Hi.

Ok...not that I need external confirmation; I just want to know if I am truly from this planet or not.

Is it just me, or does anyone else out there see a marked superiority, in terms of pure quality of image recording, of film capture to digital capture? True, I have only played with Canon, Nikon and Fuji digital cameras (including profesisonal and semi-pro dslrs). True, I am comparing the quality of digital capure (mine as well as others) to that of scanned film. But, two things come to mind.

First, I have had the opportunity as of late to work with a well known (locally) advertising and portrait photographer who discreetly laments the "quality imagery" he is able to produce with his Nikons (d100, d70). After looking at his previous (to the switch to digital) work, I see a TREMENDOUS difference with respect to depth, clarity and color. I had to see them side by side to note the difference however; I wondered for weeks how he was able to make a living churning out such...ahem...work. After viewing his work from the 70s-90s, I understood: he is truly talented. The style is still there today; it is simply muted by the inferiority of the mode of capture he uses. Significantly so. I thought for a while that he was oblivious. Come to find out he was not.

Second, I have recently scanned film--not slide film--just plain old Kodak vc 160--I shot on a 20 year old hassleblad and a 15 year old Fuji 6x9. The color, although exagerrated somewhat (red) before processing, was absolutely amazing. When comparing these scans (plain old Nikon 9000) to digital portraits I'd done a year ago (d70, prime lenses), I actually laughed out loud. It was like I had been going to a gun fight brandishing a butter knife.

I talked with someone at lenghth (directly after the shoot, looking for yet another FILM camera) regarding this phenomenon, looking as I am now for a reality check. Is everyone else blind?? Is the emperor wearing clothes, and am I afflicited with fashion blindness?? What the hell is going on here??? Or, was the person I spoke with correct: we in the U.S. tend to assume that anything denoted as being digital, e.g. television, music photography, is assumed to be superior. I tend to agree. I cannot for the life of me figure out how anyone can, with a straight face, assert that dslr imagery is on par with. let alone superior to film capture, even when the film is scanned.

Whew! Just had to get that off my chest.