Film Grain

Does it seem funny to you that in this day and age of digital cameras, that people are now going back and trying to duplicate film grain? I know this is strictly opinionated and sometimes the “film grain” adds some character to an image, but it really is just noise! When shooting film you basically had no real choice, depending on the type of film being used. You shot and with some films you got more grain than with other types. Now there are all kinds of plugins and utilities to add “grain” back into an image, seems like such a waste of good data!  I have actually seen a time when it can be useful, after applying a lot of noise reduction to a high ISO image it will sometimes have a plastic type look and the addition of a SMALL amount of grain makes it seem a little more natural, ok, so that is an exception.  It just seems ludicrous to go out and buy an expensive camera with ultra smooth and relatively noise free high ISO settings and then pay a good chunk of money to add it all back.

Maybe people are just being too retro…….. but after all it is all “art” so as long as the creator is happy, what difference does it make?