Small Negs, Big Prints

[wai_leong_lee]

I just sent my 35 mm Leica slides along with my Hassy slides for 12x18 prints

on Kodak Endura Metallic paper.

 

I was expecting that 12x18 prints from my Hassy slides would blow away my 12x18

prints from my Leica slides, but guess what-- the Leica held its own very well

indeed!

 

My shot of Yosemite Falls was taken in Feb using my 35/1.4 asph at f2.8, 1/60.

I know I did not bring a tripod with me, so I shot it braced against a tree.

 

My Hassy slide was done on a tripod using a 150/4 CF lens at F4, 1/30. I was

shooting a beautiful Brazilian model. I used mirror pre-release and cable

release to trigger the shot. The shot is in good focus and sharp, the model was

able to remain still and keep her eyes open for the 1/30 exposure.

 

Both shots were done using Provia 100.

 

The pro lab I sent to probably scanned both slides for printing-- it's hard to

find labs that do optical prints these days.

 

I had expected the Hassy print to be much better than the Leica print, esp.

given the much larger piece of film, but lo and behold, both are to my eyes

equal in quality.

 

I wonder where the break point is, ie at what enlargement size would the

advantage of 6x6 show up.

 

But wherever that is, I guess the 35/1.4 asph is truly a remarkable piece of

optic.

[marc_lieberman1]

Why should we take your word for it? Let's see the beautiful Brazilian model and let us judge for ourselves! ;-)

[stuart_richardson]

I am not going to claim that 6x6 does not have a big advantage over 35mm, but I will say

that the difference between Leica and Hasselblad prints is more apparent in black and white

than in color. I don't know why this is, but it seems to my eye that there is a bigger difference

between the two formats in black and white than there is with color slide film...

[vivek iyer]

The title and the post reminds me of the advertisments about the 8x11 (mm) negatives from Minox cameras.

 

You can blow these up to 2x3 meters and still see details.. so they claimed.

[uk]

Wai,

 

With the greatest respect.

 

Leica glass is exceptional and so are the Hasselblad lenses. I've owned both over 25 years

and have both now with some of the latest lenses. Never, ever have I seen a comparable

match. It just doesn't happen because of film size. The gap is too big and 35mm limits

what can be done..

 

That is no to say that the Leica cannot exceed the requirements, or look equally good to a

specific small print size. As soon as fine detail, or tonality becomes evident the difference

can be seen. With 5x4, it's obvious at the contact print size with most subjects.

 

Years ago, I did a comparison between a Nikon 135mm and a Rolleiflex T to see if the

Rolleiflex had the flexibility of producing a 'tele' shot by enlargement to match the

135mm. Using the same image size on the neg I compared prints and to my surprise

there was a big differerence in quality.

 

If image quality is paramount use the Hass. If quick shooting is necessary, or the very

special way that light can be drawn with a 35mm, use the Leica.

[jonathan_reynolds]

The answer may lie in the scanning process, perhaps? Was scanning resolution sufficient to show the differences, and was it the same for both formats (i.e. the Hassy file would be 4.2x the size of the Leica one). I've no experience of digital printing, but presumably the print file must contain the exact number of pixels to suit the print, irrespective of the size of the scanned negative. If there is indeed such a bottleneck it must equalise things.

[raymond_tai]

Hasn't it always been the Leica myth that it can approach MF in quality? Myths are usually based on some amount of fact. Why spend thousands of dollars on lenses if you don't buy into its imaging superiority?

[lloyd_chan]

No doubt these are superb optics, but unless one was shooting the same subject matter such a comparison is not particularly conclusive or helpful as far as finding the "break point" that you are looking for.

[wai_leong_lee]

I'm not here to do a scientific test. I was asking if people knew already the breakpoint. I was also just expressing my amazement at the fact that the prints from the Leica had held up well at 12x, even without a tripod.

 

If I wanted to find the breakpoint myself, I could certainly do so and set both cameras up on tripod and shoot the same test charts. Although I must agree that the scanner that the lab uses then becomes key to where the breakpoint lies. With a drum scanner, I'm sure the Leica will still show detail where a cheap film scanner will give up.

[jonathan_reynolds]

I think you have missed my point. I'm suggesting that scan files from both the Hasselblad and Leica negs would be reduced to exactly the same number of pixels for printing at 12x8. If printing at 300 d.p.i., the print file would be 3600 x 2400 pixels. It therefore seems unlikely to me that you would notice differences between the two systems in the resulting print.

[paul_neuthaler]

Wai-Leong, show the pictures!

[desmond_kidman]

Now this is the most ridiculous claim I've read for a long time. I've owned Zeiss 35mm, Leica M (latest apo and asph lenses...see my ebay auction on them) and if you cannot see an obvious difference even at 8 x 10 you need to change either your printer or optician. It's not the lenses, no color film can hold up at that size enlargement from 35mm.

 

Get a GOOD scan done and get good light jet prints and then you'll see. Or, shoot Profia F in both cameras and get type-R prints done. You will wish you could retract the above post.

[ronald_moravec1]

I have a shot done from the same location, same type film, same time, one is a Leica and one 4x5 with a modern lens. 160 Portra was the film.

 

The Leica Print in 9 1/2 by 14 compares well to 11x14 from 4x5. Not as good from two feet, but at 6 feet is hard to separate them.

[frank_scheitrowsky1]

I think that JR is right on with his point about the digital scanning and printing being the equalizer. Make real photographic prints and the difference will be obvious.

[subhash_tiwari]

Jonathan, now I am confused. I would have thought that the differences between the Leica and Hassy would remain apparent in print, unless one had exceeded the printer's capacity to distinguish them ( assuming that the scanner could). Or is this not correct ?

