Poor scans - May explain why some switch to Digital

<p>In the car example, it doesn't seem the film had much detail left pass the 2800 dpi of the Minolta. The Minolta captures 10MP and the Coolscan 20MP. Only explanation is that the film didn't have more detail to be had.</p>

<p>(I am refering to the particular shot, not the charecteristics of Velvia).</p>

<p>Rishi, regarding the 35MP on TMX 35mm, try adding a diffuser between the microscope aperture wheel and the bottom of the base. This will get rid of the air bubbles. I see 57MP on my TMX 35mm</p>

<p>This thread has given me an idea for an exhibition: Rather than hanging enlargements on the walls, I'd have a few dozen microscopes mounted on the walls, and people could go around examining photos of resolution charts taken on a few dozen different kinds of film. I'd call it, "<em><strong>Reductio ad absurdum</strong> </em> ."</p>

<p>Not a bad idea. Or you may call it "What we may be able to scan tomorrow since we din't throw away today".</p>

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<p>"What we may be able to scan tomorrow since we din't throw away today".</p>

 

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<p>You win. My title was a bit obvious and heavy-handed; the humor in your title is both subtle and profound.</p>

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<p ><a href="../photodb/user?user_id=3995956">Mauro Franic</a> <a href="../member-status-icons"><img title="Frequent poster" src="http://static.photo.net/v3graphics/member-status-icons/3rolls.gif" alt="" /></a>, Mar 21, 2009; 11:39 a.m.</p>

 

<p>In the car example, it doesn't seem the film had much detail left pass the 2800 dpi of the Minolta. The Minolta captures 10MP and the Coolscan 20MP. Only explanation is that the film didn't have more detail to be had.<br>

(I am refering to the particular shot, not the charecteristics of Velvia).</p>

 

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<p>

<p>There was a small amount of detail past the 2840 ppi, but not much. I also looked at the film with a 100X microscope and did not see any more then what the Nikon got. The photo was taken at f/8 with the camera mounted on a tripod. Whereas the lens was just the kit lens that came with my Canon film SLR I know it can capture far more detail then is shown on the film. If I put the same lens on my digital the digital pixels are spaced at 3950ppi, very close to 4000ppi. The image off of the digital is far sharper at the pixels level then the film scanned at 4000ppi.</p>

<p>But I did not put up the images to show detail as much as the grain in the scans, from both scanners and how much cleaner the digital image looks. To be honest the grain was so bad on this and the rest of the photos on the roll that I gave up on Valvia. Oh, and my scanner did a very bad job with the colors and Valvai, with Kodachrome no problem but the Valvai just looked like crap. Even to my eye just looking at the slide the colors looked like crap.</p>

<p>It is possible that the lab messed up the development, but I used the one pro lab that was in town to process the film. This test was film’s last chance for me, to win it had to produce photos that look far better then my digital, it fell far short of that mark.</p>

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</p>

<p>Dear Radek</p>

<blockquote>Yoshio, it's true, and your work, it's exactly what is digital used for the goal of this thread is, that for some categories of photographers, film is fully suitable when properly scanned,</blockquote>

<p>it is, and I posted above some time ago a similar sentiment. my intention here was to introduce another point other than sheer resolution. I did not make that well clear in my post. This is a point which is lost on many hobby people who are even uncertain what a 6x12 roll back means.</p>

<blockquote>you can get stellar results with some cheap 6x7 system ... of course,</blockquote>

<p>the fact that these 6x7 systems are now cheap is something which you have to thank digital for. It was not so long ago that I would not be able to treat lightly such a purchase.</p>

<blockquote>- 20x higher price, compared to film slr and you still have ff dof, can use ff lenses, and can simply achieve 14-18mpix (and maybe more if drum scanned) resolution and you have much more than digital shooter - slides, with it's unbeatable look, look which can not be achieved by any s-xga or hdtv :)</blockquote>

<p>I agree and of course, and my Leica slide projector makes simple 35mm Provia slides look wonderful with extended colour range that one will never see on any monitor or on any paper print. However I have to be careful in handling them and not damage the original</p>

<blockquote>best drum scans are pricey, but how many "best" shots are good enough to be drum scanned ... so as with 35mm, you don't need to buy ff dslr at 10x</blockquote>

<p>it depends on if you work with it or simply have it as a hobby. my 4x5 system is now only for my own personal (entertainment?) work. I love the images I get with it but it is a case of the extra small percent requireing 90% more effort. when photographing catalog material the question (after a 6MP camera) is <em>how much detail do you wish to throw away?</em> Even with 35mm there is more detail than a 3x5cm image in a catalog will require.</p>

