Sort of a general observation re: digital cameras

[odilonvert]

Just some thoughts:

As I practice on a digital point and shoot with more manual control than my iPhone (i.e. aperture control), I'm starting to wonder about the original idea behind a digital camera mimicking a film camera.

Ok for example, ISO. ISO is a film term, film is a physical object with a bunch of chemicals on it to do this or that with light and color. To have ISO on a digital camera - well I'm having a disconnect. Purportedly, it has to do with making the sensor more or less sensitive to light, which may make the pixels simulate "grain," or run 1000 miles in the direction away from "grain." But, pixels are not film.

At the same time, I've been playing a lot with Hipstamatic since my problems with it have been resolved - again, many thanks to Venomator and Eric Rozen. Somehow, the idea of filters mimicking ISO, as "films," seems to make more sense to me connected with a digital camera than ISO. You can't have ISO without film.

So, I find it confusing that with a straight on digital camera with no filters, that makers would throw in "ISO" without just creating film filters that mimic different kinds of films with different kinds of ISOs. It almost makes more sense, if you're going to bust your head open trying to make a digital camera pretend to be a film camera, to make photographers who were film-trained accept them more, that you'd create "films" for them instead.

I just find this all so weird. Particularly I guess, since digital cameras have been around for a while now and people who previously knew only film (raises hand) are a shrinking population. To use "ISO" in a digital camera seems to be a relic of trying to gain users from the film market. Aperture, shutter speed, and focus will ALWAYS be a relevant crossover. But ISO? I'm for calling a digital camera, a digital camera.

 

[Philippe Schlossberg]

I disagree ... ISO means just International Standard Organization and can apply to a variety of things ... Industrial mostly. It never was restricted to film and applied to realms of anything when a norm was needed.

Second, thanks god digital sensors don't replicate film grain. They give the ability to shoot with high sensitivities and retain more than acceptable high res images ... up to 6400 on my camera. Higher ISOs will get you noise, not "grain simulation".

If I remember what happened when pushing (underexpose and over develop) films that was just horrible. If I think of films with native high ISO films (like the TMax 3200), that was so ugly. That's the past. Digital photography got us rid of that s*

However I still have a lot of respect and love for low sensitivity 35mm films in conjunction with high end lenses, or a bit higher ISO medium format films.

I'm a bit off topic now ... but again, the use of the term ISO is still perfectly appropriate. It's just a norm and in the case of digital cameras, ISO have the same incremental (and effective, in relation with light) progression like aperture and speed. So who's going to complain?

 

[odilonvert]

I disagree ... ISO means just International Standard Organization and can apply to a variety of things ... Industrial mostly. It never was restricted to film and applied to realms of anything when a norm was needed.

Second, thanks god digital sensors don't replicate film grain. They give the ability to shoot with high sensitivities and retain more than acceptable high res images ... up to 6400 on my camera. Higher ISOs will get you noise, not "grain simulation".

If I remember what happened when pushing (underexpose and over develop) films that was just horrible. If I think of films with native high ISO films (like the TMax 3200), that was so ugly. That's the past. Digital photography got us rid of that s*

However I still have a lot of respect and love for low sensitivity 35mm films in conjunction with high end lenses, or a bit higher ISO medium format films.

I'm a bit off topic now ... but again, the use of the term ISO is still perfectly appropriate. It's just a norm and in the case of digital cameras, ISO have the same incremental (and effective, in relation with light) progression like aperture and speed. So who's going to complain?

Haha Philippe - I knew you were going to "bite" at this one.

Firstly, I'm only applying the description "ISO" with regard to film and film only.

Secondly, I've seen descriptions about app filters (old school style) terming "noise" as "grain," whether as a description of the app or a slider control - rightly or wrongly. People who come from film backgrounds would relate to that, right? Someone who has never used a film camera, what does that even mean, where does the origin of that come from? Are pixels showing their "bones" in a photo the same as "grain" in a photo shot on film? No. It's a comparison but it's not the same at all.

I'm not making a case for using film over digital - just the opposite, that they're two separate mediums and should be understood as such, without a film term such as "ISO" used at all. Maybe use another term on a digital camera, such as "light sensitivity?" But I'm not sure that really makes sense either, because you either have a good sensor or you don't. And light is controlled by aperture and shutter speed in this case. So ISO seems off - because it means a very specific thing in film photography, and when a photographer picks a film based on ISO they are not thinking "International Standard Organization" with regard to copper piping, for example. I see how it can be a container term, but I don't like the association when it comes to a camera that creates images in a totally different system than another - to make something up, a camera that uses molasses versus one that uses wood. It's confusing. And weird. At least to my (odd?) mind.

That's all I really wanted to say.

 

[RoseCat]

Interesting discussion! But, I will say, frankly, it's given me hurty head.

