The Dynamic Range of Film
A follow up to The Resolution of Film. These are quick and dirty observations about film vs digital while I write a larger article on the topic.
This post is about the dynamic range of film – something film is famed for in photography.
Actually, I should be specific. It’s negative film, both black and white and colour, that has a highly regarded dynamic range – usually considered to surpass that of digital. For transparencies / slides (e.g. Velvia), this is actually the opposite as film of this type actually has a very narrow dynamic range. An example of that narrow dynamic range can be seen in this shot:
Olympus OM-4 + Zuiko lens on Fujichrome Velvia 100
See how the sky is exposed correctly but then as you hit the water and the areas not showing the reflection, the shadows take over and all highlights are lost. Well, that’s the effect of slide film. I actually like it in this shot and in several others I have since I started using Velvia – but it should be considered a limitation.
OK so moving past slide film, and onto regular colour negatives (C41 – the types you can get processed at a regular lab), this type of film has a great reputation for wide dynamic range. Here’s a shot I took the other day which was exposed using an in camera meter and followed by the direct sunlight. It was shot on Kodak Ektar:
Zeiss Ikon + Zeiss Glass on Kodak Ektar 100
The good news is that the sky is well exposed and despite shooting into direct sunlight, hasn’t resulted in a washed out / blown out sky.
But that’s normal – the result of underexposure. Look at the ground for example, which is way too dark.
So to test the ability of film to record details in these darkened areas, I scanned the film again with curves applied into a TIFF file and dodged some of that area in photoshop to see what I could rescue. The result was:
(image following rescanning with curves applied and some photoshop dodging)
Certainly a lot of detail was recovered – impressively so. Kodak’s Ektar 100 performed well and it didn’t introduce an unbearable amount of noise in the process. And of course that sky colour was still retained. Hard to say how digital would have fared in this situation, maybe the attention deserves a side by side comparison. In the meantime, a fun test and a little anecdotal evidence to back up the claims of film’s DR.
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Lawrence, what about metering for the sky and then ”overexposing” at least 2 stops? I would usually follow this method rather than the contrary, counting on the film’s dynamic range ability to retain the highlights (that is much better than digital sensors).
For what I know, film’s dynamic range is particularly wide ‘on the right’ to the contrary of digital. Your way to go seems to be digital-like and I wonder if we would get similar results from opposite approaches.
I actually think that the colors and the light would look more natural in such a way but the sky could be far less detailed than in your shot (as it must have appeared to human eye with the sun in your face) even trying to recover some highlights in PP. So, at the end, it would be just a matter of taste and I guess your version could be preferable with such a subject (no people involved). But that’s just my hypothesis; if you’re going to experiment more, could you try such a comparison for knowledge’s sake? ;)
Interesting… agree with the process of overexposing slightly. that’s what i do in scenes like this when matrix metering is selected (with both digital and film). Just dial in +0.7. That or matrix meter off the ground and exposure lock, followed by a recompose.
What you suggested would overexpose and you may be right about being “wide on the right”. Will definitely repeat the test and compare with digital for kicks. Stay tuned.
Thinking more about my comment, I realized that usually photographers using negative film expose for the shadows and then ‘underexpose’ a few stops according to the amount of detail they want to retain in the lights. Actually it should bring the same result (same exposure) of my suggestion just through a contrary mental process and of course, there’s no true unique rule: it depends on your creative purposes.
However, for what I experienced and read the best perfomances of the best sensors nowadays surpasses the one of the negative film, having a dynamic range superior to 12 STOP in the case of many DSLR and reaching 11 STOP in the best compact cameras (at base ISO). The main differences is that digital dynamic range is usually wide in the shadows but narrow in the lights: in this field negative film still retains a sensible advantage for their nature that allows them to register layers over layers of information instead of pure white over a certain limit.
Your approach for the exposure of this photo seems to be more digital/slides oriented even if for me it really contributes to the mood of the photo.
What do you think? Looking forward to hearing your opinions!
Wrote my comment while you were posting yours. Nice to hear you will continue to experiment!
I was just passing by this site and came across your post.Its interesting and also informative.I will keep visiting here often.
[...] Rockwell – Free Digital Camera Lawrence Ripsher – The Resolution of Film Lawrence Ripsher – The Dynamic Range of Film CameraQuest – Olympus 35 RC (~£30 on [...]
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