scanned film vs digital

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>I noticed the same NR effects on the trees, Scott--before the other guys posted. Even so, you get a clean, crisp image, and that may be what you want, but you are losing some detail, most obviously on the trees for me.</p>

<p>The worst problem I ever had with that was with the Kodak 14n. In good light it gave extraordinarly sharp files, but the noise reduction was a lot more intrusive than in your case. They finally issued a firmware upgrade that allowed one to change the noise reduction setting to "weak," but one never had the option of turning it off entirely. It was very frustrating, since certin types of bushes or cedar trees always looked like they were water-colored.</p>

<p>What did you shoot that with, by the way?</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[emraphoto]

<p>someone should put together a gallery show containing images from film vs. digital threads!</p>

<p>nah, on second thought if i had to look at those images all day i'd probably punch my own teeth out.</p>

[Dave Luttmann]

<p>Heck with the camera....just put me on the ship with a G&T in hand!!!!</p>

[emraphoto]

<p>indeed dave! i'll need three or four after all the photo's of crayons and cats at the big DIGITAL VS FILM gallery opening.</p>

[kathyb]

<p>My portfolio is brimming with images from a variety of equipment: <br>

Pentax digital SLR,<br>

Canon digital p & s,<br>

Kodak digital p & s,<br>

Canon 35 mm SLR,<br>

Pentax 35 mm SLR<br>

Epson V500 scanner (and one other Epson scanner that was about the same quality.)<br>

I am happy with all of my equipment. They are like my babies. I like each for different reasons. My only complaint is the quality I do or do not get in low light conditions. I prefer to do my own negative scanning. It's cheaper. For the novice who doesn't know much, there is the auto mode scan setting.</p>

[swilson]

<p>Here is a sharper image of the ship.<br>

<a href="http://sewcon.com/samples/Ship2%2005-21-06.jpg">http://sewcon.com/samples/Ship2%2005-21-06.jpg</a></p>

 

[mauro_franic]

<p>Much better Scott. What was the problem?</p>

[swilson]

<p>I put up the wrong photo, an out of focus shot I took<br>

I did not look carefully at what I was uploading untill you said it was soft, then I knew I must have gotten the wrong one, ah well. Ah well these things happen</p>

[mauro_franic]

<p>It looked very strange not out of focus. Looks excellent now.</p>

[Dave Luttmann]

<p>Looks like it was either taken with a different camera, or Scott tried to fix the out of focus problem with the sharpening setting in Canon's DPP. That's the smeared effect I normally see from the atrocious sharpening algo in DPP.</p>

<p>The second shot has detail in the folioage that didn't look like focus, but instead appeared as an image processing issue. I would say that it appeared one was shot on a point and shoot like a Canon G9, and the other was shot with a DSLR....at least that's how it looked to me.</p>

<p>And I still want to be on the ship with a good stiff drink.</p>

[mauro_franic]

<p>I want to be on the climbing wall with a drink on my harness. </p>

[rishij]

<p>Scott,</p>

<p>Amazing resolution & 'cleanliness' on those photos... did you take them using one of those machines that stitches together many photos? And if that were the case, the setup didn't cost you less than $300... :)</p>

<p>Rishi</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Wow, Scott, that is an awesome shot now. It was good before. Now it blows me away.</p>

<p>By the way, I went to your folder: loved your shot of the dophin playing in the bow wave of the ship!</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[swilson]

<p>Thanks Landrum,<br>

The dophin shot is one that I both like and hate. It was a lucky shot but taken with a Nikon 995, I really wish I had a camera with me with a much longer lens. What you see is a crop and about all the resolution that is in the shot. I now have a Canon 300mm IS L lens with a 1.4 converter, that should could have been great with that lens, ah well.</p>

[robert lee]

<blockquote>

<p>... one of those machines that stitches together many photos?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>You mean a Gigapan robotic mount? It was $250 when I got mine, probably cheaper now. Just go to gigapan.org.</p>

<p>It's a great way to get 300MP and 16 stops out of Canon compact digicam, and a great way to relieve oneself of peni..., ur, ummm, megapixel envy.</p>

[swilson]

<p>I do have a Gigapan device, but those shots were all done before I got it.<br>

The gigapan thingy really is great, but I mostly use it for high resolution shots, over 300MP or so.<br>

Like this shot<br>

<a href="http://gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=8849">http://gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=8849</a></p>

[rishij]

<p>So then if you don't mind me asking, how are you getting 135MP shots from a sub-$300 camera? Just curious :)</p>

[mwr]

<p>Scott, maybe I missed it, but what was your equipment and process for that great shot of the ship at http://sewcon.com/samples/Ship2%2005-21-06.jpg?</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Here are SOME COMPARISONS, thanks to a link that Scott Wilson posted to a related thread:</p>

<p>http://www.terrapinphoto.com/jmdavis/</p>

<p>Draw your own conclusions, as they say.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>THE CAT PHOTOS REVISITED: Here is the the Sony v. Sensia thread that Les Sarile posted back in the fall. Methodological questions aside, I find it quite incredible that 35mm film is quite obviously holding its own (at least) against the 24.6 MP digital sensor of the Sony A900:</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/film-and-processing-forum/00Qq4v</p>

