Analog Versus Digital: Another Perspective
Take a look at these two pictures:
Given the small difference in the angle from which they were taken and the larger one in the time of day they were taken at (the first was shot late on a spring afternoon, the second a few hours earlier on the following afternoon), these are photos of the same subject—two rooftops with a tag (graffito) spray-painted on the side of one of the roofs, against a deep blue April sky. And yet if you look closely, they are quite different in many ways.
Let’s begin with the sky. In the first photo it is almost a pure cerulean blue; in the second it is almost exactly cobalt blue. Moreover, it isn’t just the sky’s pigmentation that is different. In the first picture there is a brightness, a glow to the cerulean blue, as if it, like the side of the building with the tag on it, were infused by sunlight or as if the pigment itself were radiant—lit from within. It gives the sky a depth, volume, and transparency that you see in life. In the second picture, that glow is considerably reduced. The sky is “flatter”—not quite painted-looking but not as deep, transparent, and aglow as the first sky.
Now let’s look at the building on the right—the red one with the tag “IOK” on the wall. In the first photo, the red is deep vermillion—almost blood red. In the second the building is very close to the pigment called Madder lake—an earthy brick-red. Once again, this difference in hue and saturation could be attributed to the position of the sun. But, once again, there is also a difference in luminance and dimensionality. In the first photo the red reflects the sun the way concrete reflects the sun—in a specular fashion, like a mirror. In the second photo, in spite of the much deeper shadow, the vermillion glows (aided by the windows full of sky blue) in the shade, almost as if it were fluorescent.
Now let’s consider the amount of detail in each photo. In the first photo the entire front of the building is in late-afternoon shadow, heaviest at the top of the cornice, where the lattice-like detail in the inserts is hard to make out. The brackets beneath the cornice, however, are very clear in spite of being shaded, but the embossment in the inserts between the top windows and the bottom ones is not. In the second photo, the building is lit more from overhead and the shadows beneath the cornice are almost too deep to easily make out fine detail in the brackets. On the other hand, the latticework in the top of the cornice is very clear, as is the embossment in the inserts below the top row of windows. Whether it’s the difference in lighting or something else, I think we’d have to give a slight edge in crispness of detail to photo number two.
Now let’s consider which of these two pix has better dynamic range—brighter highlights (without blooming), deeper blacks (without obscuring details), more transparent midtones? Observationally, this may be a matter of taste, but to my eye there is a continousness to the light and shade in the first photo, as if the tones run up a smooth ramp from the deepest black of the gutter at the top of the malachite green building to the glow of the white tag “IOK” on the side of vermillion building. In the second, light and shade seem starker, more discrete, and midtones less beautiful and transparent, as if light and shade were running not up a smooth ramp but a stairway, with discrete steps in between tones. Although the second photo is definitely higher in contrast, I would (cautiously) give the edge in dynamic range to the first photo.
Of course, it would be easy and, to a large extent, true enough to attribute many of the differences in color, luminance, detail, and dynamics of these two photos to differences in the way their subject was lit by the sun—to time of day, angle of incidence, etc. However, if you look at the photos in the following links (http://jlvalin.zenfolio.com/p931420946,http://jlvalin.zenfolio.com/p936699636, http://jlvalin.zenfolio.com/p373210602) and then compare them to the photos in this link (http://jlvalin.zenfolio.com/p445316703) you will see that these differences are consistent across a wide variety of lighting conditions and subjects. You see the first photo and the photos in the first three links above were taken with a film camera on color transparency films, and the second and those in the fourth link above with a high-resolution digital camera. (The same lens was used for all photos, analog and digital.) I had to digitize the film images to display them on the Web (via a 7200dpi dedicated film scanner and sophisticated scanning software), but the digitized film images and the digital originals were treated identically in post-processing (via LightRoom 2.3 and Photoshop).
You may prefer one set of photos to the other; I know I do. But the whole experiment amplifies—and was designed to amplify—an interesting question that I touched on in my last blog about tube and solid-state electronics: Which image—analog or digital—is more “realistic,” which is closer to the way these subjects actually look in life? In TAS lingo, which is closer to the “absolute”? And just as with electronics in a stereo system, I think the answer hinges on a second question, which is, “Closer to which 'absolute'?”
