Velvia vs. Sensors

When I bought my first serious Digital (Konica Minolta 5D) I still felt that I could do better quality with my Contax RTS III and Velvia. When

I bought the Sony A350 I wasn't so sure. The Leica M8 and Canon 5D made me think that my film couldn't keep up. My Nex7 definitely

makes me think so.

 

 

But is that true? Take for instance micro 4/3 cameras (essentially less than half frame) or even the Nikon 1 mirrorless with its

exceptionally small sensor. What level of Digital would you need to substitute for an excellent Film SLR with excellent lenses and a good

film like Velvia? Could you do it with a Nikon 1? With a Olympus OMD? Sony Nex-7? Nikon D800?

 

 

I'm not saying resolution is everything or that film doesn't have other benefits, I'm just curious, especially from the pros, what the current

prevailing opinion is in terms of where digital has come and what sort of sensor you might need today to be roughly equivalent to 35mm

with a good camera and lenses. Thanks.

<blockquote>

<p>What level of Digital would you need to substitute for an excellent Film SLR with excellent lenses and a good film like Velvia?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Can you prove and distinguish between each whether your processing lab and/or Velvia film, the scanner and software used to scan the film gave the excellent results? No, you can't.</p>

<p>Could you provide a sample of the appearance of Velvia you want digital to substitute for and vice versa?</p>

<p>When I see old books shot with Velvia, I think, that's Velvia. Back in the day, we liked it for its saturation and color balance. Today, the saturation looks overdone to me and the color balance doesn't seem realistic. With the latest generation of digital cameras, the resolution is essentially equal, so the only big issue left is DR for digital, but HDR has closed that gap for static images and we're getting close on action shots.</p>

<p>If you're trying to make a judgment based on "better" or "worse" you might struggle with what is essentially a subjective decision. You have to go with what you like best. </p>

<p>Technically, scan quality has to be assumed here if prints are your eventual output. - if you're talking flatbed scanning for the Velvia than pretty much all modern dslrs will offer better resolution. If you believe that pixels are equal no matter where they originate from, you'd need a mid to upper range dslr to achieve parity, though the caveat bears thinking about. </p>

<p>Picking up on a previous thread, digtial has had the edge on Velvia in terms of dynamic range pretty much for ever, since Velvia offers up about 4.5-5stops max. Neg film is a different story. Frankly after a dozen years using Velvia , exposing a dslr nicely is easier. </p>

 

I love working with film, Hasselblads and 6x6 film only. I gave up on 35mm almost as soon as I went to digital around

2007. It's really what you like and what does it for you but I have dropped using all small format film and havent looked

back.

<p>The more I look, the more I am convinced that film gives better colour images overall. It is expensive and not as convenient, so you have to pick your trade-off. I am even preferring Fujicolor 200 to DSLRs - from what I have seen, as I am no shooting much film (or anything else) these days. The reason is not new: the way film blows its highlights and the way it handles sharp tonal transitions. Digital cameras, whether you're talking about a 5D MkIII or M9 or whatever, give very harsh results in some instances.</p>

<p>It takes about 24Mpx to out-resolve Velvia 50 or Ektar 100, and digital cameras that can do that are now affordable.</p>

<p>FWIW some photographers like to rate Velvia 50 at ISO 40. I can see why.</p>

<p>I should point out that I have never used Velvia so your experience must be weighed against what I'm saying.</p>

<p>I shoot Velvia 50 MF so it's a larger negative. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/tags/velvia/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/tags/velvia/</a> I haven't tried it with 35mm. I don't know if MF Velvia is better than digital, or 35mm Velvia is better than digital for that matter. But I enjoy shooting my MF camera a lot.</p>

<p><br /> I tried Ektar 100 but find I can't figure out which of the bracketed shots are the best unless I scan all and then I'm not too sure. With Velvia chromes, I can see immediately which is exposed right. One thing. Velvia is tough on people. Flesh tones often come out too red.</p>

<p><br /> If you like shooting film, just do it unless you have some business reason not too. At the end of the day, pixel counting and resolution won't make your pictures better than the next guy's. Only creativity and vision and lighting. Content rules.</p>

