Scanning vs wet darkroom; ulitmate quality

I want to step up my image quality a bit. Currently i use digital tech purely. D800 and so on. I have chosen Mamiya 7 as my camera,

because i think it is the best medium format handheld camera. I have not purchased it yet, but i am close to pulling the trigger. Just a bit

of background :-) So: how should I process my film? Drum scanning at 8000 or more dpi or traditional wet processing? I obviously know

drum scanners are expensive, but cost is not the ultimate deciding factor. My question is: Which method will result in a higher quality

image? All responses will be very appreciated. Thank you.

<p>B&W or color?<br>

For B&W, there's a lot of power in wet printing, and better blacks and tone control. But that can be pretty well matched with scanning and digital printing to real silver paper. <br>

For color, it's much easier to get the best results with a digital workflow. More control of everything. (It was possible in wet printing, but who dodged or burnt only one color?) Also, there's almost no wet RA-4 papers designed for traditional darkroom printing, they are all optimized for digital exposure.</p>

<p>I don't believe any scanning method can match the organic purity of darkroom printing. However, the darkroom is seldom perfect so where scanning may lack in resolution or tonality, trying to remove dust, blemishes and other impurities plus color and contrast correction and all the other conveniences of digital processing make it the more compelling route.</p>

<p>I do see a problem getting quality prints as most labs have moved to a dry process or inkjet system which give inferior results. I only want wet lab prints on real photo paper.</p>

<p>Maros, Please forgive me not literally answering your question, but I have to ask why you feel using medium format film is going to give you better quality than the best of digital in today's world. I am NOT "anti film". I think it is a wonderful medium and will have it's place for a long time to come, but, to me at least, it is for reasons other than "better quality" than digital. Even a full frame DSLR with good lenses can at least equal, and often outperform, film. Another thing that I cannot understand is if you are going to go right back into a digital processing method with scanning and software, .... I simply do not see the point of shooting film. Why not start with a high quality digital image in the first place? Have you given any consideration to medium format DIGITAL? This WILL give you a big step up in quality. The Pentax MF digital SLR cameras are relatively inexpensive, but if cost is not a concern, there are far more expensive choices, such as the Phase One (Mamiya based) cameras and of course Hasselblad. For the price you are going to spend on a Mamiya 7 and lenses and drum scanning, you could get into MF digital, with frankly, much better quality. Just something you might want to consider. The cost of high quality scanning, not to mention the time and inconvenience, can very quickly lose it's appeal. Again, if you are planning all this just to "step up my image quality a bit", I respectfully suggest you are not making the right choice. Raise your digital capture quality instead of spending large sums of money with a MF hybrid film / digital work process. Just my thoughts, but please do give it serious consideration before making a large investment in film that you may regret later. </p>

<p>My own answer to that is first of all cost. A high quality medium format film camera and lenses can be had for as little as $100. Even less than $1000 can get you a nice Hasselblad.<br>

Try THAT with FF (35mm) or medium format digital cameras. <br>

Second, for me, medium format film has a depth and tonality and organic beauty that can't be matched by anything digital today.<br>

You can even see the difference in a scan of medium format film versus digital camera. It has to do with the saw sensors capture and interpret light versus the organic compounds of film.</p>

<p>Lastly, I personally love the experience of taking, processing and exhibiting pictures taken with film and cameras the corporations of the world tell us we are no longer 'allowed' to use. :)</p>

 

Thank you guys for the responses. Steve, I see a few inconveniences with the digital medium format. The Pentax 645z

does only have 50 megapixels on a sensor around 1.8 times bigger than 35mm, the best medium format digital camera

from Phase One has 100 mp from a true 645 sensor, at around 2.5 the size of the 35mm. Wouldn't drum scanning at

8000 dpi or wet processing of a 6x7 negative give me more mp and greater tonality, especially in B&W? The Pentax is

quite affordable, the Xf100 very expensive, but i could pull that off if i saw a great advantage of quality over 6x7 film. I

acrually havent seen a real say 400 megapixel scan from a medium format film, and in the case of all the scans are saw,

when I zoomed in, there were pixels, not film grain. I hit the limitations of the scanner, not the limitations of the lens/film.

