D850 vs 8x10 film

[Ed_Ingold]

The maths is simple. 'Average' film will resolve around the equivalent of 3000 ppi. Multiply that up by 5 x 4 (or a little under) and you get in excess of 150 Megapixels. So even if the lens and film combined 'only' resolve 50 lppmm at reasonable contrast, that's still the equivalent of over 100 Megapixels.

Where do you find a lens with that resolution over a 4x5" area? A few process lenses, maybe. Even 3000 lp/in (120 lp/mm) is a bit of exaggeration. 2000 lp/in (80 lp/mm) is more realistic based on film data sheets, and only with high contrast resolution targets (1000:1). Every day scenes average closer to 6:1 contrast, which yields about half the optimal resolution on film. In case you hadn't noticed, large format film doesn't look as sharp as MF or 35mm under a loupe, and nothing looks sharp under 10x magnification.

 

While re-igniting film v digital debate, the details devolve to philosophical quibbling. The point is that large format film yields large prints with little or no visible grain, and enough resolution to render fine details in these enlargements. Sometimes enough is all you need. It is also likely that you can replace a $2500 view camera with a $50K digital camera for archival documentation, fashion and landscapes.

[Nick D.]

It is so funny to read, people trying to compare formats in digital terms. Why not to try analog, look at megapixels as a film grain, more megapixels means smaller grain , but thats about it. Images shot with different formats, have different look when printed, thats why Ansel Adams was using large format camera. He certainly could afford Leica and I am pretty sure he wasn't "in love" with view camera because of its overall size and weight.

[ben_hutcherson]

Why not to try analog,

 

What is analog about anything we're discussing?

[BeBu Lamar]

What is analog about anything we're discussing?

 

What we call digital cameras capture an image with each pixels as an analog voltage and then digitized.

[Nick D.]

What is analog about anything we're discussing?

You can put film in that sentence instead of analog, if it will make you happy.

[ben_hutcherson]

You can put film in that sentence instead of analog, if it will make you happy.

 

On no planet is film an analog medium and calling it as such is the height of ignorance. Digital capture is more "analog" since-as Bebu points out-the sensor responds in proportion to the amount of light hitting it before being being fed into an A/D converter. That's as opposed to the "on or off" nature of film grain.

 

That's why I fight such a crusade against the use of the term "analog" in reference to the medium I have used seriously for the past 15 years, and in some capacity most of my life.

[Nick D.]

On no planet is film an analog medium and calling it as such is the height of ignorance. Digital capture is more "analog" since-as Bebu points out-the sensor responds in proportion to the amount of light hitting it before being being fed into an A/D converter. That's as opposed to the "on or off" nature of film grain.

 

That's why I fight such a crusade against the use of the term "analog" in reference to the medium I have used seriously for the past 15 years, and in some capacity most of my life.

Keep fighting :)

[Ed_Ingold]

On no planet is film an analog medium and calling it as such is the height of ignorance. Digital capture is more "analog" since-as Bebu points out-the sensor responds in proportion to the amount of light hitting it before being being fed into an A/D converter. That's as opposed to the "on or off" nature of film grain.

Before digital photography, film was film. Now, if we wish to make an objective comparison, film is "analog." If language did not evolve, we would be using "thee" and "thow". and our S's would look like "f's." Going back further, perhaps we would just grunt and point. Oh wait! I forgot about school cafeterias.

 

In presenting digital images, we are concerned about "grain," only we call ig "pixelation," or something of the sort. Grain, in B&W film" is noise to the extent there is no useful information in the individual particle or thread. Grain is there, or not there, with variations in size and spacing. The image is only visible in the aggregate. Each pixel in a digital image stands on it's own with regard to luminosity and color. There is noise (random variations) among pixels, and certainly defective pixels, but these are not directly comparable to grain in film.

 

Ansel Adams did use a Leica, as well as Hasselblad, as described in his books and illustrated in his photography. Even carpenters don't use the same hammer for every nail.

Edited February 17, 2018 by Ed_Ingold

[BeBu Lamar]

Before digital photography, film was film. Now, if we wish to make an objective comparison, film is "analog." If language did not evolve, we would be using "thee" and "thow". and our S's would look like "f's." Going back further, perhaps we would just grunt and point. Oh wait! I forgot about school cafeterias.

