26 Megapixel 40D Compared to 35mm Film

"Obviously TMX will be king in high contrast resolution, Velvia in low contrast resolution, and Ektar in D-range - price - convenience."

 

Why is that "obvious?"

 

Ektar is cine film, a part of Kodak that is still very profitable and funded for decent R&D. It may well outresolve any "photographic" film, at any contrast. How well do you think TMX, Velvia, etc. are funded?

 

The only surprise here is exactly how stagnant the photographic film industry had become, that something like Ektar could come out of left field and bowl everything over...

The Kodak trademark "Ektar" goes back to the mid late 1930's; used for first rebadging Xenars on Retinas ; then its in house brand of upper quality lenses. It was used for lenses on movie cameras; instamatics; bomber aero lenses; and late 1980's early 1990's C41 color print films; some cine films; currently a newer C41 film fro still cameras.

Ektar is cine film, a part of Kodak that is still very profitable and funded for decent R&D. It may well outresolve any

"photographic" film, at any contrast. How well do you think TMX, Velvia, etc. are funded?

 

The only surprise here is exactly how stagnant the photographic film industry had become, that something like Ektar

could come out of left field and bowl everything over...

 

That is just FUD

The daft theory that Ektar is cine film with the remjet backing is just plain wrong, different contrast, different processes,

different layer structures etc.

They share one common property they use 2 electron sensitization-thats it.

There's a big discussion over on APUG about your claims, pretty easily debunked by the Kodak engineers.

I have to say this is an interesting thread. The technical discussion is interesting, sure, but it's even more

intriguing to see how rude people can be over something as trivial as the film vs digi debate. First, there are

plenty of responses from people who were simply uninformed or didn't take the time to apply their intellectual

horsepower toward understanding some basic math.

 

Mauro, I found your post interesting if a little difficult to understand at first. Essentially if you are

heading out and want to fire off a few landscape shots, preserve some more detail (and are planning to print

reasonably large), shooting 35mm film with digital conversion is not a terrible idea.

 

As someone who is about to start using 35 mm film (again), medium format film (again), and (gulp) large format

film and scanning, it reinforces the reasons I plan to do this. At some point in the future, contact printing

and wet lab work may be in my future and I hope there are still some rewards to be found there.

 

Cheers,

 

Jay

Doesn't anybody but myself see that this post is

a phish?

Stir up an issue, get the reader to go to your

BUSINESS site where you offer scanning services,

etc., then hope to get a sucker.

Bait and switch.

Oldest trick in the book.

People like you add to life's misery.

 

Go sell used cars.

Wow. I'm new around here and after wading through the "film vs. digital" debate going on, I thought you (all) were just argumentative....

 

.....Turns out there there are many who are cynical and downright mean as well.

 

This certainly isn't the only board I where I lurk, so I'm not completely new to this. Maybe it's just these recent threads, but I'm shocked by some of your behavior........

Kelly, I was referring specifically to the new Ektar 100. Not the lenses, not the old Ektar films (which I quite liked).

 

Mark, it only takes an open mind (and a nice microscope) to see who's got facts, and who's got FUD. ;)

[[it was a joke. I'm a photographer. What something looks like through a microscope doesn't matter to a photographer.]]

 

Things were going so well until you had to say this, Jeff.

 

Things under a microscope matter a lot to some photographers. In fact, it takes a good photographer to know what to do to get these photos in the first place:

 

http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn14971-small-world-gallery

"We need to go back to wet labs to get the full force of the power of film"

 

Agree 100%! People take a picture with film, then, they digitalize it.

uhmm, hey Mike, I have spoken to Mauro extensively and his "Business" site is really just to help out people who need their film digitized, he is actually a VP of a big corporate company and really does not need the money! I agree with Mark and others, all the negative comments should just stay where they came from and isn't there a forum moderator to kick rude people off !!!

