Medium format vs digital

<p>But the more important question is.....who cares? I sure as heck don't and neither do my clients for the most part. They care about the creativity put into the image, not details of a globe as some form of test of said superiority. <br /> I shoot more and more film these days because I like it, I like the process and the result. And my clients pay for it with no issues because I do a great job with it, make it sing. I just pulled in a nice sized bonus on an annual report shot entirely with a Hasselblad because of the LOOK of the images on film. They LOOK different to the client too, not with a measuring stick different but more like the flavor of the sauce different.<br /> <br /> But I get it, the concept that what is actually *in* the frame being the most important facet of "Image Quality" is lost on the testers and it shows in this thread and countless others....</p>

<p>Les, I remember that test. Ridiculous. But, Bjorn Rorslett did believe that the 2.7Mpx D1 was preferable to 35mm. Perhaps he was right in terms of unit area.</p>

<p>Daniel, Ektar 100 is awful! I mean... how could such a travesty occur? Is Kodak skimping on the silver or what? Or has Velvia actually improved so much that it's better than negative films now?</p>

<p>Daniel [bayer], if I could afford to shoot film more I probably would. You're obviously happy with both a D700 and a Hasselblad. :-)</p>

<p><em>OK then, it's an overcast day and I wanted to take slow shutter speed shot of a flowing river but don't have ND filters with me and I would have to overexpose by more then 3 stops to get down to 1/15 or less.</em></p>

<p>1/15th of a second is easy to achieve on an overcast day or in open shade. This shot was made at 1/15 and f/11. The only spots that are near clipping are the spots where sunlight is breaking through. This is from an old DSLR. The flat, relatively dim lighting of an overcast day or of open shade, at ISO 100 and f stops like f/11 or f/16, usually leaves a histogram bunched up in the center with plenty of room to reduce shutter speed. I could have reduced Tv even more had I been shooting a 7D in RAW, especially RAW + HTP.</p>

<p>Quite frankly I'm far more concerned with shadow range than highlight range. In my experience I have had many more situations where I wanted more shutter speed as opposed to wanting less. With the exception of UWA landscapes with the sunrise or sunset in the frame, I'm struggling to think of a scene I've encountered where I could not hold both shadow and highlight detail by spot metering and manually setting exposure. And those sunrise/sunset landscape scenes blow out film to, and require HDR techniques or GND filters to properly shoot.</p>

<p><em>Would you should shoot a similar setup to see where the 7D blows out to see how it compares to Kodak Ektar</em></p>

<p>I wouldn't begin to know how to duplicate that test. Lights? Modifiers? Positions? Power output? Method of controlling exposure (Tv, Av, light output)? I would much rather perform a test that's easy to reproduce consistently, and which tests the full dynamic range. A back lit Stouffer transmission step wedge is the standard here. I've actually been meaning to use the same model that dpreview has to test various films. Maybe it's time to do that.</p><div></div>

<p>Karim - <em>Daniel, Ektar 100 is awful! I mean... how could such a travesty occur? Is Kodak skimping on the silver or what? Or has Velvia actually improved so much that it's better than negative films now?</em></p>

<p>My guess is that despite Kodak's claims of revolutionary advances, ISO still determines resolution in film and an ISO 100 film is not going to out resolve an ISO 25 or 50 film.</p>

<p>Keep in mind that viewing these scans like this on screen is equivalent to extreme magnification. The Ektar vs 7D sample is like peering at a 100" print. 35mm Ektar looks just fine at normal print sizes like 8x10 or 11x14.</p>

 

<p>Daniel Bayer - <em>But the more important question is.....who cares?</em></p>

<p>Why would someone who "doesn't care" bother reading the thread, then posting a complaint?</p>

<p><em>I just pulled in a nice sized bonus on an annual report shot entirely with a Hasselblad because of the LOOK of the images on film. They LOOK different to the client too, not with a measuring stick different but more like the flavor of the sauce different.</em></p>

<p>I refuse to be pulled into a "look" argument. Style is on the photographer, not on the mechanics. Plenty of photographers have switched, or use both, and the "look" is uniquely theirs regardless of medium. If your clients love your style and you've mastered that style in the medium of film, by all means, keep doing it! Nobody is suggesting you stop or change.<br>

<br /> <em>But I get it, the concept that what is actually *in* the frame being the most important facet of "Image Quality" is lost on the testers and it shows in this thread and countless others....</em></p>

<p>So there's no room for technical discussion on photo.net? And you just assume that anyone who engages in such doesn't understand that it's the image that matters? Is that honestly your opinion?</p>

<blockquote>

<p>So there's no room for technical discussion on photo.net? And you just assume that anyone who engages in such doesn't understand that it's the image that matters? Is that honestly your opinion?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>It's a dead horse beating thing, like the film vs digital debate. Both are mature, both have great attributes for different reasons, there really is very little reason to keep measurbeating and beating the poop out of the obvious. My beef with this is that I rarely see great examples of killer photography come of these discussions, just tests and far more posts firing back and forth by the same usual suspects than more important or creatively driven topics.<br>

