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what happened before digital
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depends what effect he was after
a simple example is ....sea shot, two shots take, one to free the water, and a long exposure to make the cloud blurred, then stack them into one image. as you cannot get the effect from a single shot.
Not sure what he was after in ten images without seeing the pic etc.
before digital I have nooo idea! lol
grumpybadger
Alan Rickman
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Digital gets noisier with longer exposures so you can stack multiple images to get a lower noise long exposure image - its what the astrophotographers often do.
Film didn't have that issue so you could run longer exposures. What film did have was reciprocity which meant that it exposed quicker to brighter light, meaning that longer exposures ran the risk of being underexposed if they were made even longer. Information here.
Film didn't have that issue so you could run longer exposures. What film did have was reciprocity which meant that it exposed quicker to brighter light, meaning that longer exposures ran the risk of being underexposed if they were made even longer. Information here.
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As Paul said, also special films were used such as Kodak technical pan, before use the film was prepared for use by hyper-sensitizing using hydrogen and nitrogen gas in a sealed chamber for a time. This allowed for very long exposures.
Quite a rigmarole as you can imagine but the images could be outstanding.
Info
Quite a rigmarole as you can imagine but the images could be outstanding.
Info
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In the days of film it was a case of getting it right in camera. Even neg scanning was an expensive option and before PC's were affordable and only really used on a commercial basis.
Reciprocity failure was one of the effects of shooting film with long exposures. Knowledge was a key thing in those days and that was to know what you are doing to achieve the end result before you pressed the shutter. Just remember no previewing in camera so would have to wait for the lab to develope the neg or slide before you could see the results.
I'm tempeted to say the days of film produced proper photographers but that would be a bit controversial ...................... wouldnt it?
Reciprocity failure was one of the effects of shooting film with long exposures. Knowledge was a key thing in those days and that was to know what you are doing to achieve the end result before you pressed the shutter. Just remember no previewing in camera so would have to wait for the lab to develope the neg or slide before you could see the results.
I'm tempeted to say the days of film produced proper photographers but that would be a bit controversial ...................... wouldnt it?
KIPAX
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You can cut and stack negatives too
No but you could print from several negatives and produce one print.
http://atticrecords.co.uk/uploads/news/id17/The-Damned-Phantasmagoria---461453.jpg
Just one example Bob Carlos Clark if memory serves me correct, printed from 3 negs.
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I often shoot buildings at night painting with light - and do multiple exposures and stack in Photoshop - pulling in each area and controlling the amount off each...
In days of film you ended up doing a lot of dodging and burning to get the print right!
In days of film you ended up doing a lot of dodging and burning to get the print right!
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Not controversial.. just plain insulting IMHO but i imphasis IMHO
Thought there may have been comments about that
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Really just a totally diferent way of shooting. Film dictated the settings but B&W had more flexability. What you couldnt do was change settings such as ISO (film speed) mid shoot to adjust to changing light conditions.
In reallity digital opened up a whole new ball game and now produces a different type of photography and photographers.
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RUBBISH.:bonk:
Of course you could change films midway during a shoot. Not on a single 35mm body, I grant you, unless, as most photographers of the age did, you loaded different camera bodies with different film stock. On medium format cameras you simply changed backs, according to the film stock required. THAT is why film cameras/backs have a place to slide in the end of the film carton, so you knew which film was in whihc body. The F4 onwards had a perspex window to see th eactual film canister. Medium format backs have the holder for the film carton too.
The difference with film photographers and digital photographers was in the visualisation process. With film, one had to know what was going on - you could shoot a polaroid to have a "chimp" but it wasn't as instant as reviewing the screen is, despite being billed instant film (It was instant to us!)
Everything is relative. The cleverness of wielding a camera to solve some problems has been replaced with the cleverness of driving a computer program. With film though, you couldn't go back a step and start from the last part again. You had to scrap the lot and start again. There is still ONE fundamental though, and that is the knowledge of techniques and how to apply them. That has not changed at all. The practicalities have changed, that's all.
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The advantage of taking several photos in place of one longer one when photographing the night sky is twofold.
Firstly, several photographs stacked together will improve the signal to noise ratio. One long exposure could end up being quite noisy by comparison.
Secondly, unless you live in an area with really, really dark skies, light pollution becomes a real problem with long exposures, to the point where the sky can be overexposed. Short exposures avoid this problem.
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Take a minute to think about what you've just asked...
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You can do a lot with film if you know how, manual processing of film can be very complicated and long but the results can be the same (in most cases) to what can be done digitally.
Burning, dodging, exposure and all other techniques made digital came from film.
Burning, dodging, exposure and all other techniques made digital came from film.