<blockquote>no doubt, for you is far better to shoot digitally, but many others can get comparable or far better results with film gear instead of digital you don't need to buy mf digital back for landscape shooting, as</blockquote>

<p>it is and it isn't which is why I have both. I fully agree that you can get comparable results, and in situations far better is also possible. But better needs to be qualified as it is a subjective analysis. I have attached an image from the same shoot which I took on 35mm film. This has not the tones or colour accuracy of the digital, but the ability to get inside and outside light in a single exposure was critical. This shot has no model in it, (unlike the one going to the client) but the ability to do this in a single frame (hdri gave bad artifacts from movement) made the lower outright tonal quality of the film superior to the HDRI.</p><div></div>

Maybe digital is better than 6x7. I don't have those annoying parallax problems with digital.<P.>

<center><img src=http://www.photo.net/shared/portrait-bits.tcl?user_id=423911></center>

<p>Scott, I agree It looks like in the cars the Minolta got most the information available and the Coolscan was overkill.</p>

<p>On my velvia shots I see more information on the film pass even the Coolscan capture.</p>

<p>Unrelated;</p>

<p>I have another problem today. The trunk of my Jeep Cherokee 99 won't open. the handle doesnt actuate the lock. Grrr..</p>

<p>Les,</p>

<p>

<p>My film shots do out resolve my DSLR, I have said that from the beginning. It is not the lack of detail in the film that made me drop it but rather the grain. As I have said before I hate the look of grain, I view the large advantage of a MF camera not to be the extra detail as much as less visible grain. If you are happy with the grain then shoot film and be happy, to me the grain makes film photos look far less sharp then the detail they capture would otherwise lead one to believe.<br>

<br />As for you dynamic range photo, I have been shooting both film and digital for years to a test like that really does not fool me. Using raw it is a very rare photo that I can't bring in the highlights. Using film I often would loose the shadow detail. What was missing in your test was underexposing by a few stops and then comparing film to digital. Trying to get any kind of detail out of a negative that is so thin it is almost clear is a pain in the ass. Sure you could over expose the film by a couple of stops and things would get better, but the film is already starting out slow at iso 100, exposing for iso 25 would in many cases give a shutter speed far slower then I would be willing to shoot with.<br>

Looking at random photos from your site what I see is a lot of photos where things did not go so well for film.<br>

<a href="http://www.fototime.com/inv/083F985536715B3" target="_blank">http://www.fototime.com/inv/083F985536715B3</a><br>

I am sure that with care you can get some good photos, but you clearly have had a lot of the same problems with film that I have had over the years.</p>

<p>In this one for example the sky has a huge amount of grain and I see scratches on the film, I hate grain and I have spent many an hour removing sratches from film scans, which you don't seem to bother to do.<br>

<a href="http://www.fototime.com/%7BCC45ED87-7282-44F8-8747-94BADCEF6113%7D/picture.JPG">http://www.fototime.com/%7BCC45ED87-7282-44F8-8747-94BADCEF6113%7D/picture.JPG</a><br>

The detail in the shadows is almost gone in the above photo.</p>

<p>Here is another photo of yours, first off it has great detail in the bricks, so at least this is good. But everything in the photo is textured with film scan, none of the cars look smooth. And for film not blowing out highlights the white SUV in the forground is blown out big time, sure you could rescan it but for me digital photos I can go back to the raw files and get back the highlights as well.<br>

<a href="http://www.fototime.com/%7B59AF5FE2-D862-11D9-A979-525405F6093B%7D/picture.JPG">http://www.fototime.com/%7B59AF5FE2-D862-11D9-A979-525405F6093B%7D/picture.JPG</a><br>

 

<p>The problem with the above photo is that to print it large enough that you can really see all the detail the film captured you will also see the fuzzy look of the gain just about everywhere.</p>

<p>Clearly the detail you see in your film captures makes you happy enough that the grain does not bother you, so for you film would be best and I wish you all the luck with it. For me I like the clean look of digital much more.</p>

 

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<p>Scott, I don't see grain on my prints but you can try software like Neat Image if you would like to remove it for looking at the screen or for very large prints.</p>

<blockquote>

<p ><a href="http://www.photo.net/photodb/user?user_id=3995956">Mauro Franic</a> <a href="http://www.photo.net/member-status-icons"><img title="Frequent poster" src="http://static.photo.net/v3graphics/member-status-icons/3rolls.gif" alt="" /></a>, Mar 21, 2009; 02:38 p.m.<br>

Scott, I don't see grain on my prints but you can try software like Neat Image if you would like to remove it for looking at the screen or for very large prints.</p>

