It occurred to me that digital cameras are to film cameras what polaroid film was to standard film in their day. At the time, professionals would assess exposure, lighting and composition using ‘instantaneous’ polaroid film loaded backs before committing the image to medium format film. Now, we can use digital cameras to do the same, to help us assess outcome for film before wasting resource. I like the irony of this, the younger technology supporting the old despite being the more advanced.

I figured there was a project in assessing the two outputs for the same scene. Can we tell the difference and if so, what difference does it make? Does it change the ’emotion’ or impact of the image? Below are paired shots, one digital, one film, 120 or 35mm, depending what I was shooting at the time, to allow some comparison of the two. Can you tell the difference? Which do you prefer and why? How does it alter your perception of the image and its impact?