LOL

Carry on, I shall watch from afar!! [emoji106]

 

[odilonvert]

Interesting discussion! But, I will say, frankly, it's given me hurty head.

LOL

Carry on, I shall watch from afar!! [emoji106]

Well, yeah it is kind of a hurty head discussion...

But RoseCat, look at it this way - look at Hipstamatic manual mode. Take a pic playing with the "Exposure" control. Then try to take a pic just like it with the "ISO" control. ??? I've done this and I don't see the difference. If there is a difference, it's very, very subtle, but what is it doing? Dumbing down my sensor? Why would I want to do that for light reasons when I have "Exposure" (as a sub for aperture + shutter?...), and I can just leave my "ISO" at full throttle, so it's flexible in all circumstances?

So with my point and shoot, ok I'll be "that" photographer and say what it is - a Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS50 - there is an ISO setting, but not a manual control - that's shutter, aperture, and focus priority only. I set my "ISO" setting at the most sensitive, 6400, but I could set it lower if, for some reason, I wanted to - which would mean that if I were taking pics in dark circumstances (almost always in my case), I'd have to remember to make the sensitivity better every time. Why would I do that? I don't know. I just keep it at 6400, and never worry whether my lighting circumstances are bright or not.

With film, ISO meant you had to buy certain films for certain lighting circumstances, because there was no sensor - only film. Aperture and shutter certainly affect light, but film is always another consideration when using a film camera. What does this mean for digital? ??? If Philippe can explain it to me and I go, "Ahaaaa," great - but right now, that term for a digital camera seems, as I mentioned before, some nod to the film world as an explanation that "it's all going to be ok." Otherwise, just... why?

 

[RoseCat]

This conversation is precisely why I am a tried-and-true mobile photographer. While I loved shooting with my Canon SLR, and really enjoyed developing my film in a darkroom (I'd rather tweak stuff there than while I was trying to capture a shot), I never got into the the technical aspects of shooting - it mostly just frustrated me. I ended up keeping the setting on "automatic" and calling it a day. I know I could learn it if I put my mind and energy towards it......but......

I am quite sure you have good valid questions, but I've read through this twice and I'm still none the wiser.... LOL

I bet FundyBrian would be another excellent person to join this discussion.

 

[FundyBrian]

OK, I'll take the bait.
Consider ISO simply a measure of sensitivity to light. Whether it is film or a digital camera sensor, it amounts to the same thing. With film you "push" a film by manipulating the developing. When you boost or push film you get more grain.
With a digital image sensor you amplify the image data seen by the sensor. When you amplify very low level image data you also get the appearance of digital noise. The more you amplify, the more noise.
I'm sure it would have been possible to break entirely with the past and invent some new digital system for sensitivity to light but that would risk confusing and annoying millions of photographers already familiar with the existing light sensitivity system.
With a digital camera you definitely get better image quality with less amplification of the sensor signal so choosing a low ISO is definitely worth the effort. ISO 100 will give better image quality than 6400. That is, unless you are in a low light situation and your low ISO causes your shutter speed to be too slow for a sharp hand held exposure.
A parallel in a home stereo system. If you have a tape deck (remember those?) with a very low output then you have to crank up your amplifier to get enough sound volume. However, now you notice you also amplify electronic circuit noise, hiss & hum that normally are too low to hear, but when over-amplified the background noise becomes annoying. In other words your signal-to-noise ratio has become unacceptable.
On a mobile phone you have a fixed aperture. f2.2 on the iPhone 6. On a regular camera changing the aperture setting is one of your main controls, so naturally you miss it on the mobile camera. On a film camera we tend to think of ISO as a fixed value, unless you change to a faster/slower film, so you only have shutter speed and aperture to adjust exposure. On a digital camera ISO becomes a 3rd exposure adjustment. Even so, because of my experience with digital noise, I tend to still think of ISO as a largely fixed value except when very low light forces me to leave my lowest ISO setting.
So on a phone with a fixed-aperture camera what can you adjust to regulate your exposure? You can change your shutter speed, and the only other thing you can change is the sensitivity of the sensor, otherwise called ISO. With a tiny sensor, high ISO makes nasty noise so we try to keep the ISO low and use lower shutter speeds instead, with a tripod.
Let's suppose we're shooting with film, Kodachrome 25, and we want to use a small aperture for lots of depth of field. We can say, then, that the ISO and aperture have become fixed values and the only remaining adjustment is shutter speed. Typically with K25 on a sunny day, with a polarizer, you would have a shutter speed around 1/15 second, well into tripod territory. As it gets darker we get closer to running into reciprocity failure when shutter speeds get longer than about 1 second, so that complicates things.
With a manual camera, let's take Hipstamatic with manual controls, and you choose to adjust the ISO. If the camera is actually semi-automatic, changing the ISO will force a compensating change in shutter speed. Or if fully manual, lowering the ISO makes the image darker. ISO 32 to 80 is pretty good on the iPhone. If you manually "lock" the ISO to a fixed value the only thing left to adjust is the shutter speed. If your selected ISO is a low value then your shutter speed can be expected to get rather slow, too, as the light level gets low.
Now let's get to the real heart of the issue. Whether you are using a film camera, a digital camera, or a mobile phone camera, the most important exposure control is how much you deviate from the "zero" position on the light meter. This is the "Exposure Compensation" setting and the most essential control to understand if you want to make good exposures. You deliberately underexpose to keep the dark in a dark scene and overexposed to keep a bright scene bright, like snow. Remember, the light meter has no idea what the subject matter is. It only measures the quantity of the light. The light meter is calibrated for an 18% reflective subject. Unusually dark or light scenes will fool the light meter into giving you a wrong exposure. Thus the need to give the light meter some input about the scene conditions in order to get a usable reading. How much to compensate? Now that takes some experience. In the woods, -2/3 to -1 are pretty typical. Snow, depending how much is in the shot, as much as +1 or + 1&1/3.
Some camera apps, like PureShot, give you a real exposure compensation control, just like a regular camera, marked in 1/3 stop increments. Others give you an unmarked slider and you just have to guess how much you need. Considering how hard it is to see the screen in bright light this is a poor situation.