[jonathan_reynolds]

Sorry, I misread Wai-leong's print dimensions. Let me try again. Suppose that the limit of resolution of the film matches a scanner resolution of 4,000 dpi (debatable, I know, but let's assume that. The resolution of the lens is much finer.). Scanning a 35 mm neg at this resolution gives a file of 5760 x 3840 pixels. Scanning at 6 x 6 neg at the same resolution would give a file of 9600 x 9600 pixels. In printing an 18 x 12 inch print at 300 dpi both images are being forced into a print file measuring 5400 x 3600 pixels. There is no further level of detail within a pixel. So how can one expect to notice the extra information contained in the larger negative?

 

Anyway, enough of this. It's time we were allowed to judge the Brazilian beauty for ourselves, from the scans.

[al_kaplan1]

A lot of it has to do with the film, which has improved a lot over the years. Today's Tri-x is much sharper and finer grained than the Tri-X of 25 years ago, which in turn was a lot sharper and finer grained than the original Tri-X of 50 years ago. When it comes to color negative the difference is greater still. The original Ektacolor CPS (process C22) wasn't even marketed by Kodak in cassettes. It was available in 100 ft rolls for school and I.D. photography, but the wedding shooters used 120/220, and 16x20 prints still looked grainy.

 

The original Kodacolor 400 in the late 1970's was marketed in cassettes and was popular with folks getting drugstore prints, 3.5x5 inches back then, but was about unuseable for an 8x10. It was also used by newspaper photographers but newsprint reproduction in a 2 or 3 column photo isn't much to judge sharpness by.

[Troll]

You don't do your own printing? What kind of PhD photography is that?

[desmond_kidman]

Folks love to cite the tests they have performed which validate that the equipment they own stands up to something clearly superior. But this is now going so far as to compare 4 x 5 to 35mm in an 11 x 14 size? What in the world are you guys looking at? And who is doing the printing? I wonder if the next post will say how the Leica shot used on a billboard was indistinguishable from the same shot done by a 6 x 17.

 

The film real estate, guys, the film real estate. No matter what the optics they just won't stand up to the larger film size in 8 x 10 prints and above, as long as the optics of the MF and LF are good.

[inspiration point studio]

I�ve scanned both 35mm and 645 slides and made small 8x10 prints from them, and the prints made from the medium format slides are usually sharper and contains more detail. The difference is usually more apparent for landscape pictures when there are small trees and rock faces in the background. The difference is also more obvious if you use wide angle lenses (e.g. using a 35mm lens) because the film grain on a 35mm slide just cannot resolve all the fine details of the landscape, but in medium format (e.g. using a 55mm lens), the same landscape structure are exposed onto a larger film area with more film grain coverage to resolve the details. My observation is based on the following set of equipment and preparation procedure:

 

Subject: Landscape.

 

35mm format camera: Nikon 24mm, 35mm prime lenses or Leica M6 24mm 35mm Asph lenses.

 

Medium format camera: Contax 645 with Zeiss 45mm and 80mm prime lenses.

 

Film: Fuji Velvia 50 or 100.

 

Nikon LS9000 slide scanner @ 4000 dpi.

 

Epson 2200 inkjet printer @ 300 dpi, Epson Enhanced Matte paper.

 

 

A scanned 35mm file is about 100MB at 16 bit, 4000 dpi. A scanned 645 file is about 300MB at 16 bit, 4000 dpi. To prepare for printing, I down res both types of files to 300dpi, 16 bit, 8x10 inches. I then applied Photoshop sharpening as a last step; the sharpening parameters are usually similar for both sets of files because the output prints are identical in size and resolution.

[markok765]

The old nikons are great! my uncle has a few photos in 20x24 and they are extremely sharp

[john_graham3]

So totally pointless to draw any conclusions from your statements Wai-Leong, without knowing the type of scanner, software and settings that were used, plus any post-processing settings. One reason I ditched my Hasselblad is no labs near me are doing justice to them anymore. Without an enlarger or a drum scanner there isn't the clear advantage there was.

[raymond_tai]

Wai, Sorry I didn't read your post more carefully. You said the lab made the prints from files

scanned from the negs. I'll wager you'll see the difference if the lab makes the prints

directly from the negs the old fashion way. I found out that an 8R print made from a 5 meg

files looked a lot like one made from a 1 meg file. That is because the computer does not

make use of excess information. Unlike making making a small print from a large neg

where you would see the difference in tonality, smoothness etc., the computer doesn't care.

If it take 512kb to made a print it doesn't matter if you give it 200 megs.

[anthony_brookes5]

Wai-Leong Lee - Don't be put off by all the criticisms. Scanning the pictures to show them here would not make any contribution to deciding which is better. If you, as the photographer, are happy that the Leica blow-ups are just as acceoptable as the Hssy, then that's all that matters. I likewise thought my Rollei 2.8F offered no advantages over my Leica so I sold it. It's a persoanl view but that's all that matters for most of us.

[robert goldstein]

It seems to me that a fundamental flaw in Wai-Leong's "test" is that he is comparing

apples and oranges. Photos of Yosemite Falls and of a beautiful woman are so different in

fine detail and tonal gradations that one cannot draw any conclusions regarding resulting

prints. If you really want to discover the differences between 35mm Leica and MF Hassy,

shoot the exact same subject with the same film, scan on the same scanner and print

using the same printer at varying sizes. Or do it all optically. I am quite confident that the

differences will be obvious at larger sizes.

 

That said, I have some 12x18 digital prints from 35mm film that are pretty amazing.

Good film, good lenses and good technique can work wonders.