain is not something to dread. And by the number of software packages now available that provide a graining function for dSLR images, I would say it is apparent by intuition that something is naturally missing in dSLR images that was empowered with film grain. Film grain is not just a “look,” but is deeply inherent in a different form of photographic presentation—and it cannot be simulated.

I have noticed a trend with dSLR cameras in the use of optical low pass filters (OLPF), and I believe it will continue to be an issue. Cameras such as the Nikon D4s, Nikon Df, and my old pal, the Nikon D3x, have OLPF technology that really works well on these lower pixel count cameras. One simply does not see aliasing in the images produced by these cameras, but the tradeoff is that some of the image sharpness tends to be a bit rounded on the top-end.

The Nikon D800 is a different beast. All of a sudden Nikon started providing a significant increase in resolution in the same image sensor area, and the camera’s OLPF cannot produce a steep enough sloped filter to prevent aliasing in this setup. I would describe the D800 OLPF as “weak,” and despite its use, the images produced by it have some degree of aliasing. Simply put, we are creating higher and higher demands on OLPF technology for high pixel count image sensors, while the physics of creating such steep filtration at higher pixel pitches begins to fall apart.

One step further is the Nikon D800e, which tries to neutralize its own OLPF for the sake of maximum resolution. Sadly, this may end up being the trend with high pixel count cameras when no OLPF solution is readily available—the manufacturers will just start telling users that not having an OLPF is a “feature.” I read endless reviews of the Nikon D800e before purchasing my copy, all inferring that aliasing was simply not a problem with this camera, and it could be minimized or eliminated by competent photography. Yah, right! My experience has been that any piece of dead wood, in bright sunlight (without diffusing atmospheric smog), results in a rainbow of colors in what should be an evenly gray or brown surface—the wood’s grain triggering the aliasing. If the lens is adequately sharp, it will alias the D800e, and it cannot be fixed in post-production.

What I find even more amazing is the medium format digital camera users that pay as much as a luxury car for their digital backs, all of which alias like crazy. I find no validity in the manufacture’s claims that their RAW conversion program will magically make the aliasing problems go away without damaging the image. Fairy dust.

I have illustrated two issues above which seem to me to underscore some of what we have lost in the film to digital transition, and why I have returned to film for my work. But it is only a small sample of the complete reasons, which are far more extensive. We have not talked about how negative film naturally quenches specular reflections, wherein with digital cameras one must deliberately and significantly underexpose the image to contain the specular reflections. We have not talked about the ease of use of film cameras and how “chimping” the back of the dSLR camera distracts the photographer from his connection to subject in front of the lens. We have not talked about how the discipline of shooting a few rolls of film in the field ups one’s concentration towards getting the shot right the first time, rather then banging out a few thousand frames aimlessly with the dSLR. We have not spoken of how a negative is already a photograph in its truest form, while a dSLR image files are simply a bunch of numbers. We have not talked about how wide angle lenses couple better with film than with digital image sensors. We have not spoken about film having 36 image sensors per box, and no single blob of dust or shutter oil is going to take one out of action. We have not talked about the archival nature of negatives and how fifty or a hundred years from now, the photograph they hold is still viable. We have not spoken of the sure cost and threshold that it takes to get into photography today, and how in the film era a young person could start out with a simple camera, a few lenses and bootstrap up a career. We have not talked about all the Ma and Pa labs that used to make their living slopping chemicals and making prints, and how now the revenue from those jobs is exported way around to the other side of the world. Nor have we spoken of the needless demise of Eastman Kodak (long live Kodak Alaris!).

I have made plenty of beautiful photographs using dSLR cameras, so I am not suggesting that we all scrap our dSLR camera systems and return to film. I do not think that film photography is for the masses, nor do I expect to see much of a trend towards “retro” with film. I don’t even know how I will feel about my own work being on film six months from now when the next generation of dSLR cameras appear at PhotoKina. But turning back to film certainly uncovers a myriad of issues that I believe the industry ignores out of convenience. There are no easy solutions to fix these issues, and in the interim the equipment manufactures must convince you to hemorrhage your hard-earned money to keep their companies in the black.

I hope in another ten years I will not be writing Enough Already! Revisited Revisited, but it would not surprise me. But for the moment, film is my “happy-place,” and I am content with my emulsion induced, chemical euphoria.



“Road House, Image 2” © 2014, Peter H. Myers—Kodak TMAX 400 Film

Photo.net member, Pete Myers, is a fine art photographer based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This is the next installment of his series called State of the ART. You can visit this artist and explore his captivating portfolios at www.petemyers.com