The Mamiya is also more compact than the Pentax and the XF. And at the end of the day, even if I bought Mamiya 7II,

three lenses and a quality drum scanner, it would stil be less expensive than the Xf and it would be money invested

forever, if you see what i mean. The setup would still work 20 years from now, surely even much longer, but by I think by

20-30 years we will have some revolutionary new sensor technology that will blow everything we know today out of the

water. To return back to the original idea, the XF100 or the pentax will be outdated in a few years. The Mamiya 7 I could

use it till we count the resolution of our cameras in gigapixels :-)

<p>with all due respect, the only way to know is to try both yourself. Personally i prefer the wet darkroom - but thats just me.</p>

<p>I haven't seen medium format SLRs down to $100, maybe down to $300, but not low enough for me to buy one. </p>

<p>The resolution (MTF) of film has a long tail, where digital has a sharp drop. Well, as sharp as the low-pass filter can make it. It would be interesting to do the appropriate digital signal processing to generate a "film grain" look from a digital camera image file. With a linear CCD scanner, you can get a lot of pixels for a much lower price than in a 2D camera sensor. The demand for high-end scanners isn't enough to get the prices down, though. </p>

<p>The MTF curve for T-Max 100 goes to about 150 cycles/mm, in digital terms 300 dots/mm, or 18000 across a 6cm image. More than 300 megapixels. Only 51.4Mp for the 645Z. So yes, with film and a drum scanner you can get more pixels than a DSLR.</p>

<p><br />For Portra 160, the MTF goes to about 80 cycles/mm, so still more than 50Mp, but not so much more. </p>

<p>I was told that the usual digital optical printers run at 300dpi. If so, it would take 60 inches to get 18000 pixels. Places I know only go up to 20in by 30in, for 54 Mp. </p>

<p>For wet processing, you have to consider how good the enlarger lens is, or at least the diffraction limit. I suspect that 300dpi isn't easy to do in an optical enlarger, but I am not so sure. Newer DSLRs are getting past the diffraction limit of the lenses, which is the reason they can leave off the low-pass filter. Not much point in making sensors with even more pixels. Maybe they will get more sensitive, until they run into the quantum limit. (That is, they still measure whole photons.)</p>

<p>Yes your new medium format DSLR will be outdated in 20 years, but so will the scanner. Black and white film should be around for a long time, but maybe not color. </p>

<p>Much of the improvement in sensors is in light sensitivity. Note that I specified the low ISO films above to get the high MTF. For subjects in daylight, that is probably fine. </p>

<p>I honestly have no clue, but feel on red flag duty: According to some post of Gus Lazary in another thread some Mamiya 6 parts of the nasty electronic kind are no longer available. - Mamiya 7 will follow, so your 20 - 30 years perspective becomes relative.<br>

Handheld MF? - Yeah, I did it: I happily cranked TMY through my TLRs & push processed it. - How is that supposed to give me plenty of megapixels?<br>

Sorry, there is no VR, there are no ultra fast lenses and what is there will probably benefit from being shot around f8 for the insane resolution you are after. (which still only provides DOF as you are used to at f4!) - Bright days & harsh light only? Studio work with really powerful strobes? Or on which tree are you going to grow the handholdable shutter speeds? - Don't get me wrong; I guess everybody has exposed desperate 1/60 seconds before handheld, without OIS and gotten "kind of publishable" 5x7" prints out of those negs but is that what you are after? - I'd guess drummscanning the heck out of your negs you'll see a difference between your handholding attempts at 1/250 vs. 1/500sec. <br>

I suggest an experiment: to experience handholding the films Glen is mentioning above, take your D800, primes of choice (without VR!) and pull your basic ISO with ND filters down to 25 to emulate TMX or 40 to emulate the Portra. - Go out, shoot & check results. - They should resemble the little DOF you'll get out from MF film. - If they are working for you: Fine, buy Mamiya. - If not: ditch ND filter, crank up ISO as usual & stick to digital. <br>

If I'll get re-activated with film, I'll attempt straight printing in my wet darkroom and if that fails hit the digital route for salvaging & rescuing my negs. - But I am determined to be the last person to place an inkjet at home. </p>

<blockquote>

<p>Also, there's almost no wet RA-4 papers designed for traditional darkroom printing, they are all optimized for digital exposure.</p>

</blockquote>

<p> <br>

I suppose they are optimized for digital exposure, but as far as I know, they aren't unoptimized for traditional exposure. Traditionally, reciprocity failure happens at both short (microsecond) and long (hours) exposure. Papers for digital printing have to be able to work with microseconds, but they are also still fine for seconds or minutes. <br>

<br>

In either case, RA-4 is optimized for machine processing, but again not so bad for drum or tray processing. It is optimized machine processing that got the prices down. I remember how expensive color reprints were when I first started home darkroom work. They are cheaper now, even if you don't consider inflation. </p>

<p>If cost is not the object have you considered a digital Medium format or a digital back for a MF camera? </p>

<p>A photographer's choice to use film these days is almost entirely artistic in nature. So, why is this discussion about technical issues? I would think that if one wanted to use film, one would want to use it the way it was intended to be used. What is now called "wet".</p>

<p>The success of a fine-art photograph is dependent on its power to communicate. Pixel-peeping is irrelevant.</p>

