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> the Ilford makes everything look like a picture from a local news article.

Heh heh. B&W film is a totally different world than color (although it's possible to make it similar if you scan after development). Wrapping one's head around color filters is a valuable and enlightening experience. The development itself is easy enough to do in your bathroom. Then the real fun begins: printing.

The digital editing experience pales in comparison to printing B&W film. Cropping becomes a physical activity, where you use your hands to move the rulers on the easel or the projection plane up and down and experiment with different aspect ratios and sizes and ratios of image to border. The act of making each print is often in itself almost a sort of "performance," as you, the artist, are affecting the image's development in real-time by dodging/burning/applying other effects. And the wait to develop gives you time to contemplate what you're creating, where your mind is spinning and coming up with other creative ideas as you gently agitate the photo paper and watch your image slowly come into being.

The darkroom itself is a kind-of meditative creative space, and I have extremely fond memories of staying up while in college till 2 or 3 AM, making prints and messing around with my photos. Lightroom and Photoshop are useful tools, and I've also spent a significant amount of time editing in those pieces of software, but it's hard to beat the satisfaction of making a black & white photo print on nice fiber paper.

If you're a professional wedding photographer, don't bother, it's a waste of your time and is probably not relevant to the product you're trying to deliver: memories of the event that just took place. But if you're looking for a visual creativity outlet with a deep history and a lot of flexibility and room to explore different levels of abstraction/ideas, it's certainly worth a try.

XP2 is a dye-based film for C-41 process. It can look very different to real silver halide.

Ohhhh oops I missed that it was C41 B&W. Yeah, probably not amazing. I guess I saw Ilford and immediately remembered shooting hp5 and fp4.

> A decent full frame 35mm digital will probably beat a film medium format comfortably on colour reproduction, resolution and clarity. But Damnit, film just looks "real"

Do you have a clear sense of why film looks "real" to you? Is it because film is a more accurate rendering of how we perceive light, or is it because you grew up on film?

There were plenty of films that didn't represent the real world accurately, and plenty of digital filters that don't either. But I find that the default settings for most digital cameras look about as realistic as the default settings for most film cameras did when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s.

I find the default settings for most digital cameras over-sharpen, blow out highlights, and create color fringes which looks less realistic.

though, sure, certainly all photos have a psychological component, and film may also look more "real" (absent significant defects) because culturally been ingrained. Once the culture changes, it will probably be film which looks less real over time. I wouldn't attribute it to individual tastes, though.

>and create color fringes which looks less realistic.

Interesting. I believe that lenses tend not to be corrected for chromatic aberration as much as they used to be because chromatic aberration is relatively easy to correct in post-processing. (Being lax about chromatic aberration can give lens designers more leeway to correct other more serious aberrations.)

It's not that, because classic film lenses are used on digital mirror less cameras rather routinely. Film has a pleasing, gradual acutance compared to digital - especially in high contrast areas.

Edit: but you are correct that chromatic aberration, distortion, and other things probably take a backseat to resolution these days, since those things are easier to correct in post.

>It's not that, because classic film lenses are used on digital mirror less cameras rather routinely

Sure, I don't think anything I said contradicts that.

Now that is a question!

I think its mostly that its what "historic" photos look like. I don't mean the lomo plastic lens rubbish.

Colours are more on the green/blue end (well dependent on what film of course) The dynamic range is well, film-ey, Highlights are smooth, as are gradients. Also 35mm lenses have shallower depth of field compared to a iphone sensor or similar.

The instagram filters don't really cut it. Its obvious it comes from a digital camera(depth of field, bad grain, silly colours)

I don't think that its accurate, I think its because all the iconic photos of the 40s-90s are in film

One analogy that I don't seem to find agreement is many is that shooting slide film is like saving only in jpeg/tiff on a DSLR: you get an image that is immediately ready to use but subject to the interpretation of a chemical formulation (or internal processing of a camera). Negative is more like RAW format, need more work and may never look as nice, but deep down it was more faithful than other options.

I've been in VFX during film's heyday as well. I even run a telecine/scanning side business, but I would never go back to film now that we have wonders from ARRI. It's nice to know people are still into film and it's not going away so easily. I mean, it's gone from the mainstream, but it's still around and looks like it will be for quite some time.

I was thinking about bringing my old AE-1 and my old rolls with me on my trip to Europe. I guess the xrays would kill them but they're already long expired so who knows if they aren't already dead. I don't even remember if you can process these fine grain films on any store, though I guess if it's all C-41 it's all the same.