Film vs Digital is really a like a religious thing. I am a film addict but my experience suggests that they are different animals. I own a Nikon Coolscan (unfortunately just the 5000 not the 9000) and regularly scan films. In my experience a digital camera looks better on my computer screen than a scanned 35mm film. Even an MF film scanned using an Imacon does not look much better (indeed on a laptop I find they look worse) - this is even for Fuji Velvia 50 or 100. I have concluded that the digital image looks better on the digital medium as it was intended for it. When printed the scanned films looks great. You really see the beauty of film when you stay with it and process it yourself - I have given up with labs as they continually disappoint these days. Black and white is still an area where digital does not appear to have caught up - it is close and much less effort but still can't match the all analogue process. Colour print also works well but is a very complex process with film. I find these types of debate amusing due to the strength of feeling of the proponents. On a value for money basis film is hard to beat (the cameras can be picked up very cheaply today) unless you want to shoot thousands of images. There are still things that you can do with film that digital cannot yet match (for example the bellows movements of an LF or Rollei / Fuji GX680 MF camera). I know you can add digital backs but that is a very expensive proposition. Digital has advantages of convenience, the ability to avoid a wet darkroom and high ISO performance. I have just ordered a 5D MarkII for its high ISo performance but struggle with the price and shelf life of digital bodies. The 5D was almost $3000 three years ago - now it is obsolete and discounted to around $1800. The Canon EOS 1V is still almost the same price as when it was launched and will remain current for the long term (I have 2 1V bodies but I also shoot 2 new F1s from the early mid 1980s that still work fine). I beleive that digital has had three main impacts - it has shifted revenues from film manufacturers and labs to software and camera companies, it has made the hobby more convenient and added instant feedback, it has resulted in a vast quantity of very poor images.

Per the post above...you don't need to think of a 5D, or any dSLR for that matter, as obselete. The 5D is to my way of thinking the best deal in digital today. You can pick up a full frame machine with reasonable AF and great image quality for 1800 bucks. In terms of output, it is as good as any other FF camera. Sure the LCD might not be as pretty, but if you are happy with the photos that come out of your camera now, you can be happy with them for many years to come.

Mark, it only takes an open mind (and a nice microscope) to see who's got facts, and who's got FUD. ;)

 

Joe it means an emulsion, must have the same layer structure, contrast, process, etc to be considered the same film.

The two are different in every respect, microscope not needed.

I do feel that if a person shoots film, to get what it has to offer (in B&W), then use the wet darkoom. I had a 6x7 neg that I had the local lab make a small print. Result? It was over half pure white. The negative shows alot of detail in the highlights. The contact Argyrotype shows the details. The scanned digital shows none. The blowned highlights I've heard about with digital. Now, film can have blown highights. But, in this case, the film showed them, the digital did not. If a person shoots B&W film, my suggestion is to at least make a contact print in the wet darkroom. It's far cheaper than to do it digitaly.

It's always surprised me how upset some folks get when someone even alludes to the possibility that maybe their

expensive new investment in camera technology may not be quite as far ahead of the alternatives as the sales guy

promised. Although Mauro's original point was not as clearly stated as it could have been I think the glib tripod jokes in

response reveal either an unconscious fear of even countenancing the discussion, or else a fundamental deficit of basic

knowledge about frame sizes, chip sizes, and image circles. As to the poster who responded

 

"If you want to convince me to shoot film, you've failed."

 

What makes you think the post was about you? If you don't find the discussion interesting, then why are you posting?

 

My own opinion is that the debate is interesting but overly hypothetical. In practice the critical question in terms of final

results is the over-all workflow. In this sense I think the poster who suggested comparing final prints instead of cropped

scans made a great point. Film is definitely grainy by nature, and looks so in the scans, but to my eye it is not

experienced in the same way as 'noise' when printed. Grain is what actually makes up the image's structure, and that is

not how I perceive digital 'noise'. Nonetheless, at this point, for most images for most people, most of the time, digital

will likely provide a more practical solution. For what I'm after, film remains the best practical option.

I got the gist of the argument. It works. I wish there would be a new technology scanner that would really get the gusto out of film. Perhaps Kodak should work on that and sell it competitively .I'll bet it could save the film industry.

I do not know what is involved in making a better scanner for film. Perhaps using the microscope's lenses and really get down there and check grain by grain.Software could automate the extensive decision making and give you a whopping megapixel equivalent out of good old 35mm film. I do like digital but I already have a heap of digital cameras that stopped working.Switches , displays, dead pixels ,etc.. On the other hand I still use Leicas from the 1930s.Thanks Mauro. Maybe you got the start of a new renaissance for film.

Jack, you need a competent scan operator. The defaults just jack up contrast at the expense of highlight and shadow detail. This has nothing to do with the limitations of digital as a medium- you should actually find it easier to translate a huge contrast range from the film to your print with digital- you can selectively "dodge" and "burn" any portion of the image that you choose and set overall contrast using curves.

 

If you're satisfied with your set-up, that's fine but if you are curious about a hybrid digital workflow check out the Yahoo digitalblackandwhitetheprint group. There are some really talented people there.

Jorge, what do we need better scanners for? What is the problem a better scanner would solve?

