An objective protocol for comparing the noise performance of silver halide film and digital sensor

Frédéric Cao; Frédéric Guichard; Hervé Hornung; Régis Tessière

doi:10.1117/12.910113

24 January 2012 An objective protocol for comparing the noise performance of silver halide film and digital sensor

Frédéric Cao, Frédéric Guichard, Hervé Hornung, Régis Tessière

Proceedings Volume 8299, Digital Photography VIII; 829902 (2012) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.910113
Event: IS&T/SPIE Electronic Imaging, 2012, Burlingame, California, United States

Abstract

Digital sensors have obviously invaded the photography mass market. However, some photographers with very high expectancy still use silver halide film. Are they only nostalgic reluctant to technology or is there more than meets the eye? The answer is not so easy if we remark that, at the end of the golden age, films were actually scanned before development. Nowadays film users have adopted digital technology and scan their film to take advantage from digital processing afterwards. Therefore, it is legitimate to evaluate silver halide film "with a digital eye", with the assumption that processing can be applied as for a digital camera. The article will describe in details the operations we need to consider the film as a RAW digital sensor. In particular, we have to account for the film characteristic curve, the autocorrelation of the noise (related to film grain) and the sampling of the digital sensor (related to Bayer filter array). We also describe the protocol that was set, from shooting to scanning. We then present and interpret the results of sensor response, signal to noise ratio and dynamic range.

Citation Download Citation

Frédéric Cao, Frédéric Guichard, Hervé Hornung, and Régis Tessière "An objective protocol for comparing the noise performance of silver halide film and digital sensor", Proc. SPIE 8299, Digital Photography VIII, 829902 (24 January 2012); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.910113

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available