Anlogue or digital RAW?

[Gábor]

Hi,
I recently watched a TV series in which a cameraman spoke about nearly all aspects of photography, including the advantages of analogue photography over digital. He said that film negatives have much more in tones than digital files. Then he mentioned RAW, which is to COME CLOSE. As for fine art, I'm interested mostly in black and white photography so I love playing with tones and lights etc.

So, is he right at this point? Well, the most rocking images I've ever seen in b&w were made by analogue equipment. I recently bookmarked a page. It has pictures with the finest tonest I ever came across.
Could one do similiar works in Photoshop, for example? Or something will always look a little "digitalish"? Or all this thing is bulls**t?

Thanks

[Doug Pardee]

The short answer is that "close" is all that you're going to get. There are three main limitations.

1) For many years now, all digital sensors are color sensors. Except for the Foveon sensors used in Sigma DSLRs, the sensors are Color Filter Arrays where some sites pick up green, some pick up blue, and some pick up red. Two sites located next to each other, picking up the same tone from your subject, will produce different numerical outputs because of the different filter colors. Furthermore, to reduce the chance of color moiré, essentially all of the DSLR-sized sensors have low-pass filters stuck to the front of them which intentionally blur the image (the Leica M8 is one notable exception). The Foveons don't need low-pass filters.

Foveon sensors sure sound like what your really want: each site is like its neighbors, and no low-pass filter to blur the image. Except that right now Foveons don't go past 4.6 megapixels. At 8x10 you'll have about 220 pixels per inch, which is okay but not really in the "fine art" realm.

2) The response of a modern digital sensor site isn't really comparable to the D/logE curve of a good B&W film. There just isn't enough total range, in part due to lack of rolloff. There is no shoulder and no toe—just a straight line ending in flatlines at 0 and maximum. If you like high-contrast photos with lots of solid black and lots of solid white this is not a problem. If you like delicate shading in your shadows and highlights, it's a big problem.

3) Printing a digital B&W photo is yet another issue. A few years ago the printer manufacturers finally started to get serious about making some inkjet printers that could do a decent job of rendering B&W. I'm out of touch, so I don't know how far they've come along. But it's something to keep in mind. And remember that you don't have a negative to stick in an enlarger, so if you want a really large print you'll need to order it commercially.

[MoonRunX]

Is there a difference between digital black and white photography, and digital photography that you alter using photoshop or something to make it black and white?

Like, is there digital black and white photography? Can anyone give me any information about it?

[OsmosisStudios]

Originally Posted by MoonRunX

Is there a difference between digital black and white photography, and digital photography that you alter using photoshop or something to make it black and white?

Like, is there digital black and white photography? Can anyone give me any information about it?

Yeah: Doing B/W in camera is wrong.

If you shoot Colour (or, better yet, RAW), you can convert to B/W better in post than your camera ever will. There are literally dozens of ways to do it, and none of them are the "right" way, but they'll all yield better results.

I still shoot film, mainly because I enjoy the nostalgia and feel of it. But I almost always shoot B/W film. Its large-grain, 400iso, so not the greatest, but it gets where I need it to.