 

[FundyBrian]

This conversation is precisely why I am a tried-and-true mobile photographer. While I loved shooting with my Canon SLR, and really enjoyed developing my film in a darkroom (I'd rather tweak stuff there than while I was trying to capture a shot), I never got into the the technical aspects of shooting - it mostly just frustrated me. I ended up keeping the setting on "automatic" and calling it a day. I know I could learn it if I put my mind and energy towards it......but......

I am quite sure you have good valid questions, but I've read through this twice and I'm still none the wiser.... LOL

I bet FundyBrian would be another excellent person to join this discussion.

The next step for you is to understand the Exposure Compensation control. You will find it changes everything in your sense of control to get the desired result.
What you risk in not taking control of the exposure at the time of shooting is images that cannot be fixed with tweaking. For tweaking to work your exposure needs to be pretty close to right. If it is off by as much as 2/3 stop you may not be able to rescue the lost highlight or shadow detail. No amount of tweaking can fix what isn't there.

 

[Mik]

Please don't demystify my shooting experience with all this tech stuff.

 

[Philippe Schlossberg]

Jennifer ( odilonvert ) you cannot just decide on your own that you apply ISO to film only. ISO is a universally accepted norm that applies to millions of things, and again, in the precise case of photography, that norm is extremely convenient when switching from film to digital. Tolerance in terms of grain or noise is another story. The ISO norm "doesn't care" about it. Grain and noise are technically bound to films/sensors and available light. Obviously sensors do a much better job.

And oh yes, I knew when posting yesterday that you thought I might reply promptly [emoji4]

The topic's interesting. Good that you posted it

edit: ISO, applied to digital photography, sort of add a third dimension when shooting (2 others being speed and aperture) and I like that. Call it OSI ? [emoji3][emoji257]

 

[FundyBrian]

