It all comes down to the print

[Uhooru]

<p>Just a question for all these kinds of test and comparisons, when you digitalize a MF negative, it's now a digital file subject to the limitations of the scanner. Better test would be digital print from a digital camera and a photographic print from a film camera or even a slide show projection of transparancy next to a large screen digital image. Doesn't scanning the film change the equation?</p>

[StuartMoxham]

<p>Richard funny you should mention about prints from older digital cameras looking better than you would expect considering the resolution. I still use a Nikon D1h (2.75mp) and 8x10 prints look fine even in albums next to 8x10 prints from a 10mp D80. As some of the prints are a few years old now I have even managed to mix a few of prints thinking they came from the other camera. I remember using a Canon D30 when it first came out and I remember seeing some studio portraits that my friend had shot with the camera. They were larger than 8x12 but smaller than 12x18 as the 12x18 inch paper had a white border of around 1 inch. There was nothing wrong with the prints they looked great. I guess that resolution does not really matter as much as we often like to think and many subjects don't need large amounts of resolution to render them well. I am happy with prints from all my cameras be it film or digital.</p>

[sebastianmoran]

<p>Stuart, frankly, when it comes to color prints from the lab, I am happier by far with the 8x12 and larger prints I'm getting today (from either scanned film or digital captures) than with the enlargements I got from 35mm in the optical-print era.</p>

<p>The optically printed enlargements from 6x6 were always great.</p>

<p>This comes back to Mauro's excellent title line, "It all comes down to the print!"</p>

[mauro_franic]

<p>Richard, thank you for the good words.</p>

<p>I also have several 8x10 (and one 16x20 LOL) prints made from my first Olympus 2MP digital camera that look very good although here is no fine detail in them. Depending on the subject fine details may not exist or may not be relevant for the print to look good. Although they didn't look the same as my wet prints I remembered being in AWE at the new technology. Digital is quite a treat for photographers.<br /> <br /> Several cameras later when I bought the 40D I had a period when I used it for everything, with film shots now and then. Ultimately I always ended up picking the film prints to a point the 40D got relegated to the sidelines. It was then when I began testing; in an effort to understand. Test and articles available on-line did not match my results with film so I had to test on my own.</p>

<p>Film's advantage in resolution and dynamic range were some of the first, more quantifiable, observations I came up with but still there was more, that made me choose the prints from film. Still today I don't have the full answer.<br /> <br /> I believe digital's higher acutance is both its best friend and its worst foe. The human eye, from the distance, is attracted to the abrupt changes in contrast at the small feature level and the smooth texture that digital produces. Yet up close it renders a fake and plastic look with unnaturally strong contrast transitions, smoother than natural color (interpolated), and void of the smallest details. (This is much improved with the current 20+MP DSLRs)</p>

<p>A matter of subjective preference comes into play as well. As in wine and women. Many people actually prefer the digital look whereas other prefer the look of film.</p>

<p> </p>

[mauro_franic]

<p>Barry,<br /> Today most film is scanned. That is why the comparison.</p>

<p>You can still benefit from the dynamic range, resolution, texture and color information captured by the film if you have an adequate scanner. (i.e. Coolscan or better).</p>

[mauro_franic]

<p>Edward,</p>

<p>I printed your example from the Nikon D2x of the chain at the following resolutions:<br>

1) 280dpi (40x60 print)<br>

2) 560dpi (20x30 print)<br>

3) 840dpi (13x20 print)<br>

4) 1120dpi (10x15 print)</p>

<p>I found (1) and (2) were not of an acceptable quality for display. I found (3) the 13x20 print, acceptable. The print (4) of visible better quality than (3) at close examination.</p><div></div>

[mauro_franic]

<p>If you don't mind, could you please print your crop in the same resolutions and let me know what you observe and conclude?</p>

<p> </p>

[Ed_Ingold]

<p><em>I found (1) and (2) were not of an acceptable quality for display. I found (3) the 13x20 print, acceptable. The print (4) of visible better quality than (3) at close examination.</em></p>

<p>I agree - 16x20" is a large as I'd care to go with a D2x, or 35mm color film for that matter. My point was that obvious pixelation exaggerates the problem with the resolution of DSLR images, and is completely unnecessary. Resampled D2x images clean up well with sharpening, which I did not use in this case.</p>

