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Overheard a guy at a star party say old film astrophotography had more soul than digital
He was showing a print from a 1986 shot of the Whirlpool Galaxy on a 6-inch Newtonian, and the faint halos around the stars really did have this dreamy quality I haven't seen in a stack of 200 digital subs, so has anyone else noticed a shift in how todays photos feel compared to those older ones?
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mitchell.thomas1d ago
@jackson.max you're onto something there. I've brought up the same thing when showing old Kodak Tech Pan shots from my C8, and the trick I found is to intentionally defocus just a hair or use a mild diffusion filter on the camera to soften the stars back to that old look. Digital is great for detail, but if you want that dreamy feel you gotta back off the sharpness slider and let the halos come back naturally.
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jackson.max1d ago
Kind of makes you wonder if the sharpness we chase now is actually costing us something in the mood of the image... doesn't it?
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noahwood1d ago
I tried a similar approach with some old Jupiter shots on a 4x5 once, just a slight Vaseline smudge on a UV filter and it changed everything about how the nebula felt. @mitchell.thomas would probably get a kick out of how low-tech that fix is compared to all this pixel peeping we do now.
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