Scanner and Film OR Digital Camera

First thing, in this comparison I am only talking about scans from basic desktop scanners, and consumer digital cameras, not more professional equipment. 35mm film can hold more detail than anything short of a $2000 Professional digital SLR, but getting it out of the film with a scanner, may not be cheap either.

That out of the away ... One of the things that I find many people discussing at the moment is:

Should I scan film, or just use a digital camera.

I guess the answer has 2 parts, are you making prints, or are you wanting to just have images for WWW and email?

Since not everyone has the opportunity to test gear themselves, I thought that I'd post my own experiences, and hopefully it may help you along your path.

Making the images

For my test, I thought that taking a shot of a typical bright sunny day snapshot scene from the same place, with film and digital would provide at least an "eggs with eggs" comparison basis. The images below were taken in quick succession from the same location, on the same day, this first image comes from the IXY camera, and then the one below that is scanned from Fuji Provia RDPIII which is one of the finest grain films available, certainly for printing enlargements you would not get results as good as this using 400 iso negative films but they might be good enough for just WWW and other smaller uses

At this size, they both look good, I think that the Provia slide looks nicer, and the skys come out better, but some may argue the toss either way but, one can just load the image from the digital camera onto the PC unlike with a scan where you:

• you have to spend time scanning,
• (if you don't have ICE) you don't have to spend time spotting dust
• and probably spend time colour balancing.

This means that more of your time and money is needed to get the image in digital form.

Of course with the Digital camera

• you won't have to buy film
• you won't have to pay for processing
• you'll have the images immediately

On the positive side for film is that after you buy it, and process it, you've your storage (scans will consume lots of Hard Disk space, and backup, and transfer to your next computer is an issue), and its a lot easier to find one of your negatives than one of your digital files. You can view and flick through your negatives easily, even without a computer and there are existing easily accessed professional reproduction services.

What about the detail available? Looking at the chart below, you'll get an idea of the relative sizes of the images from common digital camera sizes, and typical consumer scanners, so it would seem at a glance that film is the winner

As you can see in the comparison figure below there are substantial differences in images, but its not until you go to 4000 dpi scanning, that 35mm film stand out from digital in size.

depending on your scanner the image from the 35mm may not be incredibly better than from your 3 or 5 MP digital camera! And certainly not better than your 8 or more MP digital

going to 4000dpi scans (now quite competitive in price) gives 35mm a clear advantage in size to all but the 11MP and 16MP cameras

BUT

Why might you not get better? Well that depends a lot on your scanner and your technique for photographing, here's some reasons

• Certainly 2700dpi scans won't capture all the film detail
• your scanner may not have enough bit depth to capture the range
• your scanner may not have enough dynamic range to get into the shadows
• the film flatness may prevent uniform sharp focus of the scanner
• low resolution of many negative films
• your image might be blurry to begin with, I've found that I can get sharper images from digital rangefinder cameras than with SLR (film or digital) cameras

In my scans I was only able to see details like these, despite being able to see more detail on the film with a x30 microscope. So while the file was bigger, there was only a little more detail in there. Of course better scanners will improve on this, but its interesting to note that a low end digital camera came so close to a mid range film scan.

Although if your lucky you can get details like this out of really flat black and white film (35mm loves to curl).

When you then factor in things like no processing costs, and time I think that the balance leans towards digital, especially with 5M Pixels or more, for all electronic publishing, and most peoples needs of small prints.

So right now, I find that for most of what I do, shooting with digital often gives me as good a result as scanning film and at a heck of a lot less cost.

Does this mean I'll stop shooting film? Not at all. Digital imaging is only one process option,

Making prints from the images

I think for many applications that film is cheaper for most peoples high quality shooting needs. As shown in the above diagram, all things being equal, you'll get the same ratio of print size from each media. This means that from film you'll get bigger prints than from digital less than 8MP. If I think that looking at a scene, the I'll want a big print, then I'll shoot film scan that.

Would I buy a printer? not really, I still prefer to use the existing services of companies. They have the best equipment there is (Durst Epsilon, Fuji light jet) and I can just sent it to them by FTP. Unless I have a need to print on the spot I'd just make my image and then use this image to have made by someone else a sharper bigger print than I could get from most digital cameras with no need to invest in

• expensive digital cameras
• expensive colour printers

I can get A4 sized prints made from 35mm negative for about $12, a printer to produce comparable prints would cost me about $500, so I would I need to make 40 prints before I'd break even, and that would still not include the costs of the ink and papers (and goofs).

My decision was to downgrad to a compact convenient camera for my many snapshots, and buy a film scanner (so that I can scan film if I have a photo I want to send by email or put on my www site), all up, it cost me less than a good DSLR and is more versatile. I still think that 35mm holds the edge for making prints, and while I'm sure that cameras like the Canon 1Ds will challenge the outright quality, they have a cost factor that keeps me using 35mm and Large format film for now. (Roger Clark has made a comparison for this look at his article here as well he has a number of more detailed examinations of digital VS film on his site).

Have fun :-)