It's sad, all gear, no art... <br>

<br /></p>

<p>There have been so many comparisons showing digital and film side by side @ 100% with the final conclusion being digital is cleaner and better. Several tests of my own show the same results. BUT! that same grittiness that makes film look rough at 100% on a computer screen is what makes my 8x10 prints, especially those with vegetation and grasses included in the comp look sharper and more detailed. There I said it. Even at 5x7 my Leica and Tri-x shows more intricate detail in the previous mentioned elements with a better perceived sharpness than does my 25 MP Sony 850 and whatever wonder lens I put on it. I also have a Mamiya 645 Pro tl and though that gives me even better files I have a hard time putting them to use in in small prints.</p>

<p>I have enjoyed reading everyone's thoughts on this issue. It is one that has been of great interest to me as well, since I had been shooting with a Pentax 67 system since the early '80s. I thought I would be a film shooter forever because of my doubts that digital photography could ever match up with what I could produce with my MF system, at least digital photography that I could afford. Then, when the Nikon D700 came out, I became curious, even though it was only 12.3 MP. It was more affordable and I had been a Nikon shooter for years before I started shooting MF. So, I decided to do a test, one that would be meaningful for me as a landscape shooter.</p>

<p>I picked a subject with a full range of tones, from sunlit highlights to deep shade. I used my tripod with a cable release for both cameras. For the D700 I used the Nikon 14-24 mm lens set at 24 mm. I used the lowest ISO, 200. For my Pentax 6711, I shot as I almost always do with Velvia 100. I used my prime lens that came closest to the the 24 mm, my 45 mm f/4.0 Pentax lens. I used comparable apertures and shutter speeds, with the aperture set for excellent depth of field. I focused on the same point in the scene, about one-third in.</p>

<p>Since I did not know much about shooting digitally at the time, I shot Tiff images with the D700. I scanned my Velvia slides as I always do with my Minolta Dimage Multi-pro Film Scanner, an excellent film scanner that I had used with great success in the past. I made matching prints with my Epson 7800 printer with the longest dimension 18 inches, even though I had printed my slides much larger than that in the past for my shows and customers. With my work, the print was the important result for me to compare. By the way, I processed the images with Photoshop CS3 minimally, only sharpening each image the same amount. </p>

<p>My results totally shocked me. I had trouble believing it when I found the D700 digital image clearly superior in the following ways, ways that were most important to me:</p>

<p>1. Resolution was the most important issue for me. That is why I went to the Pentax system in 1982. Yet, the D700 image was much sharper. It was no contest. The detail in the D700 photograph was sharper throughout. It was easily visible to the naked eye.</p>

<p>2. The tonal range of the photograph shot with the D700 was much better. I would have sworn it was several stops better. I had deep shadow areas with detail in the D700 image but those same areas and even some in less shade in the MF image had absolutely no detail. The brightest highlights were similar but I found that I liked those of the D700 better, too.</p>

<p>3. The white balance was much better and cleaner with the D700. There were color shifts with the MF image. The D700 whites were pure white (I shot with the WB on the camera set on automatic). All the colors in the image shot with the D700 were right on. That wasn't the case with the MF photograph.</p>

<p>Like I said, I was shocked. I truly never thought I would be switching to digital shooting, at least not for a long time. Well, 24 hours later I owned the D700, especially because I had a landscape shooting job that would pay for most of it. I knew that shooting and processing with the D700 would save me money and time, a considerable amount of money and time for this particular shooting job. By the way, the first lens I purchased was the 24-70 mm f/2.8 and I probably use that lens for 75% of my shooting. Its sharpness and depth of field are superb.</p>

<p>That is my story. It didn't take long for me to become a digital photographer. The final straw and the point at which I announced that I was definitely a digital photographer was when I shot the sunrise at the Five Fingers at Monument Valley several months later. Having the opportunity to see my images immediately and be able to adjust to the affects of the rising sun as needed gave this overly compulsive shooter with a reputation for bracketing like crazy a confidence that I had never experienced shooting film. I love being able to see my exposure immediately and check my sharpness throughout the image right away. I also enjoy being able to adjust the ISO and WB as needed, although I usually use the lowest ISO and set the WB at automatic.</p>

<p>I don't pretend to be an expert with the new technology. I make my decisions based upon results and my results were clear for my purposes. </p>

<p>Thanks for listening.</p>

<p>Ben Greenberg</p>

<p>I'm willing to stipulate that a digital camera will "blow out" three or four stops over the nominally "correct" exposure. Once you max out the pixels, there's nothing more. In fairness, the same thing happens to reversal film, at approximately the same level. Once you bleach out all the dye, there's nothing more to remove. In either case, there's relatively little shoulder to play with - the film curve rounds off a little then ends abruptly. With digital, the characteristic "curve" a straight line unless you impose a curve mathematically (typically done because it looks better to compress the extremes).</p>