Both sets of images have their plusses and minuses. Digital is somewhat less saturated in color, less three-dimensional in aspect, less bloomy (radiant) in luminance; analog is slightly less crisply detailed, more rounded and painterly (as opposed to documentary) in presentation. If I were being scrupulously fair, I would have to admit that the digital images are closer in some (but not all) ways to the way things actually looked. However, I would also (and quickly) say that the analog images have their own subtle set of realistic qualities (that radiance in the blue sky or glow in the red building, for instance) and are—to me, at least—unquestionably more beautiful and appealing as “pictures,” as visual art. As with solid-state and tube gear in audio, a reasonable case can be made for either presentation.
So which do you prefer? Document or art? The way it actually was or the way ideally we'd like to remember it being? The eye or the mind's eye? This is the bridge you're going to have to cross, sooner or later, in photography (and in audio). I can't tell you which way to travel. All I can say is that both directions have their advantages and disadvantages. It’s a cinch that digital is more convenient—by a huge margin—and, in many respects, more “transparent to sources.” But for some users—me included—analog has certain qualities that outweigh convenience and, even, transparency. For me, it is simply the more pleasing presentation.
Rooftops, Main St. Shot on Fujichrome Velvia 50 with a Nikon F4p camera and Nikor 85mm f1.4 lens.
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Comments
Hard to tell on my machine. The film images look way way too colorful.
Jonathan, I'm sure you put a great deal of work into this project, but the lighting (and angle of view) on the two shots are so different and their size is so small that I really can't draw any conclusions past what you tell me you have noticed.
One could argue that someone with sufficient Phototshop skills could make the two pictures more similar and given two identical shots taken at the same time and from the same angle make them match so closely that even in a large blow-up you would be hard-pressed to tell the difference....
Not having been there to observe the light with my own eyes puts me at the same disadvantage as someone listening to a commercial recording and trying to decide if it is close to the mic feed. How could I possibly tell?
To call a digital image a "document" and a silver-salt image "art" is IMHO overly simplistic.
One of my photographic instructors in college, the late Carl Chiarenza, had a standard question on his final exams.
"The photograph - faithful witness or elegant liar?" DIscuss...
Steven Stone
Contributor to The Absolute Sound, EnjoytheMusic.com, Vintage Guitar Magazine, and other fine publications
Hi Steve:
Saw your reposte to Jonathan Valin's thread analogizing digital and analog photography to comparable audio media, and thought to try reestablishing contact.
Don't know if you remember me from your days in Allston at Rugg Road. I've relocated from Manhattan to MA by way of a farm adventure in NH. Last year I finally had time, recovering from a 22 room household relocation (plus contents of a two story barn) to set up an audio system again, so the odyssey continues.
Last I knew of you, Denver was your intended landfall. Is that where you are now?
If you've so inclined I would like to learn what's spinning your discs, literally and figuratively.
I hope you are well.
Best Wishes,
David Kellogg
cdk84 [at] hotmail [dot] com
Steve,
I didn't mean to make the choice between analog and digital sound so severely limiting. You can do both document and make art with either medium. What you can't do--or at least what I can't do--is make them look the same, with Photoshop, LightRoom, Color Efex, or anything else I tried (and I tried). Film looks like film; digital looks like digital--even when film is digitally scanned. Somethings they share; somethings they don't. I allow that several of the differences between the two illustrative photos are due to time of day and angle of incidence. In fact, timing and angle of incidence would be sufficient explanations for the differences in color, luminosity, detail, and dynamic pop IF those same differences in color, luminosity, detail, and dynamic pop weren't evident in ALL of the photographs taken with the film camera and ALL the photographs taken with the digital camera. Now it is possible that the latest and most sophisticated digital cameras--such as the Nikon D3X with 14-bit color--would close this gap. I'd like to find out, but unfortunately I can't afford a Nikon D3X.
