Originally Posted by
Audii-Dudii
To be fair, my film knowledge is now 15 years out of date, so it's entirely possible the capabilities of modern films are vastly different / better from those I was using up until 2005, when I switched to digital capture (hence the reason I appended my comment with "YMMV"!)
That said, though, even the first-generation 4/3 and m4/3 cameras I initially used after switching to digital capture had noticeably greater exposure latitude than the 8x10 sheets of Fuji Provia and Astia (in their original formulations) that were my mainstays ... no ifs, ands or buts!
No doubt some of the B&W and color negative films available back then behaved differently and quite possibly better than the reversal films I used, but I wasn't using any of those, thus stand by my comments about my personal experiences.
As for modern film formulations, they may well perform better than the films of yesterday, but I have zero experience with them, so I wasn't commenting on the performance of those one way or the other.
And while I am well and truly done with wet chemical photography of any type -- my last attempt at it involved directly exposing 8x10 sheets of Ilfochrome in the camera at ISOs ranging from 3 to 6! -- I have no issues whatsoever with those photographers who continue to work with and embrace film today.
(As a related aside, lest you think I'm all aboard the high-technology train, as ao many photographers are these days, I actually prefer to use vintage, film-era lenses instead of new, modern designs, precisely because they imbue my photos with a smoother, rounded, more film-like character than the harsh, clinical, sterile qualities I find to be a byproduct of working with lenses from, say, the Sigma Art and Zeiss Otus families. These lenses are brilliant in their own way, to be sure, but they don't render my photos the way I want them to look, thus are of absolutely no use to me despite their much-vaunted technical superiority. <shrug>
And -- once again, just be absolutely clear -- my comments reflect my personal experience of using film for more than 30 years and nothing beyond that should be read into them. Because -- as I noted previously -- YMMV! 8^)
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