X-ray does not actually kill film. It will just slightly increase the esposure. But on the films I took through X-Ray scanners I never noticed this. Also you can take the film with you in your carry-on and ask the person at the scanner to let your film pass unscanned. Worked for me back when I was concerned about this. :-)

Oh and film also doesn't die after its expiry date, I made enlargements of some shots from ten-year-past-expiry film recently, not technically perfect but I love the look. Try a roll and see what you get!

I've never had any trouble getting film manually inspected, in recent times, in many countries. It seems routine to the screeners, which surprises me every time.

X-rays definitely do fog film though. If you care enough to use film, but not enough to ask someone to manually inspect it... that's weird to me.

Never had any problems with film going through the scanners used for hand luggage.

It depends on the sensitivity (ISO). Below ISO 800 you won't have much of an issue. 800 and above it gets dicey.

I've been fine with 400 and have noticed issues with 1600, so 800 certainly seems like a good place to draw the line from my experience.

I was able to avoid X-ray exposure to all of my film (some of which was ISO 1600 that I was pushing to 3200) during a trip to Washington D.C. not long after the 9/11 attacks. At that time, all of the security checkpoints at the airports, monuments, etc. seemed to be on edge. However, by politely requesting hand checks of my camera and film I was always accommodated and never had my equipment X-rayed. Checkpoints that had swab based explosive scanners always utilized them during the manual checks.

I was worried about the lower ISO film as well because going to ten different museums/monuments a day meant ten security checkpoints. I didn't want X-ray exposures to accumulate for even the low ISO film.

That depends on the sensitivity of the film and the strength of the X-ray imager.

100 ISO through carry on once? Probably no issue. Instead of once, 8x? You'll see things. ISO 1600 through carry on once - you'll see lines. 100 on checked luggage? It's gone.

edit: Kodak posted some examples with X-ray scanning awhile back: http://support.en.kodak.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/30482/~/... - it really depends on the sensitivity - and that effect is additive.

> A decent full frame 35mm digital will probably beat a film medium format comfortably on colour reproduction, resolution and clarity. But Damnit, film just looks "real"

And what of larger formats? Where do you get your 4"x5" digital back, or 8"x10"? Maybe you can do it with a scanning back, but it's hardly equivalent.

The resolution benefits of larger formats aren't as big as you might initially think for a number of closely interrelated reasons.

First, you always end up shooting at narrower apertures with larger formats (as the lenses have longer focal lengths for the same field of view, and hence less depth of field for the same field of view). In practice it's rare to shoot with a wider aperture than f/16 with 4x5. Diffraction therefore negates some of the potential resolution advantage of the larger sensor.

Second, large format lenses typically don't have the same resolution as lenses for smaller formats. This is partly because you can't have your optical cake and eat it (wider coverage comes at the price of lower resolution, all else being equal), and partly because the lenses are designed to be shot at small apertures anyway.

Third, owing to the typical focal lengths used, near-perfect focus will only be achievable in small areas of most 4x5 photos. You may get some of the resolution benefits you were hoping for, but only on that one tree that you focused on!

Fourth, you typically need long exposures with 4x5. Resolutions above ~20MP can't be achieved if the tiniest amount of camera shake or subject movement occurs.

In my experience (with cheap 4x5 equipment), I can usually capture slightly more detail than my 24MP D3300 with kit lens, if everything goes right. But then, anything you shoot with a 4x5 camera has to be standing pretty still, and stitching multiple shots to increase resolution is trivial with digital.

So I'd say that as awesome as a 4x5 negative is, the resolution advantages are marginal at best. It's absolutely not the case that you are getting 10x the resolution because the negative is 10x as long/wide.

This isn't in line what what others photographers (including myself) see.

Many respectable sources estimate 35mm to approach 24MP in the best conditions with specific film, 120 to be in the 40-80MP range, and 4x5 to be 100-300MP.

Tim Parkin is one of the better commentators on this subject: http://www.sonyalpharumors.com/sony-36-megapixels-vs-6x7-vel...

To address some of your other points: good LF glass can approach 70/70/50 line pairs per mm which is still really good, diffraction doesn't affect resolution as much as some people think, and f11-f16 is the sweet spot on a lot of modern LF glass - you don't need long exposures with those apertures and Portra 400, for example.

The link you give doesn't show any evidence that film (any format) can get above 50MP.

Real world comparisons of 4x5 film with 40-50MP medium format digital backs tends to show that they are very similar in terms of resolution. See e.g. https://luminous-landscape.com/4x5-film-vs-digital/

Honestly, the claim that 35mm film can achieve 24MP of resolution is pretty wild. That might be the theoretical resolving limit (depending on how exactly you translate lpm to megapixels, which is not so trivial), but no real world comparison that I've seen has ever shown 35mm film resolving as much details as a 24MP digital camera.