As for your professor's great question: witness versus liar...which was Ansel Adams when he carefully and painstakingly doctored the sky in "Moonrise, Hernandez" to make it look like a pearly parfait, when in fact it wasn't? You can be a witness and still be elegant, IMO.
For larger images, go to jlvalin.zenfolio.com/p936699636/h3a76891d#h3a76891d for image one and jlvalin.zenfolio.com/p445316703/h25b1b55e#h25b1b55e for image two.
There's no comparison between the two pics in terms of accuracy. Tthe second one looks like a real building and a real sky. The first one looks like an 'effect' achieved by creative filtering and/or darkroom technique. It is beautiful, no doubt, and in some ways more interesting than the more accurate representation of reality. just as a Monet painting of a haystack is much more interesting than any photo of said haystack would be.
So, You've hit the nail right on the head - document or art? And the answer, for me, is quite different between photography (or painting) and audio.
Very few photographs of interest simply document the truth. Even those which are meant to, like the famous photo of the flag-raising on Iwo Jima, don't come close. To stretch the point, that very 'realistic' photo was in black & white... and it was posed. Likewise, neither of your shots of the building and sky - even the more accurate digital one - come anywhere close to reality. For example, neither can even hint at the 3rd dimension. Photography is inherently even farther from the visual 'truth' than state-of-the-art audio is from theb 'absolute sound'. Perhaps you prefer the first shot for the same reason I love a Monet - because that is how blue the sky 'felt' to you on that beautiful day. But it certainly never looked like that.
In audio reproduction, I am much more interested in transparency. And a great recording can do much more than a great photo in reproducing a reasonable facsimile of reality; the 3rd dimension, spacial cues, instrumental timbres, etc. The artist-interpreter here is the performer. It should never be the recording chain or playback system. I do not want it to play how the music 'feels' to me. I want it to play back how that music really sounds ... to the best of its ability. The performers..and the listener... will provide all the feeling.
discman,
The colors on the Velvia 50 and Ektachrome E100 images are highly saturated--that's the way they look. They "pop."
JV
Well here you've lost me Jon?
To my eyes, the second image is so superior to the first that it is as though we are in different 'ball parks'.
Look at the detail and gradation in the glass on the second image compared to the vulgar saturation and absence of delicacy in the first?
Look at the detail in the brickwork in the second image and compare to the first (which is not helped by the difference in time and lack of sunlight)....but compare the two chimneys?....the first a painted cartoon whilst the second contains a veritas and unquestionable realism.
But with ' manipulated' screen images, I don't think anyone can tell with confidence which is film and which is digital.
The real mistake I feel that everyone makes in comparing photography to audio, is that ALL photography.....whether film or digital....is microscopically reduced to 'pixals' which are dots.
The number of pixals per sq inch is simply the resolution obtainable and that applies to the printed image as well as to the screened image.
So in a way, all photography i believe can be seen as 'digital' in its composition.
Vastly different I propose, to the true analogue format of sound reproduction in 'continuous' waves?
Halcro,
In life, the tag actually looks more like the first photo than the second. It is a cartoon. A pretty well drawn one, too. (It was commissioned for that building.) And I wouldn't want to bet that the digital image is more "detailed" on the chimney bricks, although, as I said, i believe the digital image resolves certain details more clearly than the scanned film image does and overall has slightly higher resolution than the film image (at the dpi I scanned at). This becomes obvious in 100% crops. But do note that drum-scanned 35mm would obliterate these digital images in resolution--for which, see www.kenrockwell.com/tech/why-we-love-film.htm#rez. What the digital image doesn't have--to my eye--is the dynamic pop, saturation, luminousness (or glow), and dimensionality of the film one.
On the subject of film and digital images...all photography is NOT pixels (although the photography shown on this screen is). Film uses light-sensitive silver-halide crystals suspended in gelatin emulsions to create images. Of course, these film images were digitized, although, strangely enough, even in relatively low-res JPEGs that hasn't obliterated the differences between the two media, which is kind of an odd turn of events from my point of view. (If you could see the slides through a slide projector or viewer, the differences would be even more marked.)