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<p>

<p>I have tried Neat Image on my own scans and did not like the effects it had, it could get ride of my of the grain, but then it also got ride of some of the textures that really were in the photo. I have used noise reduction selectively on the sky for some of my photos, this works ok but it takes a lot of work for it to look natural at the sky-ground boundary.</p>

</p>

<p>Scott, it also comes down to how large you are going to print. Using Photoshop to view these at the level of "Actual Pixels" does show the grain, but it also shows an image that is absolutely huge. These larger files are useful for getting good prints, of course, but that does not mean that one typically is going to print them so large that the grain is going to be at all obvious, if indeed it is visible at all on the finished print.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>Let's also not forget that digital noise can also be a bit of a bother at high ISO. Here is a link to a shot I made in 2006 with a Canon 5D using a Nikon 600mm f/4 (manual focus) lens (using a cheap Chinese adapter):</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/photo/5227368&size=lg</p>

<p>Yes, the [digital] noise is there, but am I likely to see it at the sizes I am likely to print? The shot was made at either ISO 800 or 1600. This shot was cropped, of course. I still have the original file somewhere, on another machine or on an external hard drive.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

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<p ><a href="http://www.photo.net/photodb/user?user_id=3995956">Mauro Franic</a> <a href="http://www.photo.net/member-status-icons"><img title="Frequent poster" src="http://static.photo.net/v3graphics/member-status-icons/3rolls.gif" alt="" /></a>, Mar 21, 2009; 11:12 a.m.</p>

 

<p>Scott, try upsampling your results and place them at the same size next to the four extracts of the image above.<br>

This is the area from the film you requested (replace the 40D at the bottom with the results you processed):<br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://shutterclick.smugmug.com/gallery/7469988_hodC5#481944852_7SQ5U-O-LB" target="_blank">http://shutterclick.smugmug.com/gallery/7469988_hodC5#481944852_7SQ5U-O-LB</a></p>

 

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<p>Ok will do, here it is.</p>

<p>I belive my convertion is showing a bit better in some areas.</p>

<p>The film shot show more detail, but also a lot of grain.</p>

<p>By the time I back away far enough that the gain is not a problem the extra detail can't be seen. Even though there is clearly more detail on the Baleys bottle to my eye the digital version looks sharper. BTW what color is the lable on that bottle, either the film is off or the digital or both, is it really as pink as the film scan shows?<br>

 

<p>If I was photographing to capture text I would take the film image, if I was photographing to make a nice looking print I would take the bottom (40D) image. For me grain really degrades the image and for me the extra detail in the film image does not outweigh the grain. This is of course subjective so others may feel differently about it. And this is really my point, there is no simple measurement you can make on a photo that tell how sharp it will look, since different people see sharpness differently.</p>

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<p>Scott, that shot you linked to that showed a grainy sky above the mountains...</p>

<p>I see not only grain but also grain grittyness. You should (or the scanner manufacturers should have) incorporate a light diffuser into the light source, such as a Scanhancer. That'll completely get rid off all that grit.</p>

<p>Then, one should properly create Neat Image profiles for film, that basically allows the software to analyze noise characteristics across different colors/luminosities. Then apply this profile to scans of the same film. This helps in reducing noise as opposed to image detail.</p>

<p>Actually, I myself haven't tried that method with Neat Image <em>yet</em> ; has anyone else tried creating profiles for Neat Image for various films? If so, please share your experience.<br>

-Rishi</p>

<blockquote>

<p ><a href="http://www.photo.net/photodb/user?user_id=423641">Landrum Kelly</a> <a href="http://www.photo.net/member-status-icons"><img title="Subscriber" src="http://static.photo.net/v3graphics/member-status-icons/sub8.gif" alt="" /><img title="Frequent poster" src="http://static.photo.net/v3graphics/member-status-icons/1roll.gif" alt="" /></a>, Mar 21, 2009; 03:30 p.m.</p>

 

<p>Scott, it also comes down to how large you are going to print. Using Photoshop to view these at the level of "Actual Pixels" does show the grain, but it also shows an image that is absolutely huge. These larger files are useful for getting good prints, of course, but that does not mean that one typically is going to print them so large that the grain is going to be at all obvious, if indeed it is visible at all on the finished print.</p>

 

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<p>

<p>What I do when I want to know what a print is going to look like is either make a small print of a crop from the image. Or if I want to save on ink I will back off from the monitor so that the apparent size of the image would be the same as viewing a print up close. My monitor has about 100 ppi, so I back off about 3 times as far as what I would view a print at, assuming the print is done at 300 ppi. This puts me in the range of 3 to 5 feet back from the monitor.</p>

</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Mauro, re: Tmax 100 35mm</p>