<p>After purchasing 6mp Nikon D70 in 2005 I haven't exposed single frame of 35mm film.</p>

<p>I miss Velvia. I miss unrolling a roll of 220 film from my Hasselblad or Contax 645 at the lab, pour over the light table and admire my shots. I miss that. Seeing the image on a computer screen is no substitute for that. I don't miss driving to the lab to drop off the film, though.<br>

That said, I haven't shot film since 2004 or 2005 when I went digital with a Canon 10D.<br>

If you consider "film resolution" to be limited by grain size, and "digital resolution" to be limited by sensor pixel size then Velvia will have very high resolution. But if you compare scanned film to digital, you don't need that many mega-pixels to get better resolution in the final image with digital than with film. In my experience, 35mm Velvia slides scanned on a Nikon Coolscan 8000ED (what I had) printed on an Epson Photo Stylus 1270 (I think it was) were good up to 8x12 inch prints. I regularly printed 12x18's from the 6MP files from my 10D. The prints from the 10D were better than what I got with scanned Velvia.<br>

Of course, for high ISO work, there is no substitute for a modern digital sensor (assuming APS-C or full-frame size sensors anyway). I shot Fuji Neopan 1600. It has a similar look as the 10D files did at ISO 1600. Modern cameras are lightyears ahead of the 10D... My Fuji X-Pro1 is practically noise-less up to ISO 3200 and has a little bit of noise at ISO 6400. Try that with film! :)<br>

Since I went digital, I've shot with several different Canon cameras. First the 10D, then 1D II N, then 5D. In the 35mm world, I shot with a Contax Aria and RTS III. L*O*V*E those cameras. The simplicity and usability of the Contax cameras is something Canon has failed to produce. Their viewfinders are also rather dark compared to the Aria. I've finally found a camera that comes close to the Aria in terms of usability. That's the Fuji X-Pro1. That's more a rangefinder-style camera, but in terms of the user interface, it operates much closer to a Contax.<br>

~Tom</p>

<p>Shoot what you want and use cameras that you feel comfortable with. TMAX 100 has a huge amount of resolution, personally I don't care for Tmax100 I'd rather HP5, TriX or APX100. Velvia has a huge following doesn't matter to me how much resolution it has I don't like it. At what point digital replaces film depends on each individual. I'd never shoot 35mm film for any resolution advantage it may have over my D700 or even my old D80. I believed I preferred the look of B&W film but to be honest I can't tell the two apart in a blind test so it's likely I was just biased with my own work. I still like the workflow so sometimes I still shoot some B&W film. I just do what makes me happy.</p>

<p>When I first switched to digital, it took me some time to get used to it. Film, like Velvia, has a color pallet. When one shoots RAW you must work from scratch. Now I would have a hard time going back to Velvia because the dynamic range is so narrow. Resolution? Hey many will say that micro 4/3 is as good a medium format. I wouldn't compare resolution of film and digital. Instead look at which you find you can work with better to get the look you want. Most of us have plenty of resolution weather it be film or digital. </p>

<p>Thanks for your responses. For myself, I still have my Leica M2s and my Contax RTSIII and Aria and i can't bear to get rid of them. I go out with them occasionally, but digital is hard to give up. The instantaneous feedback and the ability to take however many frames I want to whether it's 5 or 50 is nice. Thanks again.</p>

<p>You said you wanted a professional's perspective. Here's mine, based largely on the fact that I supply photographs to several of the larger stock agencies. The days of carrying bagsful of slides to a local (ie London in my case) for editing are long gone. Its five years since any of my meaningful agencies would look at a slide and to be frank given turnover of editing staff you'd be hard-pressed to find many editors who were equipped to choose/reject slides today. On top of which its more than likely that your edit will be done by a member of a multi-location team so a single physical entity wouldn't work at all. These days eveything you submit as candidates must be digitised, so if you want to use film thats fine, but you need to scan (or pay to have scanned) every last frame before your agencies will look at it. Then probably pay to have the accepts drum or Imacon scanned because they want a 50MB+ file. By the time you've done (or paid for) all this scanning the busines model is blasted out of the water. </p>