[mauro_franic]

<p>You are right it looked better, particularly at 20x30. With resampling and sharpening the 20x30 print looked good from just a few feet away.</p>

[mauro_franic]

<p>Thank you Les.</p>

<p>If you received the 100% map from Daniel's 7D, can you please post it resized and sharpened to match the scan of 35mm Velvia?</p>

<p>From my personal testing of the 7D, and observing the resolution of 35mm film under magnification, it is clear that the 35mm film far outresolves the 7D but sadly I don't have an Imacon to share the results with the thread.</p>

<p> </p>

[mauro_franic]

<p>This is the comparison between the scan from Velvia 35mm (TIFF from Les) to the Canon 7D.</p>

<p>As you can tell, there is still a gap between the resolving power of 35mm film and DSLRs in 2010. MF film is a level apart.<br>

<br /> You may print this crop at 450dpi to compare how the fim (35mm) compares to the 7D on a 16x20 print.</p><div></div>

[StuartMoxham]

<p>How did you manage to make the 7D file look so bad considering that Daniels upload looks a lot better.<br>

Daniels sample</p>

 

[StuartMoxham]

<p>Here is his 7D file cropped and uploaded here for comparison</p><div></div>

[mauro_franic]

<p>Stuart,</p>

<p>Les sent me a 100% crop (named IMG_0254 DPP crop . tiff). I just did bi-cubic upsampling and sharpening in Photoshop.</p>

<p>Here is the 100% crop from the 7D I used:</p><div></div>

[mauro_franic]

<p>It is very strange.</p>

[mauro_franic]

<p>Please try to upsample it yourself and see if you can do better.</p>

[swilson]

<p>Mauro,<br>

Something is off on your scaling, or in the field of view between the images.</p>

<p>At best the Imacon scan should give an image that is 11339 x 7559 pixels, but it seem that you have scale the 7D photo larger then that.</p>

<p>Can you tell us how large the Imacon scan is in terms of pixels and how large you scaled the 7D photo to?</p>

<p>Thanks</p>

[StuartMoxham]

<p>I will give it ago but I think Daniel may have upsampled in the RAW converter. Any chance of getting the RAW file or the cropped TIFF. All I get with the JPEG crop is this.</p><div></div>

[mauro_franic]

<p>How big did you have to enlarge the 7D? If it is close it could just be framing.</p>

<p>The 35mm scan was at 8000 dpi (original 100%).</p>

<p>Let me see if I can access the link to Les' full frame.</p>

[mauro_franic]

<p>Les, I don't have the full frame. Can you please confirm the dimensions?</p>

[mauro_franic]

<p>Here I took it from Daniels own comparison to Velvia MF and sharpen it to see the detail:</p><div></div>

[swilson]

<p>Hm, that seems odd, both because the aspect ratio is 1.4:1 not 1.5:1 and to get 7678 pixels of height @ 8000 ppi the film would have to be close to 24.4 mm, which I guess is posible depending on the camera but I have not seen it before.</p>

<p>So it would appear that the size film scanned was around 34.24mm x 24.38.</p>

<p>Not a big deal, I am just trying to get a good handle on exactly what scaling is being done to all the images.</p>

[mauro_franic]

<p>There may be a thin line of unexposed film in the scan.</p>

<p>By looking at the starts resolved in the map it is clear that 35mm Velvia resolves more (significantly) then the 18MP DSLR. Which is consistent with my direct results and observations. Enough to create a difference on a 16x20 print.</p>

[StuartMoxham]

<p>I don't know there seems to be so little difference between them at this level of magnification I doubt we would see much if any difference in 16x20 inch prints unless we started to look at the print really close.</p>

[mauro_franic]

<p>It may depend on the printer.</p>

<p>On my printers, a 16x20 print (just print these crops at 450dpi) is large enough to show the resolution edge of 35mm film. It is true that you need very close examination to see the difference in detail but the film print has a visible crispness to it.</p>

<p>A 24x36 print (just print these crops at 300dpi) shows a large and obvious difference. The 35mm film print looks excellent (I encourage people to try this to realize how well 35mm looks on a 24x36 print), whereas the 7D print breaks down at anything closer the 3 feet (tolerance may vary per person).</p>