Why picture looks like painting?

Question

I don't understand why the photos look like a "painting", what's happening?

This is zoomed at 100%. I shot this photo (on the right) with a Fuji XT-3, 10-24mm, at 24mm, ISO 320, f8/0, 1/250s.
The left one is a film photo with a Pentax 6x7 105 f2.4 (Don't ask the settings).

Maybe I've figured out the benefits of medium format/ film. Otherwise, I can't explain why they don't look sharp.

Edit: I took both of the photos, one after the other, so they should be very similar. And by “looks like a painting” I refer to some softness in the image. But after doing a random google search of Fuji sharpness I found about Fuji worms, and I think that's the issue, cause after processing it with irident X-transformer, I get better results. Also, I should’ve added that the jpg of Fuji has much better sharpness in my own opinion than the raw, but I checked that after looking at the film photo.

Answer 1

Honestly, the biggest difference is that the light is much better in the film photo. The sun is lower in the sky (and perhaps on a more overcast day), meaning that you can avoid the very harsh contrast you have in your photo, and bringing out the shape of the lower slopes much better.

Good light beats equipment every time.

Answer 2

Maybe I've figured out the benefits of medium format/ film. Otherwise, I can't explain why they don't look sharp

Well, one of the benefits anyway. Basically, it comes down to diffraction; which determines the minimum size a detail can be projected onto the image plane. And diffraction is determined/caused by the aperture restriction/f# (less restriction = less diffraction).

For example, at the f/8 setting you used on the Fuji the minimum average size of a detail is 10.7um (median green/yellow wavelengths) and that limits recorded resolution.

On an APS sized sensor it limits the recorded resolution to an average of 13MP regardless of the sensor resolution. But many more of those 10.7um dots can fit onto the medium format's larger area... the limit of recorded resolution for medium format w/ a lens at f/8 is an average/median of 59MP.

And then the Fuji's smaller sensor has to magnified/enlarged 3.8x more in order to create the same sized output image (short edge)... that is going to make the relative lack of resolution even more apparent.

Of course there are things that can, and usually do, reduce the recorded resolution to less than the theoretical maximum; but that will only make things worse (or at best even them out).

Do Sensors Outresolve Lenses?

Answer 3

The major differences between the two example images:

• The film image has the white balance determined by the emulsion of the film used. It's pretty much baked in at the time the film is loaded in the camera. The digital image, since it was recorded with raw data included, has the flexibility of adjusting the white balance in post with virtually unlimited latitude. The fact that the user chose not to alter the default settings of the application used to open and export the "raw" image doesn't mean that unrealized potential is not there.
• The film image was taken with the Sun at a much lower angle and the color of the Sun's light, filtered by the Earth's atmosphere was warmer. The digital image was taken with the Sun higher in the sky, and thus less filtered by the Earth's atmosphere. The color temperature and white balance of the digital image could have been adjusted to make the light appear to be warmer and more saturated, but it wasn't.
• The digitized film image shows a wider angle of view than the digital image, at least when both are displayed at "one image pixel per screen pixel". This could be as simple as the film image having been scanned at a lower total resolution than the digital image, and thus not been enlarged by the same factor when enlarged to "100%". Viewing a 24 MP image at 100% on a 24" FHD monitor shows a piece of an approximately 60x40 inch display size of the entire image. Viewing a 50 MP image at 100% on the same monitor shows a piece of an approximately 85x57 inch display size of that image. Thus, at "100%", a higher resolution image will be magnified more than a lower resolution image.
• The film image shows more contrast than the digital image. This is most likely due to the fact that the digital image appears to have been rendered using a fairly "neutral" set of instructions¹ by the application that was used to open it. Most raw conversion applications have a fairly "vanilla" set of default instructions they use to process the data in a raw image file. Most such applications assume the user will adjust settings to alter the instructions to optimize the image before exporting it. The reason the in-camera JPEG looked better to you than "THE raw image" is because the camera used a set of instructions provided by Fuji's engineers to make the image look as good as possible without further adjustment.

_{¹ What you see on the screen when you open a raw image is not "THE RAW image", it's one of a near countless possible renderings of the information contained in the raw file. It's not possible to display all of that information simultaneously on screens limited to essentially JPEG levels of dynamic range and color rendering.}