Saturday, October 21. 2006
Two-dollar roll of film better than $3,000 digital camera
When professional photographer Henry Butz says today's digital cameras "don't do black and white" he doesn't mean they can't produce b&w images, just that they don't offer the dynamic range of b&w film:Digital cameras are really coming into their own. Although it would take 11 million pixels to approximate the film size of a 35mm negative, today's 5 and 6 megapixel cameras are very impressive. But, they don't do black and white.
It might surprise some people that B/W film is just as sensitive to color as color film, perhaps even more so. Not only does B/W film capture the visible light spectrum, but it can also capture infrared and ultraviolet light as well. Color digital cameras closely mimic color film technology. Color film has red, green, and blue sensitive layers. Digital cameras have red, green, and blue sensitive CCD's (or other similar device) which reports color with digital values.
Can you adjust the contrast of color film or a color digital camera? Not really. Color technology is more concerned about color, not shades of grey. The contrast of digital or color is much less than that of black and white film. If the contrast of color film gets too high, the colors look ugly. If the contrast drops, the color looks washed out. So, the contrast of color film, as well as digital cameras, is low and held constant.
Black and white film can represent about 5 f-stops of light {1,2,3,4,5}. Color, perhaps as much as 3 {2,3,4}. You can prove this to yourself. Take a color photograph using your favorite image editor, such as Photoshop. Convert to Greyscale. What does your image look like? It's flat, dull, uninteresting, poor contrast. This is normal.
What some people with digital cameras do is "convert" the color image to black and white using Photoshop. You can play with the color response curve, increase the contrast, perhaps mess with the color channel mixer. But, a digital image will always be inferior in black and white because it was taken with color technology....Although you can spackle on a few do-dad's, filters, grain, and color mixer channel master magic with your mouse, it's a thin, cheap imitation facade of what might have been, had you just dusted off that good 'ol 35mm camera and loaded a roll of B/W film. A spectrum of light of {1,2,3,4,5} will look better than the color->b/w spectrum of {1,3,5}.
While you may have fun taking black and white photographs with your digital camera, and they probably look pretty good to you and your peers, who also own digital cameras, I feel duty bound to tell you that some people are laughing at you....Do it if you must. Have fun. But, if you want to do something "real" with black and white, buy an inexpensive 35mm camera - I recommend the Pentax ZX-M or look at the Pentax "*ist". You can buy one for 1/10 of the price of a digital camera. With a $3 roll of film and a lab which can print it, you will make images that guys like me won't laugh at.
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You may also be interested in this article by Guy Tal, who says:
Another important fact, albeit of a technical nature, to keep in mind is that black and white film has a much wider latitude than color film, thus allowing a much wider range of tones to be captured. In scenes where such subtleties are important, black and white will often produce more impressive images.
Example of dynamic range of B&W. Olympus XA, Kodak BW400CN, average metering @ ASA400, Deerfield, IL
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