 

In presenting digital images, we are concerned about "grain," only we call ig "pixelation," or something of the sort. Grain, in B&W film" is noise to the extent there is no useful information in the individual particle or thread. Grain is there, or not there, with variations in size and spacing. The image is only visible in the aggregate. Each pixel in a digital image stands on it's own with regard to luminosity and color. There is noise (random variations) among pixels, and certainly defective pixels, but these are not directly comparable to grain in film.

 

Ansel Adams did use a Leica, as well as Hasselblad, as described in his books and illustrated in his photography. Even carpenters don't use the same hammer for every nail.

 

I have never seen mentioned of Adams used Leica. He did use the Contax 35mm rangefinder.

[Vincent Peri]

I have never seen mentioned of Adams used Leica. He did use the Contax 35mm rangefinder.

 

Appears to be correct. See first sentence in

 

LEICA Barnack Berek Blog: ANSEL ADAMS

[ilkka_nissila]

Film isn't analog at all. Analog involves a continuous grading of some parameter, and film doesn't really support that.

[Nick D.]

Guys, you still fighting about electricity on photography website.

[joseph_smith3]

I have a friend of mine that shoots primarily with view cameras., 4 x 5 and 8 x 10. He used to shoot with Nikon digital bodies. Check out his equipment at his website:

TECHNICAL INFORMATION

[Ed_Ingold]

Guys, you still fighting about electricity on photography website.

Are you referring to the oxidation/reduction reactions in photochemistry and processing, which involves the exchange of electrons?

[Andrew Garrard]

Perhaps it would avoid some repeats if I pointed people at this recent discussion on the beginner forum (you can ignore MTT uber-post near the start of that saves time, we later get on to film).

 

Conclusion: film is digital, and "grain" isn't the same thing as silver halide particles that determine the film resolution.

 

And I feel I should point out that sensor shift techniques mean that even micro 4/3 bodies are offering 80MP, and 200MP is coming (and with stacking, achievable) for medium format digital. That's before you start stitching images. And even f/22 is 2-3x smaller than when a D850 starts losing resolution to diffraction.

 

Larger formats theoretically do allow for higher resolutions. But it's absolutely a matter of the right subject and conditions, and the trade off between moire and micro-contrast.

 

There are many gigapixel images out there, generated by stitching. As far as I know, they've all been captured digitally.

[Andrew Garrard]

Perhaps it would avoid some repeats if I pointed people at this recent discussion on the beginner forum (you can ignore MTT uber-post near the start of that saves time, we later get on to film).

 

Sorry, that was my phone's autocorrect combined with my general incoherence. You can ignore the massive uber-post (that I wrote) near the start of that thread to save time, is what I was trying to say - that post was about digital, and we talk about film later.

[rodeo_joe1]

"It is so funny to read, people trying to compare formats in digital terms. Why not to try analog, look at megapixels as a film grain, more megapixels means smaller grain , but thats about it."

 

- What's your point Nick? You simply cannot compare a single opaque film 'grain' size (if such a thing is even measurable) to a pixel that holds 255 levels of grey. You'd need to squeeze 255 'grains' into the same area as one pixel to get a comparable smoothness of tonality. Which leaves the only parameter of comparison as resolution, which is visible and measurable.

 

Whether you express that resolution as pixels per inch, or as line-pairs per millimetre is fairly irrelevant.

 

"Where do you find a lens with that resolution over a 4x5" area?"

 

- You don't Ed. If you'd read further before going off on one, you'd see that I was referring to the resolution of film itself, with an estimate of best combined film and lens resolution at 50 lppmm. A not impossible figure from high-quality, and expensive, LF lenses.

 

The specific application in question is that of recording near 2 dimensional hieroglyphs, which require no lens movements and hence no surplus coverage of the 5" x 4" format. Therefore a high quality apo process lens would be an extremely good choice.

 

"Before digital photography, film was film."

 

- It still is! No need to invent a mystique-inducing epithet for the stuff.

Edited February 19, 2018 by rodeo_joe|1

[Andrew Garrard]

"Before digital photography, film was film."

 

- It still is! No need to invent a mystique-inducing epithet for the stuff.

 

Hmm. "Before digital photography, film was film. After digital photography, film was expensive."?

 

Or: "Before digital photography, film was film. Before film was film, glass plates were glass plates."

 

Although I'm sure that former employees of Kodak, Fuji, Ilford et al. will be a little unimpressed at the suggestion that film technology was static.

[Nick D.]

- What's your point Nick? You simply cannot compare a single opaque film 'grain' size

I am not talking about single "grain" size, I am talking about physical frame size 24x36, 6x6 or 5" x 4" . I don't see much difference between 24x36 film or digital frame of the same size, I can see difference between 24x36 and 6x6, that's what I meant in my previous post. Different formats have different look, megapixels numbers doesn't matter that much.

