Will a new 6 mp DSLR offer comparable quality to film?

[sfcole]

I've been using a Canon F-1 with prime lenses for years, shooting mostly slides and B&W. I'm looking for

an inexpensive DSLR and have settled on the Pentax K1000D or K110D, with maybe 1 prime lens to start

(the 50 1.4 is on sale now at Adorama).

I like the camera and its viewfinder more than the Canon or Nikons, and I really don't want to spend more

than this (have the first baby on the way). My question for those that have made the switch to digital:

Will a new generation 6 mp camera like this with a good prime lens give me comparable quality to film?

I print myself up to 13x19 (mostly A4, though). Will B&W be of reasonable quality? I'm really sick of getting

my scans back only to spend hours touching them up.

thanks for your opinions

Scott

[greg_bruce_hubbard]

Hey .. buy it .. if you only enlarge up to 13"x19" you will be amazed with the quality ... you

will save money on film and take more pictures of your new baby! Buy a epson 2400 with

K3 inks .. you'll love it! However .. don't throw away you're F-1 ... you may want to shoot

film on special occasions!

[emwalker]

Well, yes and no. Digital is not film, of course. For printable quality, films are quite variable depending on speed and design. For usable detail, gain is often a limiting factor in film. Some b/w films will deliver something in the 20+MP range in usable detail, while some fast consumer color films will give something less than 10. However, with digital there is no grain. Noise is another issue, similar to grain, and increases with ISO sensitivity. I have made prints up to 20x30" with my 8.2MP 20D which I was happy with. At 12x18 thay look fantastic. Generally, for printing, most people use 300DPI as the 'photo quality' standard, so 6MP at 300DPI will give (2000x3000)/(300)=6.6x10" at 'photo quality' printing. However, a lot of how a print really looks depends on how close you view it, and with interpolation you can create larger images to an extent without losing too much quality. So, no, your 6MP won't deliver nearly the amount of image data that a slow professional fine-grain b/w film will, but it will keep up with a lot of color films and will often offer 'better' quality as there is no inherent grain to deal with. I don't know anything about the noise performance of the Pentax cameras, but I know my 20D gives a super smooth, nearly flawless image at 100ISO when viewed full size.<BR><BR><center><image src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/4893182-lg.jpg"><BR>Canon 20D output, 100%, no sharpening yet<BR><BR><image src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/4893341-lg.jpg"><BR>Ilford FP4 scanned at ~26MP(4800DPI), full-resolution crop<BR><BR><image src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/4893190-lg.jpg"><BR>Fuji Superia 400 scanned at 3200DPI and downrezzed to 8MP for comparison to 20D output at same resolution- note the grain vs the smoothness of the digital output<BR><BR></center>Don't get dragged into the digital vs.film fray, both have their strengths. As you can see from this absolutely unscientific comparison the b/w film far surpasses the data gathering capability of my 20D, while the color consumer film shows glaring flaws in comparison. Some people like grain. I still use both film and digital, though the convenience and economy of digital is ever more endearing to me.

[inspiration point studio]

You do not have enough native pixels to get a 13x19 print. Photoshop can extrapolate the

set of existing pixels to a larger set, but that means it will have to guess. The quality can be

quite acceptable, especially for portrait type prints. The best approach is to test one out for

yourself. You have to be the final judge.

[Ed_Ingold]

You can easily resample a DSLR imate to twice the native resolution without introducing noticeable artifacts. Apply moderate USM sharpening after resampling (150/0.5/0). You will find that a 6MP camera is equivalent to a 24MP film scan or better. Processed in this way, a 12x18 inch print from a 6MP camera will look as sharp and have less "grain" than fine-grained film enlarged to the same extent. In part, that's why you can get an F5 for a little over $300 these days.

[jim_doty]

Scott,

 

If you do everything right, you can get a great 13x19 inch print from a 6mp DLSR.

 

To my eye, scanned 35mm film (4000 ppi) has a little more information than a 6mp digital file, but the digital file looks "smoother". If you took side by side images of the same subject (include some blue sky) on film and with the DSLR and printed both at 13x19, they would look different. Which is better is arguable. I went with digital and I'm not diapposinted.

 

I went landscape shooting one day with my brother-in-law, I bought my own memory card, and he let me do some comparison test shots using his DSLR and my film camera. It helped a lot with my own film/digital decision.

 

Why not do the same thing yourself and do a comparison. Even if you have to rent the DSLR, you will have a better idea which you prefer.

 

With the latest generation of printers, quality digital B&W prints are easier to achieve.

 

Jim

[philg]

Kodak says that 200 pixels per inch is photo/film quality. So for 13x19, you'd need 2600x3800 pixels, which is about 10 MP.

[basscheffers]

Remember that thanks to the 1.5x crop factor, that 50mm will have the field of view of a

75mm and may not be the best choice.

 

I played with those new 21, 40 and 70mm pancake lenses on a K10D at photokina last week

and have to see I was impressed, especially with the 21mm. Not the fastest, but very small

and nice to work with.

[mark u]

The degree of enlargement that can be tolerated with a given digital sensor does depend on the nature of the subject. Images with a lot of small detail enlarge less well than those where the subject consists of bold areas of similar tone.

[sammm]

Most of the answers above focus on resolution, which isn't the sole measure of quality. Unfortunately, you will never get a shot like this week's POW with a digital camera - you'll need a $20 plastic one off ebay for that. On the other hand, digital shots can have some charm of their own, regardless of resolution.