In order for the complex chain of photographic events to produce reliable results every contributing factor must adhere to some performance standards. Who defines the standards? The International Standards Organization.
The light meter in your camera, or hand held light meter, must measure light and report the results a consistent and reliable way based on an established standard. The progression of aperture sizes in your lens, the timing of the shutter speed control all must be accurate within a certain tolerance. We rely on this so that we can confidently change from 1/125th sec @ f8, to 1/250 @ f5.6, to 1/60 @ f11 and expect the same exposure, but different depth of field. (The law of reciprocity).
With older mechanical cameras the shutter speed times were regulated mechanically and it was quite common for individual speeds to be a bit off. Over time the springs would weaken. A little dirt might slow down the moving parts. If you were fussy about such things you could measure the actual shutter speeds and write down the true speeds to compensate for the errors. I did this for all my leaf shutters for my 4x5 cameras and checked my other cameras to keep an eye on them.
The aperture openings were mechanically adjusted by a cam connected to the aperture ring. Wear or slack in the parts could make the aperture settings inaccurate, or worse, variable.
First, electronic shutter timing replaced the mechanical timers. Then, real-time off-the-film metering could compensate for inaccuracies in both aperture and shutter mechanisms. Here we got to a point where automatic exposures could be more accurate than manually set exposures.
Throughout photographic history cameras have continued to improve. All of the variables have gradually been improved to amazing precision. Cameras today, even relatively inexpensive ones, perform to much higher standards than were even possible years ago.
The weakest link in the chain has always been the film. Getting the photo-chemical process in film to perform in a consistent way involves numerous variables. Once you get through all the variables in manufacturing the film you move on to developing the film. The slightest changes in developer chemistry, temperature, time, etc., could throw things out of whack. Not to mention how the film was stored before developing. Do you mail your films to be developed. How hot did it get in the mail truck? Was your package exposed to X-Ray scrutiny? Really, when you look at the potential variables, it is amazing it worked at all.
Pro photographers have long known that you could not take for granted that a film that said ASA/ISO 64 was really 64. It could be 80, or 50. The manufacturing standards would keep it within a certain acceptable range for amateur use but professionals required more precision.
I know from experience that a very fresh batch of Kodachrome 25 would be slightly green in the highlights but as it gets closer to the due date it changes to magenta. Somewhere in between was just right. For critical work pros would always run tests for colour & speed and when they found a particularly nice batch of film they would buy a lot of it and keep it in the fridge. The other choice is to use "Pro" films. A Pro film was one that had been tested by the manufacturer to fall much closer to the ideal for that film, marked for its true speed, perhaps "aged" to its best colour response, then stored under refrigeration. Pro film was more expensive but well worth the money when shooting important work for clients.
If you were not testing your film you really had no idea of which way your problems might run. Your only other choice was to bracket like mad, but also bracketing for an unknown colour shift was impractical.
With film you could not rely that a one stop change in exposure would give one stop change in the appearance on film. As your exposures let longer, in low light, film would become less sensitive to light in a non-linear way. So when your light meter would say 1/2 second perhaps you really needed 3/4 sec or 1 sec. And at 10 seconds you might really need 25 seconds. Every film was different. Reciprocity charts were available from the film manufacturers. In other words, at a certain point the ISO of the film ceased to be accurate and changed, sometimes dramatically from expectations.
I haven't mentioned the film response curve which had other limitations.
So I say again, film has always been the weakest link in the photographic chain. I, for one, am glad to be rid of it.

 

[Philippe Schlossberg]

Heard a lot about these inconsistencies with color films, even "pro" ones.
This said I got to say that as long as I was shooting film I was exclusively shooting 100 ISO black and white (Kodak then Ilford) ... these films were tolerant and minor exposure issues could easily be corrected under the enlarger. I mostly obtained what I wanted most of the time, the decisive factor being (as always), light quality when shooting.

Other factors were being as precise and regular as possible when developing films (temperature and timing); same for prints.

So again as I was addicted to sharpness ( [emoji3] ) I never pushed films.

You're right about camera shutters variations ... I had mines controlled regularly. Same for light sensors.

 

[odilonvert]

OK, I'll take the bait.
Consider ISO simply a measure of sensitivity to light. Whether it is film or a digital camera sensor, it amounts to the same thing. With film you "push" a film by manipulating the developing. When you boost or push film you get more grain.
With a digital image sensor you amplify the image data seen by the sensor. When you amplify very low level image data you also get the appearance of digital noise. The more you amplify, the more noise.
I'm sure it would have been possible to break entirely with the past and invent some new digital system for sensitivity to light but that would risk confusing and annoying millions of photographers already familiar with the existing light sensitivity system.
With a digital camera you definitely get better image quality with less amplification of the sensor signal so choosing a low ISO is definitely worth the effort. ISO 100 will give better image quality than 6400. That is, unless you are in a low light situation and your low ISO causes your shutter speed to be too slow for a sharp hand held exposure.
A parallel in a home stereo system. If you have a tape deck (remember those?) with a very low output then you have to crank up your amplifier to get enough sound volume. However, now you notice you also amplify electronic circuit noise, hiss & hum that normally are too low to hear, but when over-amplified the background noise becomes annoying. In other words your signal-to-noise ratio has become unacceptable.
On a mobile phone you have a fixed aperture. f2.2 on the iPhone 6. On a regular camera changing the aperture setting is one of your main controls, so naturally you miss it on the mobile camera. On a film camera we tend to think of ISO as a fixed value, unless you change to a faster/slower film, so you only have shutter speed and aperture to adjust exposure. On a digital camera ISO becomes a 3rd exposure adjustment. Even so, because of my experience with digital noise, I tend to still think of ISO as a largely fixed value except when very low light forces me to leave my lowest ISO setting.
So on a phone with a fixed-aperture camera what can you adjust to regulate your exposure? You can change your shutter speed, and the only other thing you can change is the sensitivity of the sensor, otherwise called ISO. With a tiny sensor, high ISO makes nasty noise so we try to keep the ISO low and use lower shutter speeds instead, with a tripod.
Let's suppose we're shooting with film, Kodachrome 25, and we want to use a small aperture for lots of depth of field. We can say, then, that the ISO and aperture have become fixed values and the only remaining adjustment is shutter speed. Typically with K25 on a sunny day, with a polarizer, you would have a shutter speed around 1/15 second, well into tripod territory. As it gets darker we get closer to running into reciprocity failure when shutter speeds get longer than about 1 second, so that complicates things.
With a manual camera, let's take Hipstamatic with manual controls, and you choose to adjust the ISO. If the camera is actually semi-automatic, changing the ISO will force a compensating change in shutter speed. Or if fully manual, lowering the ISO makes the image darker. ISO 32 to 80 is pretty good on the iPhone. If you manually "lock" the ISO to a fixed value the only thing left to adjust is the shutter speed. If your selected ISO is a low value then your shutter speed can be expected to get rather slow, too, as the light level gets low.
Now let's get to the real heart of the issue. Whether you are using a film camera, a digital camera, or a mobile phone camera, the most important exposure control is how much you deviate from the "zero" position on the light meter. This is the "Exposure Compensation" setting and the most essential control to understand if you want to make good exposures. You deliberately underexpose to keep the dark in a dark scene and overexposed to keep a bright scene bright, like snow. Remember, the light meter has no idea what the subject matter is. It only measures the quantity of the light. The light meter is calibrated for an 18% reflective subject. Unusually dark or light scenes will fool the light meter into giving you a wrong exposure. Thus the need to give the light meter some input about the scene conditions in order to get a usable reading. How much to compensate? Now that takes some experience. In the woods, -2/3 to -1 are pretty typical. Snow, depending how much is in the shot, as much as +1 or + 1&1/3.
Some camera apps, like PureShot, give you a real exposure compensation control, just like a regular camera, marked in 1/3 stop increments. Others give you an unmarked slider and you just have to guess how much you need. Considering how hard it is to see the screen in bright light this is a poor situation.

