Feeling nostalgic...

Growing up, I would sneak into my father's photo bag to play with his Canon A1 while he was at work. I am a guy, even at an early again, I love gadgets like that. But unlike other gadget, a camera has the ability to freeze moments in time to be cherish and reflected upon later. Digital camera with it's instant feedback allow more control and the satisfaction of being able to see the results right away. It's a great way to quickly learn photography.

However, I always missed the manual nature of the early film camera. It just feels nice to have all the various parts move via springs and magnets instead of electronics and motors. The sound it makes and the feel and smell of the film brings back memories.

So I found an old Canon AE-1 Program and took a few test shots to see how film compared to a digital image. Cheap Walmart film and quick Costco develop. The result was less than pleasing. And you know how hard it is to photograph kids and having to manually focus at a shallow depth of field like F/1.8? LOL

First off, a couple of comparison photos between Costco's scan and a professional lab like North County Photo Services (NCPS) in San Diego. The beauty of film is that you shoot, drop off the roll and someone else does the work in developing the film. However, that is also the bad part as they can really mess up the development of the negative and then the scan.

Costco runs the film through the machine to quicky develop the negative. Also I am not sure when the last time they clean their machine, but the film scans had lots of dust and marks on them. Plus, all the photos had a bad line/band running across them. Probably a result of a dirty scanner. I didn't see any of these lines/bands on the negative so that's not where the problem was. Additionally, there were fingerprints all over my negatives. Bad job Costco.

So I took the negatives into a professional lab and had it rescanned. The result was shocking, even on these cheap Walmart film. The color temperature is now correct and exposure came out how I shot it. All the dust marks and banding were gone. A much improve result through and through. And if I had let the pro lab develop the film initially, the result could have been even better. Because they use the traditional dip and dunk method that requires a process of 1hr 5min and then hung dry. More time consuming, but it's a better result. These images speak for themselves.

Dusk mark by the corner of the eye was clean off the negative, so the scan is better. The white balance is warm and improved. No magenta cast. Has better details in the shadow as well.

This shot was to test the blooming of film and put it in a difficult situation with flare from the sun and the subject heavily backlit. Film then to have a natural gradation to the overexpose highlight. Digital gets an ugly orange band and halo around the light source. It looks like a nuclear explosion. I adjusted my exposure to ensure Jason's face is not all black. However, Costco did a horrible job of scanning the negative. NCPS scanned it correctly as shot.

But a HUGE benefit of digital is how noise free it is. Here is a 100% crop of iso200 film. With digital, you can barely find any noise in a properly exposed image like this. However, with film, the grain is very apparent. Even in the highlights. Digital doesn't get grainly like this on modern SLR until like iso1000. Film, even at lower iso has grain. It's just the nature of it. Click on the photo to see the full, 100% crop straight from the lab scan.

Here is the resized photo. Will still make a great print regardless of the grain. In fact, some people like the organic nature of the film grain.

Jason's not happy about the feel of grass. He prefer his soft blankets like his dad.

More tough situations. Great thing about film, it comes back from the lab pretty much ready to use. Not much editing involved if at all.

Not bad for a cheapy film camera without autofocus. The camera was made back in 1982. Can't wait to put a roll of pro level film in this camera and see what I get out of that.