If you weren't serious, I would have laughed so hard, but I can see sincerity so the answer is this: Pixel is used only when referring to digital imaging sensors. A pixel is a group of four light sensitive diodes (light sensors) 2 green, 1 red and 1 blue this mimics human vision which is more sensitive to green light. Mega is the SI prefix for million, so one megapixel is the equivalent of 1,000,000 pixels or 4,000,000 light sensitive diodes. As film does not use light sensitive diodes, it only applies to digital and is used to quantify the quality of either digital sensors or digital displays.
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Rubbish eh? :razz:
I never mentioned changing film stock either by re-winding (on 35mm) or swopping backs on MF. Maybe what I should have typed was "mid film" in stead of "mid shoot). But my reference was aimed at changing the ISO rating as we do with digital.
the question was not quite asked as it should have been
if you look below i will repeat
Of course, as this pic from Canon's R&D depot shows...........
that is funny
thanks for the answer
right lol
what term was used for the quality of picture?
if you have say 15mp digital image you can blow it up to a massive picture without losing detail but how did/do you go really big with a picture from film or dont you?
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Also the films had different speeds ( not how fast consecutive photos were taken but from fast action to static shots) and the camera had to be set to match the film speed.
Does ASA and DIN bring back memories?
My old Voitlander Vito CL had settings of 10 to 800 ASA or in DIN 10 to 30. Not only that but this particular camera had the luxery of choosing between shooting with B/W or Colour film. Then there was the problem of parallelex error, not being an SLR, where the viewfinder was on a different plain level to the lens. The CLS version actually had a built in rangerfinder, luxury indeed. Otherwise distance guesswork was the name of the game.
The camera did had a built in light meter which one set manually for correct exposure was powered by light, no batteries back in those days.
Realspeed
Oh by the way I still own that camera and had it new 44 years ago and is in like new condition, even the clockwork delay timer still works perfectly. Little dust between the lenses but easily removed if sent for cleaning
Does ASA and DIN bring back memories?
My old Voitlander Vito CL had settings of 10 to 800 ASA or in DIN 10 to 30. Not only that but this particular camera had the luxery of choosing between shooting with B/W or Colour film. Then there was the problem of parallelex error, not being an SLR, where the viewfinder was on a different plain level to the lens. The CLS version actually had a built in rangerfinder, luxury indeed. Otherwise distance guesswork was the name of the game.
The camera did had a built in light meter which one set manually for correct exposure was powered by light, no batteries back in those days.
Realspeed
Oh by the way I still own that camera and had it new 44 years ago and is in like new condition, even the clockwork delay timer still works perfectly. Little dust between the lenses but easily removed if sent for cleaning
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You can change the film iso rating mid roll, but we know what you mean, its much easier with a digital camera.
I dunno, yawl making it sound really complicated, film is much simpler to shoot a long exposure with, you just need to be able calculate exposure considering ambient light levels, hot spots/light pollution in the scene and reciprocity failure.
Alternatively, guess it, press the shutter release and go have a cup of tea.
Miles more fun than shooting 200 20mb digi stills, buying a totr pc to assimilate 4gb of data and spending all night joining all those star trail dots together.....
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Recently, I was playing with a 50+ year old 35mm film SLR that had an interchangeable film magazine which allowed you to effectively change ISO mid-film. You would be changing to a completely different roll of film, but the end result was the same.
right i may have found a better way to explain what i want to know now lol
say i wanted to put a big photo on the side of a double decker bus
presuming im on the right track i would take a picture of the object with a digital camera with a high resolution ...... yes?
then when i blow the picture up to the size of the bus it would still look good because its high resolution ie:- megapixels?
but what would i have done if digital cameras were not invented?
could you still do it with film?
i am not taking the mickey here folks im really intrigued
say i wanted to put a big photo on the side of a double decker bus
presuming im on the right track i would take a picture of the object with a digital camera with a high resolution ...... yes?
then when i blow the picture up to the size of the bus it would still look good because its high resolution ie:- megapixels?
but what would i have done if digital cameras were not invented?
could you still do it with film?
i am not taking the mickey here folks im really intrigued
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A slight correction...
A single pixel is just that, one pixel, not a group of four. The 2 green, 1 red and 1 blue you refer to relate to the Bayer Filter over the array of monochrome sensor elements.
Each pixel is filtered to record only one of the three colors. Each pixel cannot fully determine RGB color on its own, only red, green or blue. To get the full RGB for a given pixel a demosaicing algorithm is applied to interpolate a the red, green, and blue values for each point.
The exception to this is Foveon sensor technology which uses a layered approach to the sensor element which captures all three colours in a single pixel.
You are indeed correct, I misinterpreted one of my many books on the subject.
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Digital has transformed many aspects of film photography, to the extent that it has created new picture taking opportunities.
Long exposures is one of them. Reciprocity failure affects film exposures quite hard after a shutter speed of just a few seconds, whereby a suggested exposure of maybe five seconds would have to be ten, and ten would have to become 30, and so it got rapidly worse. Different films reacted differently and in an addition, with colour film the three colour layers would have different reciprocity characterists resulting in colour casts.