Such an awesome reply, bookmarking this for the future - this is something which has been puzzling me to no end lately as I play for different effects with both cameras. Yes I actually do shoot with little light a lot - night shooting is a thing of mine, and in a way that is expressive not scientifically accurate. But I am going to try a few things based on what you say above, to see what happens. I tend to learn best while doing, which is why digital cameras are such a great learning tool, and why you can't be lazy when you are a film photographer - because it's expensive to experiment.

However, I STILL would have gone ahead and annoyed the film photographers and called light sensitivity something other than ISO. One of the problems with digital being accepted as a legitimate photographic and movie medium is that rather than coming out and standing on its own two legs as different and new, people who marketed it kept trying to match it to film. The comparisons I think are interesting but irrelevant, and so I think it should have some of its own terminology.

As for tape decks - of course I remember them. Still have music on cassette tape (but the 8 tracks got dumped long ago).

 

[odilonvert]

The next step for you is to understand the Exposure Compensation control. You will find it changes everything in your sense of control to get the desired result.
What you risk in not taking control of the exposure at the time of shooting is images that cannot be fixed with tweaking. For tweaking to work your exposure needs to be pretty close to right. If it is off by as much as 2/3 stop you may not be able to rescue the lost highlight or shadow detail. No amount of tweaking can fix what isn't there.

Word - detail in both areas (highlight and shadow) are shot and cannot be brought back. Learned about that before I ever got into digital photography for myself, from reviewing the work of other photographers where I work who were shakily moving from film to digital (I work in an active media archive). Those pictures are never used in anything we publish. This fact was good to know - if you don't get that part right from the get-go, you had better just shoot the subject all over in the proper way.

 

[odilonvert]

Please don't demystify my shooting experience with all this tech stuff.

Hehe - that's how I approached it a bit at first, because I need to find some things out on my own before I get into detail, see how much I can pick up intuitively.

But then, I have to go back and look under the hood a bit, because at some point, my curiosity demands to know WHY. !

 

[odilonvert]

Jennifer ( odilonvert ) you cannot just decide on your own that you apply ISO to film only. ISO is a universally accepted norm that applies to millions of things, and again, in the precise case of photography, that norm is extremely convenient when switching from film to digital. Tolerance in terms of grain or noise is another story. The ISO norm "doesn't care" about it. Grain and noise are technically bound to films/sensors and available light. Obviously sensors do a much better job.

And oh yes, I knew when posting yesterday that you thought I might reply promptly [emoji4]

The topic's interesting. Good that you posted it

edit: ISO, applied to digital photography, sort of add a third dimension when shooting (2 others being speed and aperture) and I like that. Call it OSI ? [emoji3][emoji257]

No no, Philippe - I just meant to narrow the conversation to speaking about ISO with regard to film in this conversation.

I'm good with OSI!