<p>Negative film doesn't behave the same, which is where the comparison breaks down. The "correct" exposure is fairly low on the characteristic curve. As you increase the exposure, negative film gets darker and darker. Before you actually run out of dye, the characteristic curve rounds off so that contrast decreases. In Les' test, each exposure is a separate frame, and he adjusts* the exposure and contrast to recover some of this loss. Not all of the layers fail in the same way, so you also get color shifts.</p>

<p>If you use negative film "as directed", with the published ISO rating, shadows tend to get ugly. Experienced photographers "expose for the shadows", which is equivalent to decreasing the ISO rating, thus working higher on the characteristic curve. In general, we don't care if really bright highlights burn out as long as the mid-range tones are good and we have good shadow detail without excessive blocking and noise.</p>

<p>Digital cameras vary in their ability to handle shadows without excessive noise. This is probably the area which is improving most rapidly with successive generations of cameras. The mega-pixel "war" is largely over. A modern DSLR may have a useable dynamic range of 8-9 stops (much depending on your definition of the limits). If there's one striking advantage of medium format digital, it's the enormous useable dynamice range, 12-13 stops. There's also space for more pixels, but that's almost incidental. Remember that this is inherently linear, not compressed (curved) like in film, which imparts a very clean appearance to prints.</p>

<p>One more thing about resolution. Film can resolve details seemingly smaller than the grain level because grain (silver, hence dyes) clumps or gathers to form edge details. Unfortunately, if you enlarge enough (and bump the contrast enough) to take advantage of this effect, you often have too much grain appearing in the open areas. I can get a very clean 24x24" enlargement from a 16MP Hasselblad back. Ektar has easily twice the resolution, but doesn't look very good larger than 30x30" because of the grain. It depends on the subject, but that's a general observation.</p>

<p>* The "Crayon" test is a demonstration of latitude - tolerance to changes in exposure - rather than a test of dynamic range. This is perfectly legitimate and of practical interest.</p>

<p>About the MF in sports. Photogs today use what everyone else is using. Not, what's better. If, your competition is useing Digital, Then, you will to. Since the turn around time is quicker. When digital first came out. Many pros got rid of the Hassey's, etc. Even though digital was not as good as a 35 film camera. They did that because digital backs for their MFs were too expensive. Not knocking digital or anything else. Just stateing that the reason why they did what they did Is, not always why most people think.</p>

<p>Roger Clarke on his website compared the resolution of 6 MP Canon D60 with Velvia and concluded<br>

" The 6 megapixel camera has a similar resolution, but smaller field of view compared to Fujichrome Velvia 35mm film scanned on a 4000 dpi film scanner....The results here imply a full 35mm size CCD sensor with the resolution of the D60 would match the scanned information of Fujichrome Velvia. Since the sensor factor is 1.6, the megapixel content for this equivalence is approximately 1.6 * 1.6 * 6 mpixels or about 15 megapixels."<br>

Norman Koren on his website has a MTF graph of Velvia + 28-70 f/2.8 L lens + 8000 ppi scanner + sharpening . The combined MTF30 response is 70 lp/mm. This corresponds to about 17 MPs.<br>

Both the above are consistent with the results Daniel has obtained in his comparisons - 7D images of 18 MPs vs 15 and 17 MPs predicted above for 35mm Velvia.</p>

<p>Compare and contrast C. Sharon's comments with Ben's. If our eyes do not deceive us, and if 35mm Velvia is not terribly far behind the 7D, then a 6x7 negative would be far superior to the 7D. But - at what cost? I'd say Ben is going for value and practicality.</p>

<p>May I humbly pose the question: in my work as a surgeon I am trying to capture high quality pictures of operations we perform,and I have been advised to change to medium format rather than the digital camera I am using (Canon E0S 30D) . Does anybody have experience in this field of photography to advise me?</p>

<p><img src="http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y148/ektar/Katrina%20Speed%20Graphic/P1160073MOREWATER.jpg" alt="" />Joe; I use digital camera to document surgery of cameras; ie were screws ; springs go; to show others. All theses shots are downsized from a 10 year old Olympus 1.3 Megapixel P&S from Walmart. A higher end dslr should be fine for surgery; you just need a macro lens in the 150 to 200mm lens to get the rig out of the sterile region.</p>

<p><img src="http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y148/ektar/Katrina%20Speed%20Graphic/P1160096GEARSLOW.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p><img src="http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y148/ektar/Katrina%20Speed%20Graphic/P1160064TOOTHBRUSH.jpg" alt="" /><br /><br /><br>

<br /><img src="http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y148/ektar/Katrina%20Speed%20Graphic/P1160091PLATEBACKSIDE.jpg" alt="" /></p>

 

<p>Karim, the only criterion that was important to me was quality, not "value and practicality", as you suggested. If the quality did not match up with my 6x7 slides, I would never have bought the camera. In fact, it exceeded it in a direct comparison test. I was the most surprised person around that it was the case. And by the way, I shot a Tiff, not raw. I now shoot only raw images, which give me other quality advantages.</p>