BTW, light comes to us in continuous waves, too. And Cibrachrome (now Ilfordchrome) prints do not look like "dots" on a piece of paper.
Jon
P.S. The details in the windows are being obscured in the first image by shadow and by the blue of the sky reflected in them.
My biggest problem comparing digital and film is that there is really standardized way or neutral way of comparing them. For example, for film, different lab will give you different result of the final slides or print. For digital, different color space, different in -camera setting, different monitor calibration, etc all comes into play. I have Nikon D2X since it first came out and I still am not sure if I am capable of choosing the right profile optimally for all the various condition and environment yet! If you scan slide into computer, you add more variable by the scanner. If you print out digital photo to compare, the printer will matter.
However, I do believe that digital camera ultimately offer greater resolution than film. Corner sharpness in all the classic wide angle lens become much more critical in digital camera and what was once a perfect lens for film is not always so great for digital.
It is so much easier to compare audio equipment in under controlled environment, I think.
The big difference between audio and photography is that in audio you are the audience; in photography you are the artist. That's why the choice of your photographic "tools" is, ultimately, entirely personal and aesthetic. OTOH, the way analog and digital images look can be quantified and assessed. Once again, I refer you to www.kenrockwell.com/tech/why-we-love-film.htm#rez if you want an eye-opening lesson on how much shockingly higher 35mm film is in resolution than any digital 35mm camera, including the latest top-line Nikons and Canons.
This blog was only intended to point out differences I've observed in (digitized) film and original digital images, to note a similarity to the differences between analog and digital (or solid-state) audio gear, and to state a personal preference for the higher saturation, greater luminousness, and superior dynamic pop of film (even digitized film) images. I just happen to prefer the "look" of film. No one should take this as a prescription to follow or assume that great images cannot be made (far more conveniently, BTW) on a digital camera.
As for resolution...this depends on what you mean by the word. After all information about saturation, hues, luminance, presence, and contrasts is also "resolution." (As a sidelight, this is one of the things that bothers me about tube-bashing in audio circles. There are all kinds of resolution--it isn't just a matter of being able to count the number of men and women singing in the audience on a Harry Belafonte album, although clarity is one kind of resolution--and an important one.)
I read kenrockwell article and I have to wonder.
He spent half of the time talking about superior viewing ability of transparent film over digital screen. Limitation of digital display is not exactly problem of digital camera vs film though. If you view film picture on digital screen, you will have the same limitation. Film photography does not automatically enhance digital display to show better picture. Sharpening and white balance is a feature of digital camera. Having the ability to manually adjust or keep it on default is not weakness, just the ability to take more control of the camera, in my opinon. Computer becomes part of photography. You don't need computer for film photography but how many pros don't use computer even when they are shooting film. It is a more convenient way of editing, storing . I find some of his arguments rather tedious and more whining and not really abou digital vs film per se. I am sure other will disagree but oh well...
I can't argue with him about contrast and high light since this reamains one of the weak spot in digital camera. I do quite a bit of underwater photography and sunball picture is incredibly difficult to achieve with digital whereas film is much easier to obtain result.
All in all, there are both advantage and disadvantage to both formats and one may prefer one over another for various reason.
<< All in all, there are both advantage and disadvantage to both formats and one may prefer one over another for various reason.>>
I completely agree. The image above--digtal or film? Here's what i say: If it works, who cares? And for me, it works. (This was shot digital, BTW, at twilight on a cold evening, and doctored in LightRoom.) My bias toward film isn't gonna keep me from using digital when convenience or conditions or any of number of other factors (like foreign travel, for instance) make it preferable.
I want to be very clear: I don't think digital looks bad; I think it can look great. I just like the look of film better, most of the time. Let's face it: It ain't the camera but the guy behind the camera who makes the picture and makes the difference.
BTW, I thought your comments were very cogent. Are you a professional photographer?
Jonathan, no I am not a professional photographer but dabble a bit, mostly in underwater photography.
Unfortunately now I don't have as much time to go diving/photographing as I would have like.
