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Can you tell the difference between these film and digital photos?

by 4 Comments

I’m sure you’ve seen many photographers trying to emulate the “film look” in their digital photos. There are different techniques to achieve it, but you’ll often hear that the “film look” is a lie and only actual film can give you this effect. Photographers Jay P. Morgan and Kenneth Merrill have decided to do a little test and compare some film and digital images side-by-side. Can the “film look” be successfully replicated in digital photos? Or you can see the differences straight away?

Jay P. and Kenneth are using three cameras for the test. The film cameras are Hasselblad 500 C/M with Kodak Tri-X 400 black and white film and Pentax 645NII with Kodak Portra 400 color negative film. They used Nikon D850 for digital photos and they’ve emulated the film look using some presets and post-processing.

Here are some screenshots for you to compare the results. Can you spot the differences?

In most cases, I was able to tell the difference between film and digital. Sometimes it was too obvious, and sometimes it required some closer inspection. But, I did make a couple of slips and totally believed that a digital photo was shot on film. You can see plenty more examples in the video, as well as the breakdown of the photos. How was your score? Could you distinguish all the photos shot on film from the digital ones with the “film look?”

[Film vs Digital: Can You Tell the Difference? via ISO 1200]

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  • countervail

    Honestly, isn’t a “film” look just the quirks of the particular brand and speed of film? Like I used to love a certain stock of Fujifilm with a polarizing lens because it would make unbelievably blue skies. But I can do that in post processing in Lightroom now. I can add grain, color profiles, etc. I can make my own “film.” Why are we so hung up on analog vs. digital?

    • Rick Scheibner

      Because sites like DIY (and others) get lots of clicks when they start a film vs digi flame war on a somewhat regular basis. We help them out by contributing to it.

  • Amilcar Alzaga

    It’s a bit odd to compare medium format vs 35mm, isn’t it? Most of the differences might actually come from that. DOF, even lenses are different.

    Could be better to compare MF to MF or 35mm to 35mm to really have something comparable from the point of view film vs digital.

    Otherwise you can just say: right now a film MF camera is actually cheaper than a high end digital 35mm, and an order of magnitude cheaper than a MF digital, and medium format has certain advantages in still photography of still subjects.

    Now, for low volume photography it surely makes sense, but it would be interesting to see which volume of photos you need to have a comparable cost with digital MF compared with film, as you don’t have to buy film nor develop, so is a one that me cost vs a recurring cost.

  • Eddy Kamera

    This is MF look vs 35mm look, which is a legit comparison.

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