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Comment by esafak | Hacker News Reader

This reminds me of how film photographers and film-makers strived to eliminate grain while digital photographers felt the need to add it back in. The grass is greener on the other side!

I confess to finding the examples on this page quite appealing, amidst all the digital sterility.

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It'd be good not to overgeneralize. For as long as we've been doing digital video, and then later, digital photography, there have been as many folks trying to minimize noise as trying to eliminate noise as trying to simulate noise as intentionally exploiting noise. Noise as a thing was never the problem, it was always about whether there was too much of it.

Exactly. Noise adds texture - which is an important ingredient in visual art and design. But too much noise obstructs the image. It's all about balance – just like cooking.

Wasn't that kinda solved by Foveon X3? Film-like yet digital.

Foveon just has 3 vertically stacked layers of photodiodes (one for each RGB colour) instead of a single one with Bayer filters like other digital camera sensors.

It’s not related to film grain (which is a byproduct of silver particles in celluloid).

The behavior of the sensor with its flaws closely resembled film. The sharpest digital pictures I've ever observed.

they are very sharp indeed, and the colours are quite film like. I have a DPM2 and waiting for the Foveon full-frame sensor that Sigma is still working on.

I think the problem resolved itself when a new generation grew up with digital photography and did not long for grain. Now it is a retro aesthetic, like gen-Z's use of pixel art.

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