Many Of The Photographs I Make Today I Could Not Have Made In The Film Days

I would not have been able to make this photo in the decades I photographed with film.
The technology and tools just did not exist.  I explain below.
(click to enlarge)

Digital photography, with its technological wizardry, unbridled versatility, incredibly useful advanced as well as artificial intelligence based features, state-of-the-art sensors that provide us with extraordinary subject details as well as affordable optics that put lenses of just a couple of decades ago to shame are allowing us to make images we could never before make.  We photographers (and I'll make this assertion for the majority of us) take our photographic gear pretty much for granted today.  We have tools that allow us to create almost any photograph we can imagine.  We are, indeed, very fortunate to have cameras and lenses that are amazing and, generally, affordable to most of us.  Isn't this a great time to be a photographer?

Whether it be stopping action at 1/32,000th of a second, handholding the camera in low light using image stabilization, photographing flying birds at 40 frames per second, making images in almost total darkness at ISOs over 10,000, having autofocus that can identify specific subjects and even lock on to an eye at a great distance, the ability to combine multiple images into one in the camera to obtain a depth of field that was not possible by the laws of physics, reduce obtrusive digital noise or upsize an image 200%, 300% or even 400%, we are the beneficiaries of a century and a half of progress.

As an example of a photograph I would not have been able to make in the film days, this Bald Eagle was in a dead tree about 500 yards away.  At first, I could only hear it calling but then finally spotted it using a long telephoto lens.

The reasons I could not have made the image at the top of this post with one of my film cameras, long before the advances we now enjoy with digital cameras and lenses is that, first, I could not afford a lens of sufficient focal length to magnify the eagle enough to print it large enough for display.  The longest lens I could afford back then was a good 200mm lens.  If I wanted a longer lens, I would have had to buy one of the third party lenses and they were terrible!  I'm not exaggerating.  Today's third party lenses are excellent.  Not back then.  In fact, there were only a few lenses made by Nikon and Canon that had focal lengths 1000mm or more and they were beyond most photographers' affordability.  Additionally, their ability to resolve fine detail and make sharp photographs does not favorably measure up to today's lenses with computer generated optical formulas, exotic glass, molded aspheric elements and advance coatings.  Lenses of the 1970s and 1980s just don't compare to our modern lenses.  

Second, the 35mm film available didn't have the ability to to resolve fine details and textures that a modern digital sensor with 24 or more megapixels can accomplish today.  

Third, even if you could capture a sharp, detailed image with a 1000mm lens, there was no ability to enlarge an image to a great extent and still have acceptable prints because making photographs in any light except full daylight was sort of futile.  The best films were transparency films and Kodachrome had an ISO of 64.  A film with an ISO over 100 would have to be used and the film grain obliterated any fine detail you captured.  I remember in1977 Kodak introduced Kodacolor 400.  I remember my photographer friends and I being amazed at having a 400 speed film available.  Now, you want to talk about grain?  Obliteration of fine detail?  The best way to shoot it was overexpose it by one stop (ISO 200) to try to reduce grain and contrast.  Then you lost half your speed.  The image at the top of this post was made at ISO 1000!  Let that sink in.

I, for one, am grateful for all of this technology.  As much as I enjoyed my decades of shooting film, developing and printing in the darkroom, I will never go back.  There are just too many advantages to digital photography for me.  I can make images that, in the past, I only dreamed of making.  

The image directly below was what I saw with my eyes.  It was made at 50mm, which is the field of view we are told we see with our eyes.  This is what I saw while standing there hearing, but not seeing the Bald Eagle.  Where is it?

Do you see the Bald Eagle in the distant dead tree?  This image was made with a 50mm
full frame equivalent focal length—which is what our normal human field of view would see.
(click to enlarge)

How about a little help.  The arrow now points to it.  Still can’t see it?
(click to enlarge)

Here the same file is cropped to about 100%.  You can barely see the white of the head.
(click to enlarge)

Let’s attach a 900mm full frame equivalent lens.  Now you can easily see the raptor sitting
on the branch.  In the film days, there was no way I could afford a Nikon 1000mm f/11 mirror
lens, a Nikon 1200mm f/5.6 telephoto lens or a Canon 360-1200 mm lens to make this image.
Not only that, but the best lenses of a few decades ago were not nearly as sharp or could resolve
such fine detail as today’s much less expensive lenses.  The problem still is that 900mm is not
long enough to have the eagle sufficiently close to make a decent photograph.
(click to enlarge)

Here is an approximately a 100% crop of the above image.  Those old lenses of yesteryear were
designed to resolve what film could provide, which is not nearly as much detail as our modern
digital sensors can give us.  This image was shot at ISO 1000.  Any film over ASA (ISO) 100
would be very grainy and the grain very well could obliterate any fine detail and texture.
(click to enlarge)

Cropped, sharpened and noise reduced even more by using an AI based Lightroom plug-in gives
med even more versatility.  Just amazing to me.  Again, this image as you view it, would
not have been possible, at least not for me, when I shot film. (click to enlarge)

When I continually hear 'critics' and 'reviewers' knocking today's cameras and lenses, it makes me laugh.  If you listen carefully, the only criticism they now seem to have is so minor and so knit-picky that it really makes hardly any difference at all to the vast majority of photographers.  Just my humble opinion.

Here is another example made at the same time (same Bald Eagle) as the top series of images.  The first image is, again, a 50mm field of view.  The second is at 900mm and then a 100% crop of that image.

(click to enlarge)

(click to enlarge)

My suggestion to you is to just enjoy using your technological wonder of a camera with your superb lenses and make photographs you were unable to make in the past and don't worry about what you don't have or what someone has.

Did I mention isn't this a great time to be a photographer?

Join me over at my website, https://www.dennismook.com.  

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook  

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