 

[odilonvert]

In order for the complex chain of photographic events to produce reliable results every contributing factor must adhere to some performance standards. Who defines the standards? The International Standards Organization.
The light meter in your camera, or hand held light meter, must measure light and report the results a consistent and reliable way based on an established standard. The progression of aperture sizes in your lens, the timing of the shutter speed control all must be accurate within a certain tolerance. We rely on this so that we can confidently change from 1/125th sec @ f8, to 1/250 @ f5.6, to 1/60 @ f11 and expect the same exposure, but different depth of field. (The law of reciprocity).
With older mechanical cameras the shutter speed times were regulated mechanically and it was quite common for individual speeds to be a bit off. Over time the springs would weaken. A little dirt might slow down the moving parts. If you were fussy about such things you could measure the actual shutter speeds and write down the true speeds to compensate for the errors. I did this for all my leaf shutters for my 4x5 cameras and checked my other cameras to keep an eye on them.
The aperture openings were mechanically adjusted by a cam connected to the aperture ring. Wear or slack in the parts could make the aperture settings inaccurate, or worse, variable.
First, electronic shutter timing replaced the mechanical timers. Then, real-time off-the-film metering could compensate for inaccuracies in both aperture and shutter mechanisms. Here we got to a point where automatic exposures could be more accurate than manually set exposures.
Throughout photographic history cameras have continued to improve. All of the variables have gradually been improved to amazing precision. Cameras today, even relatively inexpensive ones, perform to much higher standards than were even possible years ago.
The weakest link in the chain has always been the film. Getting the photo-chemical process in film to perform in a consistent way involves numerous variables. Once you get through all the variables in manufacturing the film you move on to developing the film. The slightest changes in developer chemistry, temperature, time, etc., could throw things out of whack. Not to mention how the film was stored before developing. Do you mail your films to be developed. How hot did it get in the mail truck? Was your package exposed to X-Ray scrutiny? Really, when you look at the potential variables, it is amazing it worked at all.
Pro photographers have long known that you could not take for granted that a film that said ASA/ISO 64 was really 64. It could be 80, or 50. The manufacturing standards would keep it within a certain acceptable range for amateur use but professionals required more precision.
I know from experience that a very fresh batch of Kodachrome 25 would be slightly green in the highlights but as it gets closer to the due date it changes to magenta. Somewhere in between was just right. For critical work pros would always run tests for colour & speed and when they found a particularly nice batch of film they would buy a lot of it and keep it in the fridge. The other choice is to use "Pro" films. A Pro film was one that had been tested by the manufacturer to fall much closer to the ideal for that film, marked for its true speed, perhaps "aged" to its best colour response, then stored under refrigeration. Pro film was more expensive but well worth the money when shooting important work for clients.
If you were not testing your film you really had no idea of which way your problems might run. Your only other choice was to bracket like mad, but also bracketing for an unknown colour shift was impractical.
With film you could not rely that a one stop change in exposure would give one stop change in the appearance on film. As your exposures let longer, in low light, film would become less sensitive to light in a non-linear way. So when your light meter would say 1/2 second perhaps you really needed 3/4 sec or 1 sec. And at 10 seconds you might really need 25 seconds. Every film was different. Reciprocity charts were available from the film manufacturers. In other words, at a certain point the ISO of the film ceased to be accurate and changed, sometimes dramatically from expectations.
I haven't mentioned the film response curve which had other limitations.
So I say again, film has always been the weakest link in the photographic chain. I, for one, am glad to be rid of it.

Fascinating - again thanks Fundy Brian for this reply, another bookmark!

Don't you think it's funny though, that there is a whole generation of youngins who are fascinated by film, even though it's a relic in their time, and shoot only in film? It's an aesthetic choice in the end, right? That, and enjoying the unpredictability of it, as you detail above, and the "slowness" of the process. It's an old school craft, as you describe it. In this sense, shooting with film is really a very different thing from shooting digital, from the camera all the way to the process. So I say, give it that respect from the beginning, give it its own terms, and by now for sure - stop catering to the film analogies.

In the movie world, people are still resisting digital, or using it with a sad glance back at film. CGI in some cases has made the reputation for using anything computerized unpalatable and "low brow." I think that community is coming around to digital as a separate medium that deserves a place apart more slowly than the photography community. Hopefully as people use digital in ways that film could not be used - not talking about CGI here - it will be appreciated for what it is, rather than what it is not.

Again, loving the answers in this discussion, very glad I brought my burning issues with ISO as a digital measurement up, and I'll be re-reading this thread often as I go forward. Awesomeness in this community! <3

 

[odilonvert]

Heard a lot about these inconsistencies with color films, even "pro" ones.
This said I got to say that as long as I was shooting film I was exclusively shooting 100 ISO black and white (Kodak then Ilford) ... these films were tolerant and minor exposure issues could easily be corrected under the enlarger. I mostly obtained what I wanted most of the time, the decisive factor being (as always), light quality when shooting.

Other factors were being as precise and regular as possible when developing films (temperature and timing); same for prints.

So again as I was addicted to sharpness ( [emoji3] ) I never pushed films.

You're right about camera shutters variations ... I had mines controlled regularly. Same for light sensors.

Light quality - the key!