[frans_waterlander]

I make great 13x19" prints with my Epson 2200 printer without interpolation from my 6MP Nikon D70 dSLR. With 400% interpolation I make surprisingly good 24x36" prints.

[jcuknz]

I think you are missing the point when you say you are sick of touching up scans .... working digitally permits you to finish the job properly and the editing programme is equally as important as the pressing of the trigger towards the final product.

[don_e]

Scott,

 

If your goal is to avoid as much pp as possible, you should compare the jpeg outputs of the Canon XTi, Nikon D80, Sony A100, and Pentax K10D (which replaces the K100, K110). These are the low-end offerings in dslrs. Check with the review sites to see if they've posted sample images. Compare. All will not have been reviewed yet since they are new.

 

 

--

 

Don E

[robert goldstein]

<I make great 13x19" prints with my Epson 2200 printer without interpolation from my 6MP Nikon D70 dSLR.>

 

This would seem to be mathematically impossible unless you are printing at less than 150ppi.

[godfrey]

The Pentax K10D does not replace the K100D or K110D. It is a larger, more expensive,

higher resolution camera, intended as an up-market semi-professional body.

 

To the original question, the simple answer is yes. I have been working with Pentax *ist DS

bodies and printing to A3 and A3 Super sized prints since January 2005. The results are at

least as good in quality as 35mm film to these sizes.

 

Godfrey

[frans_waterlander]

<<If your goal is to avoid as much pp as possible, you should compare the jpeg outputs of the Canon XTi, Nikon D80, Sony A100, and Pentax K10D (which replaces the K100, K110). These are the low-end offerings in dslrs.>>

 

Since when is the Nikon D80 the low end Nikon dSLR? What about the D50 or even the D70s?

[frans_waterlander]

<I make great 13x19" prints with my Epson 2200 printer without interpolation from my 6MP Nikon D70 dSLR.>

<This would seem to be mathematically impossible unless you are printing at less than 150ppi.>

 

What is it about mathematics that would prevent you from printing at 150dpi? Have you tried to print a 6MP file from a Nikon D70 at 13x19"? You would be surprised, even without interpolation. The 300dpi "rule of thumb" went out of the window a long time ago and was borrowed from what dpi you needed to get decent spreadsheets and graphs, not images.

[robert lee]

"The 300dpi "rule of thumb" ..."

 

This number is the maximum resolution that most print making hardware is capable of. It simply means that throwing denser images than this at the printer will net no additional gain in detail.

[don_e]

Both Godrey and Frans have corrected me. Thanks. The models they've mentioned are lower-priced than the new models.

 

 

--

 

Don E

[andrew robertson]

"You will find that a 6MP camera is equivalent to a 24MP film scan or better."

 

This is even more evident if you upsample from RAW directly.

[robert goldstein]

I don't think that the 300dpi rule of thumb went out the window. It is still the

recommended print resolution for close viewing, although you can probably get away with

240dpi. A 150dpi print may look fine from a distance, but not from up close. View

300dpi and 150dpi prints from 12 inches, and the difference will be obvious.

[frans_waterlander]

<View 300dpi and 150dpi prints from 12 inches, and the difference will be obvious.>

 

And there is the rub: you normally don't view a 13x19" print from up close; that's why for this size you can use way less than 300dpi. I use 300dpi for 4x6" prints and use progressively less for larger sizes all the way down to 150dpi for 13x19" prints.

[dave_redmann]

How many ppi you need depends a lot on the <I>subject</I>, as well as the viewing distance and your personal standards. Of course, like it or not, people do sometimes look at even large prints from distances around 18 in (0.5 m) or even less. When you view it that closely, <I>some subjects</I> need 300 ppi (or close to it), and a few would even benefit from 400 ppi or more (assuming you had an output device that could render continuous tone or something reasonably well approximating it at that resolution--which might possibly be an issue with, e.g., inkjets with 1440 dpi resolution).<P>

 

IMOPO, for relatively detailed subjects, I think you usually need to start with resolutions of at least about 200 ppi for an 8x10 and 175 ppi for an 11x14. As it gets bigger, you can use less resolution. I would expect a 13x19 print from a 6 MP camera (which is 154 ppi, i.e., contrary to the claim, not less than 150 ppi) to look decent.<P>

 

Of course, some subjects don't need anything like that. I just did a calendar, and one of the images I used was 1280x960 pixels, sized for 8.75 x 11.25 inches (US letter-sized with some bleed), i.e., 110 ppi. I'm still waiting to get them from the printer, but I expect it to look pretty good. The original image was a silhouette with a sunset background, and was quite sharp. It interpolated up pretty well.

[Ed_Ingold]

Canon's statement is self-serving. Independent tests show that the 12MP D2x provides superior images than the 1DSMkII - sharper and fewer artifacts - in spite of the size difference in sensor (q.v., http://www.natur-fotograf.com, per Bjorn Rorslett). Full-resolution gallery photos on http://www.dpreview.com for the full-frame 5d and 1DSMkII show profound color edging, not attributable to the lenses used.

 

If you need the full-effect of wide angle lenses, then get a full-frame DSLR. If image quality are at stake, you have better choices.

[don_e]

"Canon's statement is self-serving."

 

Edward, that was very gentle and kind of you. 8-)

 

Correction to the url:

 

http://www.naturfotograf.com/

 

 

Regards,

 

Don E