<p>Now imagine how the cat would have looked if shot with medium format film, giving a file about 3.5 times larger than that of the 35mm film.</p>

<p>I know that there are those who say that we are beating a dead horse on this issue, but the question remains: whose horse is holding up the best from the beating? </p>

<p>MORE MEDIUM FORMAT IMPLICATIONS: Along the same lines, Michael Reichmann (whether you like him or not) has offered some provocative comparisons on this thread which is ostensibly about megapixels, but which winds up offering some good comparisons between scanned film and digital files from DSLRs, not to mention medium format film and digital backs:</p>

<p>http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/back-testing.shtml</p>

<p>Here the question again for me is what happens when one moves up to scanned</p>

<p>medium format film.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[alex_bb]

<p>how come a simple question has stirred such a debate, so that this thread is in the top 5 on photo.net, one week long, in 2009? Are the digital users somehow frustrated?</p>

[steve m smith]

<p>We have got to the point where you can see great images created on film and great images created with digital (and plenty of rubbish created with both too). The intricate details of resolution, line pairs per millimetere, etc. are fairly pointless to me as are the subjective comparisons when presented for viewing on a computer monitor. Even the best monitor in the world is no match for a properly printed image.</p>

<p>I currently have a picture in an exhibition. It was part of a local competition and the fifty shortlisted entries are being exhibited. I think mine is the only film originated image. All the exhibition prints have been printed by the same company for consistancy and I have to say (as a non-digital using person) that most of them are fantastic.</p>

<p>This doesn't make me want to try digital again as I am just not interested in the computer side of it. It does make me want to try harder with film though.</p>

<p>I don't see why wee need to hate one medium in order to love the other. Why can't we accept that there are two equally valid ways of doing something?</p>

<p>I have never heard watercolour artists arguing with oil painters over the range of colours available and how their pictures would look much better if they changed system. Or sculptors telling screen printers how their images lack any 3D effect.</p>

[swilson]

<p>

<p>To Alex Stelea, as a digital user I can say that I am not at all frustrated. Digital has been fully accepted as a legitimate form of photography. A number of years ago this was not the case and back then it was a bit frustrating to hear that magazines like National Geographic would not let their photographers use digital, as an example.<br>

But times have changed, no one asked me any more if my camera is digital. People not pay much more attention to what lenses I might have on the camera then the camera body I am using.<br>

Personally I don’t feel am much need to defend digital as a legitimate form of photography as I once did, what others say here about how it stacks up against 35mm film photography is not going to affect me in my real life shooting. From what I have read on this thread I don’t think from of the digital shooters have fully realized this.<br>

For the most part these debates serve little use, but there is one good thing that comes out of them, you hear what techniques work the best for either film or digital shooting.</p>

</p>

[swilson]

<p>For Steve Smith,<br>

I think you are right on the money about being able to create great images with either film or digital and for the most part right on the money regarding the need to compare photos as print rather then on a monitor. Sometime photos are taken that are only meant to be viewed on a monitor so then it makes sense to compare them on a monitor. <br>

 

<p>But for the most part prints is where the comparison really needs to be done. But it is not practical for all of us to send prints back and forth. Of course we are not stuck with viewing peoples’ samples on a monitor, we can make prints scaled to say 12x18 inches, but only print out a small part of the image. What you end up with is a small print but one that will give a good idea about how the photo would look if printed at a fairly large size. I have done this from time to time for photos that look like they might hold up to large printing, to get a better idea of how they would look when printed large. I don’t waste much ink this way and I am not stealing someone else’s photo. You can also print two sample side by side on the same print this way, for easy comparison.</p>

 

</p>

[swilson]

<p ><a href="http://www.photo.net/photodb/user?user_id=828721">Mick Ruthven</a> <a href="http://www.photo.net/member-status-icons"></a>, Feb 24, 2009; 11:54 p.m.</p>

 

<p>"Scott, maybe I missed it, but what was your equipment and process for that great shot of the ship at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://sewcon.com/samples/Ship2%2005-21-06.jpg?" target="_blank">http://sewcon.com/samples/Ship2%2005-21-06.jpg?</a>"<br>

The photo was sticthed out of a number of shots.</p>

 

<p>I started stitching when my Nikon 995 did not go as wide-angle as I would have liked. The wide-angle converters for the 995 pretty much all sucked big time, so the easy solution was to shoot a few photos and stitch them together.</p>

<p>As stitching software got better it became pretty easy to no only use stitching for wide-angle shots but also to increase the resolution of a photo. With a panoramic head it became very easy to get photo of almost any resolution I might want. Just a few shots gets me up to the 100MP range, which is more pixels then enough pixels for just about any print that I might do, figure a 20x30 inch print needs 56mp to be printed at 300 ppi.<br>

A pretty typical stitched photo for me now days is made up of between 18 to 30 photo, 3 rows by between 6 to 10 columns. This is a nice number in that it takes very little time to shoot the photos, less then 2 minutes, and the resulting photo is a bit over 100MP, more then enough for most needs. If for some reason I want more then 100MP I turn the job of taking the photos over to the robot and let it have at it.</p>

 

<p>But most my photos are signal shots, I just don’t need that much resolution most of the time.</p>