[Andrew Garrard]

I'll challenge you on that, Nick. There are things which are clues as to the format, such as film grain size, sharpness and depth of field - but if you put a good f/1.4 lens on a D500 and compared the output with an f/2.8 zoom on an original 5D, I bet you'd guess wrong which one came from the smaller format.

[Nick D.]

I'll challenge you on that, Nick. There are things which are clues as to the format, such as film grain size, sharpness and depth of field - but if you put a good f/1.4 lens on a D500 and compared the output with an f/2.8 zoom on an original 5D, I bet you'd guess wrong which one came from the smaller format.

OK, tell Annie Leibovitz she was overspending Pirellis money using Hasselblad.

[Andrew Garrard]

OK, tell Annie Leibovitz she was overspending Pirellis money using Hasselblad.

 

Compared with what? Did she get better recorded local contrast and less grain from a 6cm x 6cm film frame than a 36x24mm one? Very likely, but I can do the same with a D3200, with the right lenses. Yes, the latest medium format digital backs slightly outperform current full frame bodies, but that's not true if you compare current FX to the early digital medium format - sensor size helps for any given technology, but it's not magic.

 

I'm not disputing the merits of a larger sensor (I mostly shoot FX digital, I have a medium format camera), and there's a trade off between coverage and the aberrations that get worse with relative aperture that tends to favour larger formats, but what most people think of as "the medium format look" is apocryphal.

[Ed_Ingold]

In order to compare film with digital imaging, you start by finding areas of commonality. These include resolution and dynamic range. With film, these properties are essentially continuous (aka "analog"), whereas with digital they are quantized in discrete steps. Perhaps the key word is "compare," because without comparison, there is no need to define common terms.

 

Incidentally, 255 steps is rather outdated. since it represents 8 bit data words. A more common specification for digital sensors is 14-16 bits, which have as many as 65536 steps, or as many as 16 stops dynamic range (typically 12-13 stops in newer cameras).

 

The proposed use of a 100 (or more) MP camera is not just for hieroglyphics (which are actually 3 dimensional), but specimens of insects, plants, and other perishable specimens. How many historic movies have been lost to equally perishable film? Most of Matthew Brady's famous photos of the Civil War ended up glazing greenhouses. We have scraps of documents written in ancient Egypt (and earlier), but virtually no samples of documents on sulphite paper older than 80 years or so.

[bob_bill]

Ed speaking of images lost, I wonder how many folks in the early 2000's stored images on floppy discs? I wonder how many of those have been lost or have no means to be viewed for the owners?

[Ed_Ingold]

.

Ed speaking of images lost, I wonder how many folks in the early 2000's stored images on floppy discs? I wonder how many of those have been lost or have no means to be viewed for the owners?

The conundrum of archival storage is that the media may endure longer than the means of retrieval. This actually applies to archeology. For many years hieroglyphics were unreadable, even after the Rosetta Stone was discovered bearing the same message in Greek, Aramaic and heiroglyphics. (The key was that the pictographs represented syllables rather than words or thoughts.) Cuneiform tablets are perfectly legible after 5000 years, and we mostly know what they mean. We don't know how the language sounded, but can infer meaning because most are business records for various commodities.

 

It has been years since I've had the ability to read floppy discs (starting with the 8" versions). Soon CDs and DVDs may suffer the same fate (Best Buy recently removed all CDs from their shelves). I still make CDs and DVDs for clients, but the bulk of my deliverables are via the internet. I still have several reel-to-reel recorders, including a large Ampex, weighing about 120 pounds. Oddly, older, red oxide tapes are holding up very well, while black oxide tapes from the 70's may shed their entire coating in flakes unless baked in an oven at low temperatures for several hours. I've had better luck with CDs, going back to the early 90's. Problems are not with aging, rather faulty recorders or physical damage. The endurance of color film is spotty. Kodachrome, cited for its longevity, is misplaced. Kodachrome holds up better against the intense light of projection, but Ektachrome holds up much better in storage.

 

In order to maintain digital archives, it is necessary to update the storage method in a timely fashion. As long as the original is readable, it can be transferred without loss to a new medium. You can't say that about analog systems, including film.

 

Meanwhile, Voyager I sails merrily (and silently) in interstellar space, bearing a gold record with digitized sound form Earth. Three hundred years from now, that may come to plague the real Captain Kirk.