<p> </p>

<p>May I please ask if anyone can advise if a Canon 5d 12.8 mp would give a similar resolution to a 35mm frame of Velvia 50?</p>

<p>The reason I ask is I'm thinking of shooting digital next year alongside Velvia 50, and wondered if I would need to upgrade further to a 5d mk 2 21mp or stick with the 5d mk1 for this.</p>

 

<p>Nick, this PN thread should tell you all you need to know with included 100% crop comparisons...</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/film-and-processing-forum/00X4Nd</p>

<p>The <a href="http://static.photo.net/attachments/bboard/00X/00X4PJ-268867584.jpg">first image attachment</a> in the thread linked to above makes my point rather nicely. Granted, that's a modern-day digital vs Velvia, whereas, in my case I compared a 10D vs Velvia and found the 10D to have the edge. Not as dramatically as seen in the image I link to above, but still... </p>

<p>I think looking at image quality in terms of resolution only is being a bit narrow-minded. You need to look at it in terms of perceived image quality (OK, there the math just went out the window). This means you're looking at a combination of resolution, contrast, saturation, etc.</p>

<p>To answer Nick H's question about the 5D: If you already have a 5D, use it. If you're looking to get a 5D and then upgrade to a Mk. II later, I'd say keep saving and just buy the 5D Mk. II. The Mk. II is miles beyond the Mk. I.</p>

<p>~Tom</p>

<p>Disclaimer: I'm not a professional, I take essentially no digital photos, and this answer is mostly about B/W (but see the end).</p>

<p>I recently got Peter Turnley's "French Kiss" book which is interesting in this regard (with the caveats above). It has pictures from the 70s to essentially today, all taken with a variety of Leicas, by the same photographer, and all printed (optically, via a LF internegative for the digital ones) by the same printer. I believe the recent ones are probably M Monochrom but the might be an M9 or something. I don't know what film he used for the older ones.</p>

<p>So I played the game of "can I reliably tell which pictures are digital" There are various clues which give it away unfortunately – apart from hairstyles he does the slightly annoying (I find, others differ) black-line-around-the-print-to-show-it's-not-cropped thing, and he's replicated that for the digital images but you can immediately tell it's not actually the edge of a negative because it's absolutely straight.</p>

<p>But disregarding that the answer seems to be that yes, the differences are obvious: the digital images look to me like MF film, if anything, so I think that full-frame sensors really are doing "better" than film now. If it is the M Monochrom then it is an unusual sensor of course, which might skew things, although I rather doubt that it makes that much difference.</p>

<p>So they're "better", perhaps, but are they actually better? Well, not for me, no: I have always loved 35mm B/W for what it is rather than a failed attempt to imitate a larger format. I like the texture of grain in the greys and all the other things that 35mm B/W has. I prefer the film pictures, just in terms of visual texture, to the digital ones: I don't think they are objectively "better" but I don't think that matters.</p>

<p>So I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't think objective quality matters very much: what matters is what it looks like, which is often a very different thing.</p>

<p>For me the problem with colour slide films is that, again, it turns out I was not interested in some objective "quality" metric, but in what they looked like, and all the ones that looked good to me are gone now: I don't actually care if Velvia has the best resolution in the world because I really don't like that souped-up colour thing (of course, you see a lot of this in digital colour as well: I hate it there as well).</p>

<blockquote>

<p>what the current prevailing opinion is in terms of where digital has come and what sort of sensor you might need today to be roughly equivalent to 35mm with a good camera and lenses.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I am not a pro and I do not know if there is a prevailing opinion, but I have shot a lot of digital cameras (mostly Canon and Nikon), and I have yet to find one that matches the<a href="/photo/17530236&size=lg%20"><em><strong> Nikon D800E</strong></em>.</a> The color balance and dynamic range are really quite wonderful.</p>

<p>That said, I believe that the sensor is made by Sony.</p>

<p>At the least expensive end of Nikon DSLRs, I think that <a href="/photo/17506648"><em><strong>the sensor on the D3200</strong> </em></a>is really quite incredible.</p>

<p>Frankly, though, I never had any complaints when I was shooting Canon, either. The 5D II was a fine camera for me, and half of my portfolio was probably shot with it. I still love it, and the 5D III is better.</p>

