Thread: Film vs. Digital DR and tonal gradation

Hi all,
Last year I bought a voigtlander Bessa L with a 15 mm fixed lens. This little beauty has no viewfinder but uses an eye piece. It's amazing and I get a feeling of the old days when it's in my hands. It has been plenty contrasty for me and the tone is right on. Having said that, I am no expert with m mount lens, but do admire this shooter.
Probably no help here, but I've enjoyed everyone's remarks.

Pete

Originally Posted by wt21

The Canonet is one that some folks have recently pointed me to. I guess they take mercury batteries that are illegal in the states, but I understand you can have the voltage regulator reset or some such.

I've spent most of the weekend looking for my ME Super, which seems to have been misplaced. I was thinking of trying that for a bit (haven't shot with it in over 15 years), but I can't seem to dig it up, after annoying my wife by tearing the house apart :(

Oh well. Maybe I'll check the bay for some Canonets.

Hmmm mine uses an energiser akaline battery and it seems fine. See here, just below the photo of the back of the camera: Canon Canonet GIII QL17 - Photoethnography.com's Classic Camera DB

Hope that helps.

Also I just thought that tonal graduation depends a lot on film type, for example potra NC is less contrasty than Velvia.

EDIT: a heads up for buying used, very old film RF's, like the canonet, as well as checking shutters and metering, make sure that the split viewfinder image is acceptable. I tried out a few other rangefinder when I bought mine and some were so dull focusing was impossible, whilst a Hi-matic 9 was perfect (but the meter was dead). Getting rangefinders brightened is a process more expensive than buying these old RF's, so getting a good one is ideal.

You could probably take a similar image with a digital camera with a decent sensor like the Canon 30D or 40D, a Sigma compact, or definitely with the 5D Mark II, underexposing a tiny bit to leave in the highlight detail, then convert to monochrome and bring out shadows while decreasing contrast. Come to think of it, I've done something similar with a few M9 photos and the Voigtlander 35/1.4, which has a soft, slightly dreamy quality when wide open.

If you're shooting with film, scanning is going to be a big part of the process if you want to display your work online or email it, and by all accounts, good scanning can be a very involved skillset as well. I've seen minilab scans of black and white film blown away by home scanning in terms of recovery on highlight and shadow detail, but this takes time and experimentation.

Much of this is personal taste. When someone says, 'there is nothing I can do with film that I can't do with digital', you have to consider what they like to do. I haven't done enough experimentation to be able to say that I cannot get results from digital that I can with film, but I'm getting closer.