<p>Whether film will still be available in 20-30 years is anyone's guess. I suspect that b&w film will be around at least in some sizes longer than color film. Counting on an electronic camera to work for that long and for parts to remain available for it for that long is probably not realistic. If you gather together a bunch of Mamiya RB67 cameras and lenses, these should be repairable for a long time. Someone recently said that while new technology has made very high image quality available, the demand for very high quality images has never been lower. Why? Of all of the digital images recorded, only a very small percentage ever wind up being printed on paper. The rest are looked at on monitors which have fairly low resolution even if they are high end models. If someone is looking for very high resolution, there are fine art and scientific applications but shooting for maximum resolution at all times is not always practical. Even a 50MP Canon DSLR will only reach its maximum performance with certain lenses and at the wider apertures. Can you really do all of your shooting at f/4? For now if you need a limited number of high resolution images and don't want to spend too much, you can get an RB67 and use Ektar 100. If you need to make many high resolution images then film/processing/scanning costs can make using digital equipment a better choice. </p>

<blockquote>

<p><a href="/photodb/user?user_id=776750">Marc Rochkind</a> , Mar 23, 2016; 10:46 a.m.: <strong>Pixel-peeping is irrelevant</strong></p>

</blockquote>

<p>Best comment of the year</p>

<blockquote>

<p>...higher quality image....</p>

</blockquote>

<p>The problem with the whole discussion is fundamentally, there is no definition of "higher quality". It is easy to think (or assume) that more pixels or larger format means more quality, but in which sense? As well said, pixel peeping is irrelevant. It's staring at trees without seeing the wood.<br /> "Image quality" is too fuzzy, too undefined and too dependent on the intended use of the final image. It's not about pixels nor about how you collect those pixels. Without defining what qualities you're actually talking about (tonality, contrast, resolution, distortion, vignetting??), you cannot really draw any conclusion seriously.<br /> There are perfectly sound reasons to choose medium format, film, darkroom printing or any of the alternatives. But as already said, they ought to be creative choices, or choices driven by business requirements. What do you do with the photos? Does that justify having all those pixels, and how much is that really worth? What format delivers the best compromise to get those shots?</p>

<p>Plus, hand-held shooting. If you really meant getting higher resolution than what a D800 can deliver using a MF camera hand-held.... sorry, but think again.</p>

<p>There are people that will pay 10 times 'too much' for a 1967 corvette or Volkswagen Combi bus than it's 'worth' in business terms. Or maybe even 3 million dollars for a 1957 Ferrari. There is no logical justification.</p>

<p>Certainly there are faster, better handling, higher-equipped, more efficient... on and on... autos available to transport oneself in comfort or speed but yet some will line up at auctions around the world to outbid each other for these antiquities. </p>

<p>In the end some people want a different driving quality or experience.</p>

<p>In photography some people want a different artistic quality or experience.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>My impression would be that every sensor is the same as it leaves the factory, whereas every lens and film and chemical interaction with the film and paper and the temperature of the solutions etc create a new world each time you take a picture .<br>

I love both mediums, but film is the magic side of things. To see the picture come swimming up through the developer and becoming roughly what you were hoping for is magic; since you might ask, Photoshopping is not the same as dodging or burning.<br>

With film, of course, you cannot see what you've just done or even if you've developed it right until after the event, so every part of the process can generate surprise, tension and happiness. And if you mucked it all up, the opposite emotions.</p>

<p>I have a d800, d700 and many film cameras. I feel the results are better for me from the d700 than the 800. yes there are more pixels, but I prefer the color, tonality and rendering from the D700. For me its all about the end print! not the amount of pixels. I prefer the look of film printed in the traditional analog way and I still do it. Give me a film print every time over an digital print. Yes I have nice digital equipment and a very nice printer when it doesn't suffer from ink clogs. I just prefer the end results from film over digital. If I'm shooting a little league game or a basketball game, digital is king. But if Im out shooting landscapes on a tripod, I have yet to find a 35mm sensor that can give me the results Im looking for over any MF camera. I have a fried with a pentax 645z and his results are pretty good, so i might have a look at that.<br>

It comes down to what you prefer. neither is right or wrong. I laugh at all the digital shooters who get offended and argumentative towards film shooters. Why should you care what medium I use to shoot with? I dont care what you think. all that matters is the end results. For color digital has many many advantages over film, but I prefer the look and feel of film. In B&W digital does not even come close. maybe the B&W leica but give me film all day every day. Again, its my preference and choice. you should not care what I use, only if you like my results, not if you like or dislike my tools that I use to get the results. <br>

for me, nothing beats a 6x6 slide projected on a large screen. or a real silver gelatin B&W print on fiber paper toned in selenium. </p>

