Bits and Banding and Greytones
Don’t you think it’s funny how we spend so long lusting after new technology, only to find that when it arrives we actually wanted something else, or something old in the new. Organically Farmed Food, CD’s with the warmth of Vinyl, Valve based guitar amplifiers, Classic Cars, vintage handmade musical instruments, the list goes on and on.
And so I find myself in a similar dilemma, I love the convenience of digital photography, the unsurpassed flexibility, the opportunity to develop my negatives without the mess and stink of chemicals, and yet I mourn the loss of the feel of film, especially in the case of Black and White images, sure we have fantastic resolution (MegaPixels) available to us now, certainly on par with film at the upper end of the market, but I’m talking about tones in particular the specatcular range of greytones and subtle variances in an old print (or I could just be going mad??)
As I understand it (correct me if I’m wrong), the limiting factor is the A/D conversion process, the way the camera interprets what it sees (analogue) and converts that to negative (digital), and the more digital bits that are involved in the conversion process the less obvious the trasition between tones and shades. Canon have recently introduced 14bit DIGIC conversion on their latest camera models (EOS 5D Mk2, EOS 1Ds Mk3) to give less banding (harsh steps between shades and colours).
If anyone can point me at any examples of B&W images taken with either of these cameras, I’d be really keen to take a look at the images produced and to see if these are starting to regain the feel of subtlty of tones that I seem to pick up from Film and Print that seem to be lacking (to me at least) within Digital B&W images.
Of course if I’m talking garbage, feel free to pipe up and tell me, it maybe that it’s all in my head!!
