>>4141069>>4141076>How much does a full-frame digital camera with ~15 stops of dynamic range (without HDR) and around 24Mp resolution(I'll forget about bayer for now) cost?D610's go for about $450 in decent shape on ebay rn. Also, dynamic range mean different things with film and digital. Dynamic range(for b/w film) is controlled with exposure and development. You can get as much DR as you want with b/w film, just pull it 2 or 3 stops. I was able to get 12 stops of DR myself pulling fp4+ to 50 iso. You get shit tons of shadow detail, sure, but the negs from that roll were useless! They were too flat to print in the darkroom, even with maxing out the magenta filter and pushing the paper. They didn't scan well either.
Color stocks don't have this 15 stop of DR you claim either, still good at 8-12 depending on exposure and development. DR doesn't say much about IQ with film.
Digital DR is a bit different. DR in digital is limited by the noise floor, so more DR = less noise at a given EV. So saying that film has 15 stops of DR and is therefore better than digital is not only wrong, but also doesn't say anything about relative IQ between the two mediums.
I've posted a portra 400 film scan(35mm) and d610 shot at 100 iso of a very challenging scene. Used the same lens(50mm f/1.8 ais nikkor), used the best of the bracketed shots for both. This scene has about 17 stops of DR between the highlights on the lotion and deep shadows.
Film is scanned with my d610, converted using negative lab pro. I made some pretty aggressive edits to both shots to bring up the shadows to show the DR between the two. The digital image has much more shadow detail, none of the highlights are clipping. The film shot is blooming in the highlights, much less shadow detail, and much more noise overall. There is only noise in the deep shadows in the digital shot.