As far as what photographers like you are "seeing", then for goodness sake, if you are actually seeing 35mm film capture the same amount of detail as a 24MP DSLR, let's see the photos!

The f-number is a ratio, not a specific diameter. f/16 is not the same between a 4x5 lens and a 35mm lens of equivalent angle of view. A 90 mm lens at f/16 has an entrance pupil diameter of 5.65 mm, while a 28 mm lens at f/16 has an entrance pupil diameter of 1.75 mm.

So no, diffraction is not an inherent limiting factor of shooting 4x5 and you will in fact gain resolution. You will only lose depth of field (and your savings) when you go to larger formats.

See this post for more: http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?...

Diffraction effects depend on the ratio, however, not the diameter. I didn't get through all of the forum post you linked to, but if it's saying otherwise, it's wrong.

The reason 4x5 appears to suffer less from diffraction for a given aperture is simply that the sensor is bigger, so that the blurring has relatively less effect.

Do you have a source for that? I can't find anything supporting it.

Hmm, kind of the opposite here, I've never found anything supporting the contrary view!

Here's a quote from the forum discussion linked below:

> Yes, diffraction does depend on the absolute diameter of the aperture, at least that is what determines the angle of the diffracted rays. But with a longer focal length, the rays diverge farther before they hit the film, so the Airy disc (the fuzzy blob created by diffraction) becomes larger with longer lenses. When you get done crunching the numbers you find that the final result -- the physical manifestation of diffraction on the film -- is dependent only on the f/stop, and the focal length and absolute diameter of the aperture make no difference. A 20mm lens at f/22 will create the same size Airy disc as will a 200mm lens at f/22. In short, all lenses will produce the same amount of diffraction when set at the same f/stop.

http://photo.net/large-format-photography-forum/00JsZ7

So of this is correct, it's in a sense true that diffraction depends only on the absolute diameter, but the effect of diffraction on resolution is dependent only on the f stop.

Interesting, thank you. I'll read up on this.

If your 4x5s are barely beating your D3300, that's on you. Only the higher end medium format digital really matches 4x5 in terms of resolution. Now, if your argument is that you only print 16x20 so it doesn't matter, then that's fine, but that's a completely different argument.

Moreover, if you do a 'DSLR' scan of the negative, you can get quite a bit more detail. I'd say 100MP of "really actually noticeable and useful" resolution. https://petapixel.com/2012/12/23/why-you-should-digitize-you...

The reasons to use large format, as I see it, are as follows:

* Lens choice. There's a wealth of options here that you simply don't get with smaller formats

* Movements. The mild DoF hit is easy to accept when you have complete control over the focal plane, as well as the distortion control

* Film. Digital PP still isn't quite up to replicating the chemistry. Someone good, and with a significant effort, can get really close, but it's not quite the same.

>If your 4x5s are barely beating your D3300, that's on you. Only the higher end medium format digital really matches 4x5 in terms of resolution

These two statements contradict each other. There is not much difference in resolution between 24MP and 50MP (4.9 : 7), so if I was getting ~50MP of resolution in my 4x5 negatives, you wouldn't expect to see a big difference, even if I was doing everything right.

>Moreover, if you do a 'DSLR' scan of the negative, you can get quite a bit more detail.

This is in fact what I do (using a very sharp pre-AI 55mm Micro Nikkor). I do get benefits from stitching multiple 24MP "scans", but this is because there is always some resolution loss in scanning. So, sure, I might end up with a 100MP file, but I find that I can typically reduce that down to around 30-40MP without losing any detail.

Do you have an example of a 100MP scan of a 4x5 negative that loses detail when reduced to, say, 50MP?

"First things, unlike digital, it gracefully degrades when you are operating around the edges of high exposure."

If you are shooting negative film, yes. If you are shooting slides, not so much.

> A decent full frame 35mm digital will probably beat a film medium format comfortably on colour reproduction, resolution and clarity.

I think this is true for B&W films.. the grain even on medium format is still visible. But, I would be surprised vs shooting a color slide film like provia 100F with very fine grain structure and getting a proper drum scan.

Medium format, with fine film, excellent lenses, ideal lab conditions, and a drum scan, can have more detail than a Nikon D810. Any comparisons of shots taken in the wild I've seen favor the digital camera, though. Also, drum scans are /expensive/.

true, I've never paid for one myself.

Ordinarily, airport x-ray machines will not fog film. At least, not appreciably, not at the ISO you are using and not at the levels that airport x-ray machines use, not unless the technician is feeling particularly vindictive. The old warning about x-rays was for ISOs above 800 or 1000 or so.