 

[terse]

Don't you think it's funny though, that there is a whole generation of youngins who are fascinated by film, even though it's a relic in their time, and shoot only in film?

It's seems weird, yes, but I'd guess that it happens fairly often in arts, crafts, pop culture, and other areas. Some new technique or technology or tool appears, probably crude and clumsy if it's really new, and a few pioneers pick it up and start pushing what can be done with it. Then come the early adopters who join in and start to create a buzz around it and to make it do new things. And all the while the tech has been improving and the audience swelling until the thing (whatever it is) starts to go mainstream. It gets to surf along on the wave for a short while, and then... Some people (pioneers, early adopters, but maybe in different guises) reach *back* and start fiddling with the old technology again, maybe one that's completely new to them in their lifetimes, puzzled by its limits compared to the snazzy new tech (now so much better), but intrigued and... they start to push it to see what it can do. And some people turn out some really interesting stuff, which creates some buzz, and... the wheel turns again.

I'd guess this stretch-forward/reach-back happens because those things are *different* from now, so they can be seen in a fresh way (and possibly without some past baggage in case of old stuff). It gives the explorers a sense of adventure and also imposes constraints, limits you have to push against, to work around or overcome with creativity and imagination. When digital first started to reach the public, it took some imagination to find ways to produce good work with it, within its limits. Likewise with mobile phone cameras: It took experimentation and creativity to make interesting photos at first, an expansion (in a way) of what photography could be. I expect it's the same with the alternative process photography folks doing tintype and glass plate photos (real ones, not insta-filters).

Maybe the short version is "Because McLuhan"?

 

[FundyBrian]

Fascinating - again thanks Fundy Brian for this reply, another bookmark!

Don't you think it's funny though, that there is a whole generation of youngins who are fascinated by film, even though it's a relic in their time, and shoot only in film? It's an aesthetic choice in the end, right? That, and enjoying the unpredictability of it, as you detail above, and the "slowness" of the process. It's an old school craft, as you describe it. In this sense, shooting with film is really a very different thing from shooting digital, from the camera all the way to the process. So I say, give it that respect from the beginning, give it its own terms, and by now for sure - stop catering to the film analogies.

In the movie world, people are still resisting digital, or using it with a sad glance back at film. CGI in some cases has made the reputation for using anything computerized unpalatable and "low brow." I think that community is coming around to digital as a separate medium that deserves a place apart more slowly than the photography community. Hopefully as people use digital in ways that film could not be used - not talking about CGI here - it will be appreciated for what it is, rather than what it is not.

Again, loving the answers in this discussion, very glad I brought my burning issues with ISO as a digital measurement up, and I'll be re-reading this thread often as I go forward. Awesomeness in this community! <3

I wouldn't say there's a whole generation of people interested in antique photo processes. There are a few people here and there following a fad. There are older photographers who have never made the transition to digital, and other people who want to explore the origins of photography.
I have often said that people with experience in film have a wider understanding of photography, and certainly, if you have darkroom experience you know right away what the tools are for in Photoshop. All my darkroom stuff is put away now and I hope to never again need a bunch of bottles of chemicals in the house. I couldn't just pour them down the drain so I saved them for our hazardous waste disposal days twice a year. No more chemicals for me. That's another bonus of digital.
No more worrying about X-ray damage to films while travelling.
I think it is definitely time to stop trying to relive the past and to go beyond film into territory beyond the capability of film.

 

[odilonvert]

It's seems weird, yes, but I'd guess that it happens fairly often in arts, crafts, pop culture, and other areas. Some new technique or technology or tool appears, probably crude and clumsy if it's really new, and a few pioneers pick it up and start pushing what can be done with it. Then come the early adopters who join in and start to create a buzz around it and to make it do new things. And all the while the tech has been improving and the audience swelling until the thing (whatever it is) starts to go mainstream. It gets to surf along on the wave for a short while, and then... Some people (pioneers, early adopters, but maybe in different guises) reach *back* and start fiddling with the old technology again, maybe one that's completely new to them in their lifetimes, puzzled by its limits compared to the snazzy new tech (now so much better), but intrigued and... they start to push it to see what it can do. And some people turn out some really interesting stuff, which creates some buzz, and... the wheel turns again.

I'd guess this stretch-forward/reach-back happens because those things are *different* from now, so they can be seen in a fresh way (and possibly without some past baggage in case of old stuff). It gives the explorers a sense of adventure and also imposes constraints, limits you have to push against, to work around or overcome with creativity and imagination. When digital first started to reach the public, it took some imagination to find ways to produce good work with it, within its limits. Likewise with mobile phone cameras: It took experimentation and creativity to make interesting photos at first, an expansion (in a way) of what photography could be. I expect it's the same with the alternative process photography folks doing tintype and glass plate photos (real ones, not insta-filters).