The whole thing was very unpredictable even for experts, and 'bracketing' was normal practise - shooting a series of frames at different exposure settings to ensure that at least one would be okay. Using a 10-stop ND filter for example was unheard of with film - they are new to digital.
Stobist flash photography is also pretty much a digital invention too. Even if you have auto-TTL, that only helps with the exposure - it doesn't tell you how the light will actually look. Using multiple flash guns in manual, with radio triggers, in situations that would be extremely difficult to calculate and predict with film (eg outside) - that is now both easy and affordable with digital. The higher ISO of digital also makes a massive difference to the effective power of hot-shoe guns.
Polaroid backs were only available for medium format cameras, which nobody but professionals could afford. Even then, a Polaroid was only a guide and very expensive.
Digital is cheap, easy even for beginners, and allows you to do things that were impossible in practise with film.
Long exposures is one of them. Reciprocity failure affects film exposures quite hard after a shutter speed of just a few seconds, whereby a suggested exposure of maybe five seconds would have to be ten, and ten would have to become 30, and so it got rapidly worse. Different films reacted differently and in an addition, with colour film the three colour layers would have different reciprocity characterists resulting in colour casts.
The whole thing was very unpredictable even for experts, and 'bracketing' was normal practise - shooting a series of frames at different exposure settings to ensure that at least one would be okay. Using a 10-stop ND filter for example was unheard of with film - they are new to digital.
Stobist flash photography is also pretty much a digital invention too. Even if you have auto-TTL, that only helps with the exposure - it doesn't tell you how the light will actually look. Using multiple flash guns in manual, with radio triggers, in situations that would be extremely difficult to calculate and predict with film (eg outside) - that is now both easy and affordable with digital. The higher ISO of digital also makes a massive difference to the effective power of hot-shoe guns.
Polaroid backs were only available for medium format cameras, which nobody but professionals could afford. Even then, a Polaroid was only a guide and very expensive.
Digital is cheap, easy even for beginners, and allows you to do things that were impossible in practise with film.
Not controversial.. just plain insulting IMHO but i imphasis IMHO
I think he's right to a certain extent - not that digital hasn't produced 'proper' photographers either, but the majority of photographers whose work I admire were 'weaned' on film.
I still think shooting film instilled a discipline during training that's lacking with those wholly brought-up on digital capture.
I'm constantly amazed at the lack of what I always thought of as basic photographic skills and techniques exhibited by photographers I meet on my travels (mostly Press toggers, I have to say).
By trial and error we knew the limits of the different film types on different formats.
'Slow' film - 25-64iso film was used for high quality images.
General-purpose film was about 100-200iso. Most hobbyist photographers would use this, but also a lot of Press work when light wasn't an issue.
High-speed was anything from 200-400iso.
Most press work was done with this film (first exclusively B&W and later on Colour as newspapers introduced colour-printing) and here the real test of your abilities occurred as you eked every grain of quality out of that film as you pushed it, sometimes as high as 1600iso
to make the most of what light you had available...lolReal men were masters at finding different ways of manipulating the processing-chemistry to get better images at higher iso's...
Also, colour-transparency (slide) film was used for most professional applications, whereas colour-neg film was generally regarded as the preserve of hobbyists...
Whereas now we just use a camera with a higher Mpx-count such as a D3x to produce large images, in 'Ye Olden Days of Filme' we used different camera formats.
35mm was generally but not exclusively the preserve of Press-toggers.
Medium-format: Hasselblad, Pentax 6x7, Mamiya etc. were generally used for fashion, advertising and editorial as they were generally expected to be used for larger prints, glossy-magazines and bill-boards.
5x4 Plate Cameras such as the Sinar and Toyo were used for very high-quality work, some portrait photographers used them and some fashion and advertising work as well as a lot of product photography - that which called for very high-quality images. Otherwise that too would have been done on medium-format.
For ultra-ultra high-quality work, 10x8 plate cameras were used. massive group photos are still done on these cameras as digital still isn't up to that unless you perform a multi image 'stitch' (which we still do on occasion, such as a Battalion Photograph - 800+ people - in front of Edinburgh Castle or similar).
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My point exactly althought my post was partly tonue-in-cheek.
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I can see that being quoted in somebody's signature.
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I don't think there's any doubt about that. With film you need a level of basic skill - not just exposure, but shutter speeds, depth of field etc too - because you couldn't chimp 'n' cheat.
Today with digital, you can get a very good result, technically, without any of that understanding.
None of which changes the vast quanties of rubbish photographs still taken today. Just goes to show that cameras don't take great pictures, photographers do.
a question is only easy if you know the answer.
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Perhaps, but it was kind of like asking, "Dick turpin never complained about the price of unleaded going up. Did horses use petrol?"