{"id":343260,"date":"2025-12-30T18:29:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-30T18:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/343260\/"},"modified":"2025-12-30T18:29:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T18:29:10","slug":"ive-been-going-through-my-old-negs-and-ive-learned-something-surprising-about-how-digital-cameras-have-changed-my-photography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/343260\/","title":{"rendered":"I’ve been going through my old negs and I’ve learned something surprising about how digital cameras have changed my photography"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was never obsessed with resolution when I shot 35mm film. There were obvious flaws like camera shake or mis-focusing that I could spot and deal with, and it was clear that slower films offered higher resolution and less grain than faster ones, but as long as I felt I was getting all the quality the film could deliver, it was fine.<\/p>\n

Now I get to shoot with some of the best full frame mirrorless cameras<\/a>, with digital sensors that offer far more resolution and way less noise than analog 35mm, and yet now all of a sudden I\u2019m worried about both those things. Actually, it\u2019s not all that sudden. I wonder if it started just about the time when my photography workflow switched from film and darkrooms and prints, to computer monitors.<\/p>\n

Why? Because now, using the best monitors for photo editing<\/a>, it\u2019s easy to zoom in as far as you like on digital images using monitors sharp enough and clear enough to show the exact moment when the fine detail disintegrates. It\u2019s become too easy to find fault and too easy to lose track of the magnification you\u2019re actually using.<\/p>\n

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\"Zooming
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If I zoom right in to 200% on this image from my Fujifilm X-T5 I can start to see the fine detail starting to soften. That’s bad, right? But the small navigator window top left shows I’m looking at just a tiny central area of the scene. That’s the trouble with zooming in to pixel-peep \u2013 you lose all sense of scale. (Image credit: Rod Lawton)<\/a><\/p>\n

Back in the \u2018optical\u2019 days, you might have a light table and a loupe for magnifying your negatives, but it wouldn\u2019t have the magnifying power we take for granted today, or maybe you had a slide viewer that let you look at 35mm transparencies at a larger size, but certainly not at today\u2019s digital magnification levels.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The real test was making a print. If a 10\u201d x 8\u201d print looked crisp and sharp enough, everything was fine. If you wanted a larger print you might have to use a slower film, or may switch up to medium format. Either way, it was easier to keep a grip on how much resolution was \u2018enough\u2019.<\/p>\n

This is what\u2019s changed. Now we can keep zooming in and in until the resolution ISN\u2019T enough. But enough for what? If we don\u2019t print any more, we don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

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\"Film
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But then here’s an old Kodachrome 64 transparency that has nothing like the resolution of my X-T5, but I don’t feel the need to zoom in and worry about it. That’s weird. (Image credit: Rod Lawton)<\/a><\/p>\n

But something else has happened which gives me hope. I\u2019m re-digitizing my old 35mm negatives with a modern digital camera that easily records all of the detail in the original film. Clearly there\u2019s not as much detail in my negatives as my mirrorless cameras deliver but I don\u2019t actually mind. My old negs still have more resolution than my 27-inch 4K monitor can display full-screen, which probably represents the highest display\/output resolution I\u2019m likely to need.<\/p>\n

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Do I zoom in to check for even more detail? I know I won\u2019t find much more so I don\u2019t bother. It doesn\u2019t worry me. I judge the images as a whole and as long as they have adequate sharpness, it\u2019s fine.<\/p>\n

What I don\u2019t understand is why, knowing all this, I still pixel-peep my digital images. That\u2019s very odd.<\/p>\n

Check out our guide to the best film scanners<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I was never obsessed with resolution when I shot 35mm film. There were obvious flaws like camera shake…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":343261,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-343260","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343260\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}