<p> </p>

<p>Sigh. I have seen people with several thousand dollar body FF Canikon bodies and sexy grey lenses. Their photos looked like crap. I have seen people with Hassy's and RB67's and fine lenses. Their photos looked like crap. I have seen those with a cheap Holga make astonishing photographic statements.</p>

<p>After a term with IT/IS administration, I learned that a major part of the issues were the wetware inhabitants behind the screen. So it is with various cameras. Be they digital or film, if one does not have a grasp of how to make a statement with them--then the remainder of the discussion is pointless.</p>

<p>Just saying...</p>

<p>I have noticed over here in New Zealand the less common stuff to the general population can be cheaper than the USA. A Mamiya 645 with the no removable back (that version) with a lens, and a finder for $100US.</p>

<p>I myself picked up a Epson 2880 for $100US with a 20 sheet packet of 13x19 luster paper and 6 carts.</p>

<p>To me I like the film look on the print and I like getting equip I could only dream of in the 1990s and 1980s also slides look so good to the naked eye. Shooting it without the rear LCD, take it to the lab and wait for it, this process is so much longer to enjoy. I do use dSLRs for general photo's of people though, they just want them shared on Facebook. And did I say they are so affordable. Even just compared to an intermediate crop sensor dSLR. </p>

<p>From my experience a perfectly exposed, perfectly processed negative will produce better results than a scanned negative (depending on the scanner). However you can do so much more with a scanned negative which include fixing imperfections, and color enhancements. </p>

<p>Lots of quality 35mm cameras and lenses, even AI lenses, are available in the US down to $10 or so.</p>

<p>But medium format, even TLRs, not so low. I suppose older TLR down to $100, but for SLR closer to $300 with lens and back.</p>

<p>While conventional (wet) printing is described as a pure, organic experience, with nothing between your creativity and the results has a nice ring, it gets a little more complicated in practice. Keeping the negative and paper flat and in focus throughout the image is difficult at best, and usually just beyond reach. Exposing the print, dodging and burning to bring out the full dramatic effect is an art form in itself. The best know practitioner of this art is probably Ansel Adams, and those he trained to print in his stead. It is likewise nearly impossible to keep the optical path free of dust, which means hours of careful spotting are required. The enlarging lens itself is far from perfect, and only works well at certain magnification ratios and apertures. The greater the enlargement, the shallower the DOF for enlarging. I haven't seen one for home use, but a vacuum platen to keep the paper flat would be helpful for anything larger than 8x10 (maybe 4x6).</p>

<p>Much of this variability is eliminated by scanning film. The lens is optimized for one magnification (unity) and used at this setting. Dust needs only be spotted once, on the master image, as well as any burning or dodging to a sub-master image. Color balancing is never easy, but at least with digital it is not time and temperature dependent. Once you have a good master image, everything else is relatively simple, or at least consistent.</p>

<p>You don't need super resolution for scanning. Based on my own experience, 3200 ppi is probably on the cusp of film resolution. 4000 ppi (e.g., Nikon film scanners) is more than adequate, and 8000 ppi from a drum scanner is probably excessive. Not all "ppi" are the same. A drum scanner is probably ideal, using a single lens and focusing on a single spot with a single sensor while the film moves. Flatbed scanners, short of a Scitex, have mediocre optics and a lot of overlap between pixels. Consequently their effective resolution is only about half the sensor density. Regardless of the method, organic or digital, you can't do better than grain-sharp.</p>

<p>You don't need a huge high dynamic range either. Capturing an image on film involves a lot of natural compression. Recall that exposure v density is an S-shaped curve, which tucks the low and high end nicely into a 6 stop range on the developed film. B&W medium speed film might extend that out to 9 stops or so on the film, but that's still well within the range of a digital sensor (but still too large to print directly). A reflectance scan of a print might show a range of 5-6 stops for B&W and 4-5 stops for color. A good inkjet print might be 6-8 stops from bare paper to the deepest black.</p>

<p>You can be creative (or not), regardless of the tools you use. If you're going to use film, medium format makes sense, given the quality of small-format digital cameras and lenses. If you are going for landscapes and maximum detail, that might be a tough call.</p>

" I think by 20-30 years we will have some revolutionary new sensor technology that will blow everything

we know today out of the water"<P>

 

Its funny how gear heads tend to think plastic digital cameras with "new and improved sensors" every six

months will make better and better pictures. The truth is, there is much much more to a good photograph then image quality, sharpness, noise, color saturation. If we were to follow that logic, then every image made from the 1920s to the 1990s would be

garbage. <P>

Here is an image by Duane Michals. Just about every major museum in the country has his work in their

collection. He generally printed 35mm film no larger then 5X7. This must be garbage too<P>

 

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