>They are enormously sophisticated imaging devices that comprehensively outperform, for example, the 35mm film SLRs that many photographers were using in the 90s.
I'm not so sure about that. I'm impressed by what smartphone cameras do these days, but the Nikon F100 snuck into the 90s and beats the pants off my iPhone 14 Pro's camera, while still being very much in the hobbyist/prosumer price range.
Have you done any side by side comparison shots? Even with a high quality scan, you're unlikely to get the same resolution and dynamic range from a 35mm negative. And that's leaving aside the obviously vast differences in convenience and flexibility. (I'm old enough to have used 35mm SLRs, and I have absolutely no nostalgia for that era.)
I've long since lost or sold my F100, but you can go to Flickr or 500px and search for F100 photos - it's still relatively popular among people that want to shoot on film.
Doing a quick side by side comparison of the 'selfie in the woods' shot with a shot of a person with a beard on 500px ( https://500px.com/photo/89633601/ge-by-nika-topuria ), the F100 shot has similar levels of detail in the facial hair, despite being taken from farther away and with what looks to be a wider angle lens by my eyes. You can pick out single strands of hair and bits of fuzz on the subject's clothing, etc., as well.
Bokeh is, of course, massively better on the F100. And I'll take basically any of the Fujia films over the color grading in the iPhone.
Looking at landscape shots, it does appear you'll get more detail out of the iPhone camera ( https://500px.com/photo/10782613/silent-chorus-by-chris-froe... ), so I can't claim it's universally better, but I think the idea that phone cameras "comprehensively" outperform quality film SLRs from the 90s is false.
Without side by side comparisons it's hard to draw any conclusions from some random photos on Flickr. The concert photos you link to are good photos (which is the important thing, of course) but they're hardly excellent from a pure technical perspective. Look at e.g. the blocked out shadows here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ginandsake/32014019777/in/phot...
I guess you're just using the F100 as an example, but it's worth pointing out that the camera body is almost completely irrelevant to image quality with a 35mm film camera. It's all in the lens and the film. (Autofocus might be better on the F100 than on earlier SLRs.)
>And I'll take basically any of the Fujia films over the color grading in the iPhone.
You want the same color balance regardless of time of day or lighting? If you want to get accurate color balance with film you have to use color balancing filters to adjust for lighting and conditions.
There are tradeoffs, for sure. Even in that photo, the details you can see look better than the weird mess that iPhone 14 Pro produced at a concert the other night. I think that's largely due to whatever computational garbage is happening, but that's what the camera app gives me.
>I guess you're just using the F100 as an example, but it's worth pointing out that the camera body is almost completely irrelevant to image quality with a 35mm film camera. It's all in the lens and the film. (Autofocus might be better on the F100 than on earlier SLRs.)
Sure, though the body determines what lenses you can use, ergonomics, features like autofocus, etc. There was a lot of solid Nikkor glass available for the F100. We could also point out that the developing process is also important to quality, etc.
>You want the same color balance regardless of time of day or lighting? If you want to get accurate color balance with film you have to use color balancing filters to adjust for lighting and conditions.
I'm not sure how you get that from my statement. I think that the iPhone's color grading and computational stuff looks pretty awful, and think that Fuji made quite a few excellent films. I don't see where this says I wouldn't use a filter when needed for an SLR... I certainly make use of CPLs and NDs on my cameras today.
Though, I was misremembering when my go-to film was introduced - looks like the FujiColor NPH 400 came out in '02. I'm not sure what I was using prior to that as my standard film.
I don’t think there are any Nikkor lenses that work only on the F100. Nikon has always been pretty good about lens forward and backward compatibility.
There’s lots of nice looking iPhone concert photos on Flickr. I just don’t see any slam dunk there, sorry. But hey there's obviously a subjective component here. If you prefer the results from the F100, that's just as legitimate as whatever preference I have.
I'm confused about the color stuff because digital basically lets you do whatever color grading you want, within reason. Getting the exact colors that you want from film is an arduous process if you aren’t scanning and using a digital color grading workflow. You either need a big set of color correcting filters or you need to do complex work in the darkroom. (Color wet printing is a HUGE pain in the butt.) Back when I shot film for real in the 90s and got the films developed and printed by regular cheap consumer labs, it was pot luck how the colors came out. I think a lot of people have a kind of false nostalgia for film's color rendition based on the results of a film+digital workflow that wasn't available to regular people in the 90s. There's a similar effect with grain, which looks quite different in scans compared to wet prints.
I'm not so sure about that. I'm impressed by what smartphone cameras do these days, but the Nikon F100 snuck into the 90s and beats the pants off my iPhone 14 Pro's camera, while still being very much in the hobbyist/prosumer price range.