Oh well.... at least I still have my stereo to play with at home!
Listening to music is a fine consolation for many things.
There is another important impediment to comparing stimuli to the 'ears' vs the 'eyes'.
For some obtuse reasons, our eyes are not nearly as discerning as our ears?
Take the frame rate of motion pictures (approx 24 fps) which totally convinces our eyes/brain that we are seeing 'analogue' movement comparable with the 'real' thing?
Compare that to the original sampling rate of digital audio (approx 44k/sec) which was instantly dismissed by many as being half the rate required to appear as convincing as analogue?
Observe how for over a century, we have been 'happy' to sit back and watch movies in 2 dimensions only, despite the fact that our vision in the 'real' world is 3 dimensional? We don't scream out for greater 'faithfulness' to the 'real thing'?....although that has been available to us via 3D viewers of various sorts for over half a century?
In our daily lives our 'quality' of vision constantly changes.....from morning to night, from sun to shadow, from mist to rain and snow. Yet our hearing is a constant throughout all this?
Drawing analogies between the 'eyes' and the 'ears' I'm afraid, is fraught with imprecision.
With all due respect, Halcro's logic here is flawed and extremely simplistic. Comparing the persistence of vision with the sampling rate required to cover the range of human hearing is like comparing apples and... elephants. On has absolutely nothing to do with the other. The reason movies and TV are not all in 3-D is not because our eyes are less discerning than our ears, but just the opposite. We can much more easily fool our ears into hearing spacial cues than convince anyone that visual 3-D technology looks anything like the real world. I've had countless people tell me, "It sounds like the band is right here in the room." Nobody has ever walked up to my TV and started talking to the actors.
The one thing I DO strangly agree with Halcro on (sorry Jon): Drawing such analogies between the eyes and the ears is not very useful.
Halcro,
I'm not so sure our eyes are as bad as you're making them out to be, considering that they can distinguish among at least 7 million colors, can detect a darkest black that is one thousand million shades apart from the brightest white they can detect, and by some reports can respond to a single photon. That ain't bad for a pair of peepers.
And I would point out that we've been drawing analogies--and good, useful ones--between photography and audio for decades. Where do you think the word "grain" came from? And surely you're familiar with the word "Technicolor" as it has been applied to the reproduction of timbres in certain amps and preamps. Indeed, there are a lot of terms in photography that could easily migrate to audio--acutance, for instance, or contrast or saturation. And "bloom" is just a half-step from luminance.
Jon
I think it's a matter of our brain to recreate something believable from what our senses tell us - until something better comes along or until we know better. There are many well-documented 'illusions' which make the brain distort the sensory input to fit with its known reality with grotesque results (eg midget men next to giant babies etc..)
Sound reproduction and film have made huge strides since the beginning of the 20th century, and what was considered as faithful reproductions of the actual event now look like a very poor copy. Video tape was great until DVD came along, that was also great until Blu-Ray came along, which looks fantastic until the next technology comes along. Today, a VHS tape is unwatchable. The problem (if you do want to call it a problem) is not with our eyes, but with our brain reconstructing reality from the input. I would venture that the same thing is happening with hifi. I sat back yesterday and listened to Bill Evans' My Foolish Heart (from Waltz for Debbie) on the Thorens' 150th Anni LP and thought to myself that it just couldn't get any better; I felt I was litterally transported back to the Village Vanguard. I am quite sure that in, say, another 30 years, this particular reproduction would feel very unrealistic. It's good that there is constant progress :)
I'm with Jonathan on this. The eye is exteremely discerning, as is film. Digital film, if you have even one eye, simply does not look like a genuine human face (lets skip the builing analogies, ok?). The lack of continousness just screams "Fake!"
Wasn't it HP who once said if you want to like digital, stop listening to analogue?