<p>I just got two rolls of Ektar in the mail this past week. Yes, film is still very, very nice.</p>

<p>Here is the D800E link above, which does not appear to be working properly:</p>

<p><a href="/photo/17530236&size=lg%20"><em><strong>http://www.photo.net/photo/17530236&size=lg </strong></em></a></p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<blockquote>

<p ><a name="00cDhw"></a><a href="/photodb/user?user_id=257691">Tom Christiansen</a>, Dec 08, 2013; 02:32 p.m.</p>

</blockquote>

 

<blockquote>

<p>The <a href="http://static.photo.net/attachments/bboard/00X/00X4PJ-268867584.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">first image attachment</a> in the thread linked to above makes my point rather nicely. Granted, that's a modern-day digital vs Velvia, whereas, in my case I compared a 10D vs Velvia and found the 10D to have the edge. Not as dramatically as seen in the image I link to above, but still...</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Comparing a digital image to a Velvia without knowing the scanner, how the sharpening was done, etc., is a relatively meaningless comparison.. Was the scanner a flat bed or a drum scanner? How was the digital image processed? </p>

<p>The test photos also have no DR to compare. Both maps are lighted equally throughout from top to bottom, side to side. So that tells us nothing about how the image is handled in gradients by digital or film. I'm not saying that one is better than the other. Its just that this test proves nothing. </p>

 

<p>Getting back to your question, I think a micro 4/3 sensor is able to produce images that are as sharp as 35mm Velvia up to 16x20. My 12x18 inch images from a d300 are sharper than my slide film scanned in a Minolta Multi Pro dedicated scanner. But if sharpness is the final destination then you need to learn about post processing and sharpening both output and input. It is more than the camera. It also comes down to what you can get out of that file. Those who own d800's are missing out on the full sharpness of the images if they don't understand input sharpening as well as output sharpening. If you are not going to make razor sharp prints that are over 16x20 inches then anything should be good enough. </p>

<p>IMHO, the Kodak DCS 460 (first DSLR with 6 MP sensor, introduced in 1994) had image quality roughly equivalent to Velvia. The resolution was not as good, but the sharpness wasn't bad and the grain was better. It was necessary to pump up the color in post processing to match Velvia.</p>

<p>I was shooting basketball games over the weekend with a D600 in the same poorly lit gym where I've been shooting for 10 years. I used to underexpose 800 speed film with an f 1.4 lens. Now I can shoot with an f 2.8 zoom lens with the ISO at 5000 (and still have room to move). </p>

<p>Since I "went over to the dark side" in 2006 I have to admit I'm getting better pictures. </p>

<p>People that sit with calculators to work out pixel ratio comparisons between film and digital often favour film. There is one person on this forum that will go to his grave convinced that 35mm film can out resolve any full frame DSLR.</p>

<p>After years of experience I can say that digital files from just about any DSLR look better than those from 35mm film both on screen and when when printed large. With a DSLR you are also not fighting all day long at ISO 50 as you are with Velvia. In my opinion even medium format film is taking a hit from cameras like the D800.</p>

<p>Film still has a handful of advantages left:</p>

 

<ul>

<li>It is usually better in high contrast situations</li>

<li>It is still the number one choice for archivability</li>

<li>Large format remains the king of quality</li>

</ul>

<p>I still shoot film but I only do it for fun. The end result is more satisfying because of the effort that went into it.<br>

</p>

Not any FF...just some of them.

<p>I thought I'd throw in a comparison from somebody who has tested a Nikon D800E vs a Mamiya 7 medium format camera with both Fuji Velvia and some black and white film. I also happen to own a decent scanner (as I do scanning for part of my living). <br>

http://static.timparkin.co.uk/static/tmp/D800E-vs-Mamiya7-including-colour.jpg<br>

<img src="http://static.timparkin.co.uk/static/tmp/D800E-vs-Mamiya7-including-colour.jpg" alt="" width="1130" height="838" /><br>

So perhaps things in digital land aren't always better than film. If we go to 4x5 then we can beat most medium format digital backs and it's a pretty even match with the IQ180</p>

<p>Great to see a post like that Tim.</p>