Film grain

In this month's issue of Popular Photography, there's an article advertised on the cover as how to reproduce the "look" of film photography using digital. I was expecting an article on using various filters to reproduce the feel of the grain of some films, but instead the entire article is how to saturate your image to make it look more like Fuji Velvia film. Now, don't get me wrong -- I'm all for saturation -- but I hardly think this qualifies as something that would fool anyone into thinking your picture was taken with film.

Film has personality. If you doubt this, just ask any black-and-white film photographer what brand of film they use. I believe that to many, what gives film its personality is a combination of what tones it reproduces (i.e. the Velvia), and what the grain looks like. ISO 400+ film particularly can significantly change the mood of a picture based on what the grain "feels" like.

Grain is a flaw, an inaccuracy. It is something which exists in the finished product, but not in the original scene. In many cases, though, it is our flaws which define our personality. The quality of digital photography is advancing so quickly that sometimes it can feel like it is nearly flawless, but of course it's not. However, the noise present in a digital picture doesn't have the same kind of personality as film grain does. Why is this? Is it because film grain has been around longer?

There are a couple of good parallels between this issue and the digitization of other industries. There are still plenty of music fans who believe vinyl has more personality than cds, and it does -- this is almost identical to the issue of film grain. I think there will be fans of film photography long past the time when all the major equipment manufacturers have abandoned it. This definitely isn't a bad thing, though, since the fewer film users there are, the more unique its use will be.

The use of an analog medium doesn't directly mean more personality, however. VHS tapes were around for quite some time, and you don't see anyone claiming VHS has more personality to it than DVD. Perhaps there is something fundamentally different between movies and music that causes this, but it's more likely that the difference is in the artist. A moviemaker doesn't choose what brand of VHS tapes to release their movie on based on what its grain looks like -- it's an economic decision. That same moviemaker, however, will choose between film and digital movie cameras based on their artistic preference.

As digital technology advances, it will allow us to take pictures in worse lighting with less grain. I hate the flash, so I think this benefit greatly outweighs any chance of losing personality due to the replacement of film. And if an artist has a particular look in mind (such as the standard sepia "ye olde" look), they can always fake it using Photoshop. Which brings me back to my original point, that Popular Photography should have written an article on how to reproduce film grain, not on how to push the saturation slider to the right.