I once had a Versa and, although far from perfect, it had an ease that nothing digital competes with. Digital still sounds, to my ears, like a puzzle: pieces that fit together perfectly, but the (interlocking) seams are still there. I have no doubt, no longer having the greatest and best stuff, that digital probably DOES sound much better than I'm making it out to be, but how much do you have to spend to get to that level? $20K? Isn't this a bit, I don't know...stupid? If one could have a Versa Dynamics 2.3 and feel hair-on-end, mermerized, at, say, $12,000, why the hell do manufacturers make digital producsts that are 20, 30, 40k??? It's like the lie about CD: "it will cost less." Right. We've seen how true that is. For you forgetful ones, an album cost $8.98 at it's peak (I don't mean audiophile, I mean mass-market). Seen a CD for that price recently? Oh, wait, yes, in the late, lamented Tower Records stores "bargain bin."
(Comparably priced) digital just doesn't sound as true-to-life as analogue. Take a $3k CD player and a$3k turntable and try it out. If you hear differently....well, as Lily Tomlin's character Edith Ann once said when told she was bossy: 'I am not bossy.....my ideas is just better." My ideas is just better, too.
You're holding up a 159Kb JPEG as proof that analog betters digital? You've run a slide through an analogue to digital converter and then digitally compressed it. In audio terms this is an MP3 of a vinyl rip, but lots of people like how mp3s sound. Go figure.
Go figure yourself.
It would have been swell if this Web site allowed me to display 404GB TIFF files (the size of the scanned transparencies), but it doesn't. And yet in spite of the a-to-d and the compression, the analog jpeg, as noted, still looks recognizably like analog and the digital one like digital. In other words, they work fine as illustrations. As I've said, if you really want to see "proof" of the gap between the two media you need to look at the slides (or at prints made from the slides).
I have transparencies and negatives in 35mm and medium format, I know how good they look. I also have recordings of vinyl done with a dCS 904 converter and Scarlatti clock which are a very faithful copy of the original vinyl 'sound'. What I'm trying to point out is how absurd it is to talk about how much better an 'analogue' image is when it's converted and processed and passed around via digital systems.
Digital systems have had colour accuracy nailed for ages, they far exceed film in that respect. I'm not denying that staring straight at a colour transparency in the flesh can be an emotional experience but that's not what we're looking at here. This is a JPEG and not a very big one. It's like a very low bit rate MP3 of one of my vinyl recordings, it may well have some of the qualities of the analogue original but it's digital! An analogue master put on CD follows the exact same process. It would be nice if we could have the original master tape as a frontend but we don't all own record labels.
You could take the raw digital file and process the colour to look like film, it's not that difficult. As you've shown, with a B+W image it's almost impossible to distinguish film from CCD origins. The main problem here and what still images miss in the analogue/digital comparison is DAC jitter. There isn't any realtime processing in displaying images so you get none of this most detrimental component of digital music replay and in that respect it's not even a good comparison to be making.
<< I have transparencies and negatives in 35mm and medium format, I know how good they look. I also have recordings of vinyl done with a dCS 904 converter and Scarlatti clock which are a very faithful copy of the original vinyl 'sound'. What I'm trying to point out is how absurd it is to talk about how much better an 'analogue' image is when it's converted and processed and passed around via digital systems.>>
How would you have had me demonstrate my point? Invite everybody over to my house for a slide show? The JPEGS were carefully chosen to illustrate a point--and they do that. As for your "faithful copies" of the original vinyl sound, I'm sure they are as faithful as digital copies get--I'm a great fan of dCS gear. But I'm also sure they don't sound like the original vinyl. Nor can you make raw digital files look just like film. It is that difficult. In fact, it's impossible. You can easily make them look like parodies of film via Color Efex "Film" (or someone else's) profiles. Film looks like film; digital images look like digital images. I'm not scorning digital; I'm just pointing out a fact. As for accuracy, I concede (and conceded) that the digital image looked more like the "real thing" in color balance (but not in luminousness, saturation, or dynamic pop) and that it was more highly resolved than the digital scans I made. I also pointed out that in this case I preferred the non-real thing because it is more beautiful and evocative.
"How would you have had me demonstrate my point? Invite everybody over to my house for a slide show?"