Maybe the short version is "Because McLuhan"?

Well on a fashion note, my husband and I saw a young woman today, and I said "Man, her top is the '70s," and my husband says, "Yeah but her jeans are the '80s. She's getting her decades mixed up." But yeah, she had no direct baggage anyway from those eras, so it looked fresh to her, whereas to us it was "why go back there."

For sure digital photography has gone through its growth cycles. As anything digital has. Things evolve sooooo fast now though. I was kind of freaking out reading this article, imagine a smartphone with many cameras and lenses. ...! Who knows where we'll be a year or so from now. Definitely FAR away from the origins of photography...

 

[odilonvert]

I wouldn't say there's a whole generation of people interested in antique photo processes. There are a few people here and there following a fad. There are older photographers who have never made the transition to digital, and other people who want to explore the origins of photography.
I have often said that people with experience in film have a wider understanding of photography, and certainly, if you have darkroom experience you know right away what the tools are for in Photoshop. All my darkroom stuff is put away now and I hope to never again need a bunch of bottles of chemicals in the house. I couldn't just pour them down the drain so I saved them for our hazardous waste disposal days twice a year. No more chemicals for me. That's another bonus of digital.
No more worrying about X-ray damage to films while travelling.
I think it is definitely time to stop trying to relive the past and to go beyond film into territory beyond the capability of film.

Well true, not a generation haha! I guess I'm talking about young photographers I've watched on Tumblr, Flickr, Instagram, and articles that promote film over digital on various blogs. But yeah, the percentage of people pursuing that is much smaller than those using digital, even though the media I'm reading makes a big deal out of them - simply because the people writing the interviews are probably young themselves...

 

[FundyBrian]

Have you ever notice that all of the film emulation apps for iPhone make the pictures look different by degrading them in some way. They add dirt, light leaks, foggy areas, weird colour, low contrast, lens flare, etc. So far I have not seen any film emulation apps that make the picture look clearer, or more detailed, or improve the highlight and shadow detail. The problem is that it is much easier to degrade an image than it is to improve it. The film emulation apps also give the impression that film was generally terrible, with poor colour, bad developing, dirty chemicals, poorly handled, etc. It was never THAT bad.

 

[FundyBrian]

Well true, not a generation haha! I guess I'm talking about young photographers I've watched on Tumblr, Flickr, Instagram, and articles that promote film over digital on various blogs. But yeah, the percentage of people pursuing that is much smaller than those using digital, even though the media I'm reading makes a big deal out of them - simply because the people writing the interviews are probably young themselves...

I think a bigger part of this is that you can buy a really good old film camera for hardly anything. Very attractive if you're a student with not much money. Of course the film and developing costs add up a lot more than shooting digital.
Back in the film days, (daze), it was sometimes fun to pick up an antique camera and see what I could do with it. You could still get some 616 film back then. Or if film was not available you could cut pieces of sheet file so you could make one shot and then go back to the darkroom. I found the results never lived up to my expectations. Why? They were all too good. They looked perfectly normal. No soft focus, no light leaks, no defects. To get those things you needed to use something truly dismal. The Diana camera was made for just this purpose. Terrible cheap construction, barely workable. No controls as all. Often the body parts fitted together so poorly you needed black tape to cover the gaps. The lens was exceedingly cheap and it made some low quality images. I still have one in the original box in case you desperately want to buy one Not as fun as a pinhole camera which you made yourself.
Another fad from the film days. The idea was to discover something in your pictures you did not in any way create or frame or see at the time of shooting. This was done by strapping your camera on your back and using a shutter release cable to trip the shutter. You would walk around and see something interesting in front of you. Then, without looking back, you would take a picture behind you. Look forward, take a picture backward. Then you would go to the darkroom, develop your film, and see what discoveries might be in store. Mostly a lot of rubbish. Occasionally a passerby looking quizzically at the camera. I think the recent pictures, selfies, made by apes using phone cameras are more interesting.

 

[odilonvert]

Have you ever notice that all of the film emulation apps for iPhone make the pictures look different by degrading them in some way. They add dirt, light leaks, foggy areas, weird colour, low contrast, lens flare, etc. So far I have not seen any film emulation apps that make the picture look clearer, or more detailed, or improve the highlight and shadow detail. The problem is that it is much easier to degrade an image than it is to improve it. The film emulation apps also give the impression that film was generally terrible, with poor colour, bad developing, dirty chemicals, poorly handled, etc. It was never THAT bad.

Haha! Yeah, there's a fetish for that "bad film" look. You'd think they'd do the opposite, go for the "bad pixel" look.

I remember when grunge style photos were big, and I came into the app thing later than most of the people in the community I learned from. The other thing is the 19th century look. I can't say that either are my schtick. I'm more fascinated with glitch than trying to emulate film. It's natural to the electronic world, after all. ...