 

Grain does not equal resolution- resolving more grain doesn't buy you any detail if the image wasn't perfect to begin with (camera shake, mirror vibration, focus, etc). I use a "scanhancer" diffuser to cut the graininess in my 4000dpi scans, but it's not really a whole lot more enlargeable than the digital shots from my 20D. There's more resolution but also more grain obscuring detail.

My problem with your test methodology is that you're comparing B&W film to a color camera. If you use color film, the resolution will not be nearly as good as the layers and dye clouds are not as sharp - and would provide a more equal comparison.

 

I scan on an Imacon, and can tell you that there is no 35mm color film that I've used (Provia 100, Provia 400, E100G, 100UC, 400UC, E200, EPD200, Kodachrome 25-64-200, Portra 160-400-800, and Agfachrome), that will give the ability to make prints as large as I can make from a high-quality digital camera. I have not tried Ektar - so I cannot comment on that film. I have transparencies that go back to 1965. The films today are so much better in grain structure, that you cannot even compare a 120 format film from the mid-'80's to a current 35mm for detail resolution. When I scan film shot in the 80's and 90's - the grain structure is just plan awful compared with today's film.

 

I also think looking through a microscope doesn't prove much - you're much better off looking at the final product - a print and evaluating the end result. Much of what you see with a microscope cannot be translated to a final print because of losses in the optical system with either a wet darkroom or scanners. So you really have to look at usable resolution - and not theoretical resolution.

 

It's a bit like evaluting lens MTF and claiming it represents absolute lens performance. There is more to lens performance than shows up in MTF numbers. For example, Leica will often trade lower MTF for better contrast as edge differences show up more by contrast than MTF - making an image that appears sharper than from a lens with higher MTF.

The best drum scanners can get everything there is from negative film - based on my own detailed comparisons. The issue

is that a computer screen is a limited means of judging the potential print qualities of an image for a variety of reasons. A

side by side comparison of prints is the best method, but getting really really good prints out of a computer is as difficult as

making them in a 'wet' darkroom in my experience.

 

My point about grain was simply that I think it's a mistake to equate film grain with digital sensor noise. Whatever about the

technical arguments for comparing them, in practice they have different impacts on how a print is perceived. Moderate film

grain is a 'characteristic' of a photographic image in my opinion. Digital sensor noise might not be perceived as benignly.

Whew! Mauro did you just get laid off from your job in the finance industry?

"Moderate film grain is a 'characteristic' of a photographic image in my opinion. Digital sensor noise might not be perceived as benignly."

 

And, interestingly enough - some of the interpolation software programs have a feature allowing you to add back a bit of "noise" to the image as it can "give the image a sharper appearance." Not my statement, but from the interpolation software company.

 

Where a digital image can be made to look better than film is in really large prints. The grain in the film degrades the edges because they aren't made of sharp edges like a pixel. When handled correctly, the interpolation software will fill in and smooth the pixels, but won't do that with grain. Edges with vectors (curves and diagonal lines) will be rendered more smoothly and sharper on the digital image - if you handle the image correctly. If the digital images are not handled correctly - you get stair stepped edges which are not as sharp as film - as has been pointed out in a previous post you have know what you're doing in either a wet darkroom or lightroom.

Interesting study. I had no idea that film could possibly out resolve digi-sensor over 14 megapixels.

 

I don't get the smug responses of those who can't their head around what was done. It a simple comparison film versus the 40D. The FF frame sensor megapix count was extrapolated from the 40D cropped sensor coverage. The poster could have used better equipment, but he did this study with what was in hand.

 

/bing

I have nothing against digital. Heck,I bought an Epson printer for my digital negs. My 6 color printer gives the B&W a

magenta cast. But, they are only negs.Since, buying an 8x10 camera is for now, out of the question. But, it seems

in these digital vs film debates, that for the most part, people are using 35 cameras as "film" 35, a subminiature film,

just like 110 and 16. Even my 828 camera is bigger than 35! Maybe a person can buy a digital to equal 120 or

maybe

even 4x5. But, it sure comes at a high cost for me. Since, the Dslrs that people use instead of 35 cost a large sum

of money. I'm not a pro that shoots alot of photos and I don't have to have it yesterday. For my old contact

processes, MF and LF film works great.Even if for now, I have to enlarge the negs digitally.

Thanks for the interesting thread, Mauro. I think that your post has to be assessed as one might assess a

philosophy class--not for whether the professor got the right answers, but for whether he asked the right

questions and made people think. Those who read it in that spirit surely got a lot to think about.

 

Film and film photographers should not go gently into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the

light. Yes, the future almost surely belongs to digital, since digital is still in its infancy and has already

made great strides, but there will always be something special about film--and I hope that there will always be

those who keep it alive.

 

--Lannie