My point exactly. If you wanted to demonstrate how good your vinyl rig sounded would you post up an MP3? People could get an idea of the charecter of the source that way but would they wouldn't be getting anything like the full effect. And a JPEG conveys little except the colour profile of film.
How would you compare the output of a scan-back digital camera with your scanned slides? Same scan process, one scans the film and the other scans the lens output directly. This is wholly based on a preference for a colour profile.
Art,
I agree that a great recording played back on a great stereo system can fool us into thinking that we are in the presence of real musicians and that a photo of those musicians (even a life-sized photo) cannot. But because these different media have different effects doesn’t mean that analog and digital cameras don’t have many obvious similarities to analog and digital audio gear.
Also, it seems to me that recordings (though capable of sounding more facsimile realistic than photos look) are generally no more purely documentary than "documentary" photographs. You mentioned the fact that the famous "Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima" photograph was "staged." (You might also have mentioned all the photos taken by Brady, et al. at Antietam and Gettysburg were staged.) But is a great recording any less "staged?" Let me ask you: Is it the "first take" we're hearing on a CD or SACD or LP—or a subsequent take or a combination of takes? Have dubs been edited in to "smooth over" dropped notes or ragged ensemble or to pot in background vocals or instrumentals, or is everything the way it was recorded by the mics in a single take (even in so-called "live" recordings)?
I’m all for transparency to sources. But which sources? Maintaining, as some do, that the mic feed is the Ur text—and forgetting that it, too, reflects the strengths and weaknesses of a mic scheme, of mics themselves, of cables, of amplfiers and mixing boards, of loudspeakers and/or cans and that it rarely represents the final thoughts of artists, producers, and engineers--is a bit like saying that the undoctored negative of "Moonrise, Hernandez" is the Ur text, a more "realistic" document than Ansel Adams' expertly made final print. It is more authentic in this sense and this sense only: It is the "picture" the camera/lens took, just as the mic feed is the sonic "picture" the mics picked up. It is not the picture that the photographer took—that he made in the darkroom using his skills and his imagination. And for the vast majority of discs it is not the sonic picture that the producer, artists, and engineers took—that they made in the recording and mastering process using their skills and imagination.
Jon
<< If you wanted to demonstrate how good your vinyl rig sounded would you post up an MP3? People could get an idea of the charecter of the source that way but would they wouldn't be getting anything like the full effect.>>
An "idea of the character of the source" is precisely what I was trying to convey, both in photos and words. And though it is odd, as I've already noted, enough of that character somehow survives a-to-d and compression to illustrate the point. Furthermore, with most digital cameras the lens output doesn't go quite "directly" to the sensor; there is that little sheet of birefringent material--the optical anti-alias filter--that it must pass through first. And of course that sensor isn't scanning a film transparency in which each dot of color is a literal composite of the amount of red, green, and blue light that has illuminated that spot ; rather, it is creating a color image via individual red or green or blue-colored pixels not layered on top of one another but arrayed side by side in a Bayer pattern that allows the camera to interpolate (smear) the individual R, G, B pixels together to approximate color. This may be the reason why scanned film images look richer and more dynamic than native digital images--film starts with more color and luminance information per "pixel."
You do not compare photographs on the computer screen. The first picture would look much better if printed the second one would be poor in colour and flat and somehow dead. Digital was ment for computers that's why the second picture looks natural on the screen. It translates better to limited resolution of the screen and was ment for the computer screen. I just visited Venice and noticed how terrible travel guide brochures look nowadays. It's all digital pictures by the way and shot on professional digital cameras. If I scan my 35mm film I get 30-35 MB per picture in TIFF format. If I make a copy in JPG it becomes about 9 MB but there is no difference between this two pictures on the computer screen. If I print both pictures you see the differrence. My friend's digital camera produces pictures of 8-12 MB. And they look really great on the screen but fail when printed. So it is useless to try to explain to digital photographers that their pictures are of lower resolution compared to analog ones because a lot of this guys never saw their pictures on paper.
this is one of the most fascinating discussions i have ever accidentally stumbled across in my life -
Peace to all yall insightful folks
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