So, with the trusty Canon EOS Elan IIe in my sis’s good care, I’ve finally (after several years of reluctance) gone digital with the Canon Digital Rebel XT paired with a Sigma 30mm f/1.4 prime lens. The convenience is wonderful and I’m satisfied with the quality, but there’s no doubt there’s a noticeable difference between film and digital. Composition aside, the pictures my sis took (in my previous post) definitely have a different feel than the ones I took. Film seems to look a little “warmer” than digital. I guess there’s still a difference between light striking silver halides (AgBr, AgCl, and AgI) on film and light striking an array of capacitors on a digital charged-coupled device (CCD). My speculation is that there is a degree of randomness in the arrangement of the light-sensitive silver halide salts on the film that produces a visual effect that cannot be mimicked by the regularly-spaced light-sensing capacitors on the CCD. In other words, digital has dense, but evenly spaced pixels while film has dense, but randomly spaced crystals. This is just my theory though — I’ll keep searching for a real answer. Ok, I’ll spare everyone the engineering talk for now and just show the digital pictures…
Alamo Square (where they filmed the opening credits to Full House)
Door to Exercise Yard, Alcatraz Penitentiary
Alcatraz Watchtower
Wildflowers on Alcatraz Island
