I started taking film astrophotos in the Spring of 2003, and was exclusively using Fuji Provia 400 Slide film at the beginning. On the recommendation of several folks who saw my images (especially Michael Covington), I started experimenting with Kodak E200 in the Fall of 2003. I've posted a few comparison images below, taken with the same instrument of the same objects, but with different film.

While the differences are easy to spot, neither film is better overall, just better within their regions of strength. The Kokak E200 film is better for any objects with a dominant red component, such as emmision nebulosity, while the Fuji Provia film is better for any objects with a dominant blue component, such as reflection nebulosity. The Fuji film also records fainter detail in galaxies, though the Kodak film picks out active regions in a more aesthetic fashion.

For bright star clusters, neither is a clear winner, though I don't like the reddish cast of the dimmest star images in the Kodak E200 images, which appears to be more of an artifact of reciprocity failure than actual star colors. In other words, the red layer records fainter stars than either the blue or green layer, so the faintest stars appear red.

See Don Westergren's site for detailed analyses of the performance of these slide films, as well as various print films.

The following photos were scanned from slides with minimum adjustments, in order to show the visual appearance of the raw photos.

The Kodak E200 film is clearly the better of the two for this object, recording significantly more nebulosity with less sky fog in about half of the time.

The images below are after processing of the above images for optimum contrast and saturation.

The visual impact is now more similar, but the Kodak E200 still wins easily when the full images are compared, retaining more detail and subtle variation in the nebulosity.

Update: CCD version of above image

In May of 2004 I began imaging with a CCD camera. The quality of images that I've been able to obtain with this camera far exceeds anything I was ever able to achieve using film cameras.

Some part of the improvement is due to being able to focus the CCD camera in "live" mode (and refocus as necessary during a long series of exposures). An additional part of the improvement is due to my added experience in processing astronomical images. However, the high signal to noise characteristics of the CCD camera, along with its linear light response and super-fine "grain" (9 microns), give it an advantage that would likely be impossible to overcome with film-based imaging.

The image on the right was taken with a CCD camera, and has considerably more depth and detail than any film image I'd been able to obtain.

Note the vastly increased number of visible stars, along with the tiny size of the smallest stars. Also, the resolution of the nebulosity is vastly greater, with more subtle gradations between shades of color and brightness.

The following photos were scanned from slides and adjusted for best balance.

The Kodak E200 film shows more detail in the active regions of the galaxy, but the Fuji Provia film shows better detail in the quieter regions, and with an exposure of half the time of the Kodak film.

While the Fuji Provia film is clearly better than the Kodak E200 for this galaxy, merging the two images in Photoshop provides a view that highlights both the subtle areas of the galaxy as well as giving a little emphasis to the active regions.

Update: CCD version of above image

The image on the right was taken with a CCD camera, and has considerably more depth and detail than any film image I'd been able to obtain.

Besides the inceased detail and resolution, this image has far better color rendition than either of the film versions. This is primarily due to the CCD's linear response to light (i.e., lack of reciprocity failure). The film emulsion has different degrees of reciprocity failure in each of the color layers, making accurate color portrayal virtually impossible on such dim objects.