<p>I did use a diffuser in the light path, else the bubbles are obnoxious.</p>

<p>I can see down to 5.5ish... which translates to ~35MP. Practically most/all of which the Imacon 848 picks up.</p>

<p>Furthermore, Kodak rates the film as resolving 200 lines/mm at 1000:1 contrast, which translates to 34.5MP. Which is right around what I'm seeing with your Tmax (kudos to your shot). 57MP... seems a stretch to me. At least I, for one, don't see it...</p>

<p>Cheers,<br /> Rishi</p>

<blockquote>

<p ><a href="http://www.photo.net/photodb/user?user_id=423641">Landrum Kelly</a> <a href="http://www.photo.net/member-status-icons"><img title="Subscriber" src="http://static.photo.net/v3graphics/member-status-icons/sub8.gif" alt="" /><img title="Frequent poster" src="http://static.photo.net/v3graphics/member-status-icons/1roll.gif" alt="" /></a>, Mar 21, 2009; 03:30 p.m.</p>

 

<p>Scott, it also comes down to how large you are going to print. Using Photoshop to view these at the level of "Actual Pixels" does show the grain, but it also shows an image that is absolutely huge. These larger files are useful for getting good prints, of course, but that does not mean that one typically is going to print them so large that the grain is going to be at all obvious, if indeed it is visible at all on the finished print.</p>

 

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<p>

<p>What I do when I want to know what a print is going to look like is either make a small print of a crop from the image. Or if I want to save on ink I will back off from the monitor so that the apparent size of the image would be the same as viewing a print up close. My monitor has about 100 ppi, so I back off about 3 times as far as what I would view a print at, assuming the print is done at 300 ppi. This puts me in the range of 3 to 5 feet back from the monitor.</p>

</p>

<p> </p>

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<p ><a href="http://www.photo.net/photodb/user?user_id=2381463">Rishi Sanyal</a> <a href="http://www.photo.net/member-status-icons"><img title="Frequent poster" src="http://static.photo.net/v3graphics/member-status-icons/2rolls.gif" alt="" /></a>, Mar 21, 2009; 03:47 p.m.</p>

 

<p>Scott, that shot you linked to that showed a grainy sky above the mountains...<br>

I see not only grain but also grain grittyness. You should (or the scanner manufacturers should have) incorporate a light diffuser into the light source, such as a Scanhancer. That'll completely get rid off all that grit.<br>

Then, one should properly create Neat Image profiles for film, that basically allows the software to analyze noise characteristics across different colors/luminosities. Then apply this profile to scans of the same film. This helps in reducing noise as opposed to image detail.<br>

Actually, I myself haven't tried that method with Neat Image <em>yet</em> ; has anyone else tried creating profiles for Neat Image for various films? If so, please share your experience.</p>

 

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<p>

<p>I have not tried it for film buy did try making profiles for my digital at high iso, it really did not seem to help all that much. The problem I see trying to do it with film is a lack of constancy from roll to roll. I think the film is likely constant but the processing has not been.</p>

</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Rishi... you are giving me work... I will have to set the microscope and take a snapshot.</p>

<p>Scott, on a separate note, this is to show that there is clearly more info on 35mm Velvia than the Coolscan can capture. (fyi this is a quck and dirty outoffocus shot through the microscope):</p>

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<p>Wow Mauro, you must have a super coolscan unit there (pun intended)... I see much more contrast lost in my LS-4000/5000/9000 scans of the Velvia frame you sent me using Vuescan. I do not see much past 3.5... the labs must have some bad units.</p>

<p>That is the same frame of Velvia you sent me?</p>

<p>Sorry to make you work Mauro... I'll check the TMX in lab again.<br>

-Rishi</p>

<p>Scott, "If I was photographing to capture text I would take the film image, if I was photographing to make a nice looking print I would take the bottom (40D) image."<br>

Trees and grass are finer thant text.....</p>

<p>Also, please print the file you created at 360dpi (aprox an 11x14) and please tell me your preference... almost there.</p>

<p>Rishi,</p>

<p>1) yes this is from the same strip I sent you. I pointed out before that the results from your Coolscan seemed to lack a bit of resolution but I attributed to the specialty glass holders and diffusers they may add to it. I just use the Coolscan 9000 with the built in factory diffuser...</p>

<p>2) My Coolscan resolves 3900+dpi on the stepper axis and 3650dpi along the sensor.</p>

<p>3) I am looking at the TMX strip at 400x with and see around the #7 mark. I'll try to take a picture later tonight. I see about 56MP on my TMX 35mm and about 6MP on my Canon 40D. With the same judging eye.</p>

<p> </p>