Photography by Alexandr Pospech

Last days I have been quite confused, why noise in the images is so important today and everybody is talking about it.  Expressions like "terrible" or "intolerable" in connection to modern DSLR image noise are very common in discussions these days.

So I decided to prepare brief comparison of film (analog) SLR and digital SLR images...  

Used equipment:

digital: Canon EOS 40D, EF 135 f2 L, iso 800

film: Canon AE-1, FDn 200 f2,8, Ilford HP5 400 push @ 800, Ilford Microphen, standart development time for iso 800, Nikon Coolscan V, 4000dpi

ISO 800

Full photo 1

 digital

film

Crop 1

digital

film

Full photo 2

digital 

film

 Crop 2

digital

film

 So where do you see more noise? Actually the HP5 noise is much more obvious, but I must really admit, that I like it. What i don't like is quite big loss of details compared to so-called "noisy" APS-C.

ISO 3200

digital: Canon EOS 40D, EF 135 f2 L, iso 3200

film: Canon AE-1, FD 50 f1,4, Ilford Delta 3200, Ilford Microphen, standard development time, Nikon Coolscan V, 4000dpi

I'm sorry, that the photos are quite different, but when I was shooting it it was not ment for comparison.

Full photo

digital

film

 Crop

digital

film

 Whole generations were using classic films, which now seem much more grainy than contemporary APS-C DSLR and the photos were OK - so the question is, why noise is today one of the most discussed parameter of digital cameras. 

So It's everybody's choice, what is the most important parameter of image...

 more photos will be added soon - from EOS 5D MkII, Mamiya 645, EOS 50E, EOS 40D, EOS 10D...