Digital as Preview?

[trace_dibble6]

Dinosaur that I am, I have no use for digital "photography," that

modern day pictorialism and harbinger of the downfall of western

civilization. Be that as it may, a thought occured to me: rather than

breaking out the trusty Polaroid for test exposures, is it possible

to configure a digital camera in such a manner that every aspect of

Velvia (light sensitivity, color balance, image contrast, etc.) would

be accurately simulated? If I could see the effect of my exposure

choice, and of adding or backing off a half stop, I could see where

this would be a valuable tool. Is this a pipe dream?

[mikecat]

I use a Nikon CoolPix 5000 to do test shots for lighting setups and it works great to get a rough idea. But ... you can only get so much information out of the little tiny LCD screen.

 

Even if you could match all the characteristics of Velvia (don't hold your breath), I'm not sure that you'd be able to get any critical information out of the test shot until you got it out of the camera. And if you have to wait to get it out of the camera, then you've just limited its usefulness as a system for test exposures.

 

Plus, I haven't done any digital stuff so far that didn't require at least some PhotoShop manipulation before it was an acceptable image.

[shutay]

I do use a Nikon CoolPix 995 to preview certain shots myself, sometimes to check metering, etc., especially when I first started out in medium format over a year ago. Part of the reason for doing this is that I don't have a "good" handheld meter, but even so, I quite like having a digital record of the shot that I can tie back to my MF slides or prints. The bottom line is that personally, I do believe that after a bit of practice and selecting the right digicam, it can be a very handy tool to the medium format photographer.

 

However, be warned:

1. Often, I found that shutter speeds and aperture settings didn't quite match up, or sometimes, I would have ISO 160 film in the TLR and well, only ISO 100 or 200 in the digital camera. Then you just do the mental adjustments, and when you factor in the fact that my TLR has shutter speeds like 1/25, 1/50 and so on, the whole things becomes rather more approximate and you start having to transpose up and down ISO values.

2. Dynamic range. For the time being, even if you got the most fancy doodle megabucks Digital SLR, it won't have the dynamic range of film. You're on your own here, you'll just have to experiment a little with side-by-side film and digital shots and compare results afterwards and make mental notes of differences. Fujifilm recently introduced a new SuperCCD sensor that has more dynamic range than other types of imaging sensor, but even so I understand it still doesn't quite match slide film and certainly can't touch print film.

 

Not all digital cameras are equal! I once read an article about doing precisely this in what I thought was a reputable photography magazine and the author's choice of digital camera made the whole article a joke and a waste of time. Make sure you get one with spot metering and whatnot if it's important to you. Not all have a good range of manual shutter and aperture settings. Many don't have manual exposure at all. Be warned also that many digicams will have a very limited ISO range. Some consumer type digital cameras have ISO range of ISO 100 to 800 or ISO 50 to 400, but that's not very common. Most will only have ISO 100 - 400 or even just ISO 100 to 200.

 

Your choice of digital camera is very important, as most will be a zoom compact type of camera. You will have to go for the more, "prosumer" or serious consumer type digital camera if not a digital SLR. If you do go for the consumer type, watch out for f/2.8 - f/5.6 zoom lenses. Such lens restrictions might force you to do more mental transposing up and down of f/stops... adding more unecessary work. Other cameras like the Canon G3 have a generous f/2 to f/3 zoom lens, quite nice. More on f/stops on digital cameras, the smallest aperture on virtually all consumer digital cameras is probably f/10 or f/11. Most will have a minimum aperture of f/8 only. Why? The physical dimensions of the diaphragm opening is so small because these digital cameras have very small sized sensors that apertures smaller than that will cause serious diffraction effects (blurring and whatnot, I am told). This leads us on to the fact that consumer digital cameras have considerably greater depth of field, so watch out for this.

 

Hope this helps. These are just my experiences with using my Nikon CoolPix 995 as a meter and preview with my YashicaMAT-LM TLR and Welta folder.

[dick roadnight cotswolds]

You can use £20,000's worth of digital to simulate Velvia and save on polaroid film

 

The the most demanding (and important) aspect is to simulate the limited lattitude of Velvia, but I think you can do it with quality kit like the eyelike.

 

Take an Epson 7600 with you so that you do not have to do all the assesment on the mac lap top.

 

You might even conclude that 40 Mega-pixel 16 shot digital makes MF look sick.

[lawrence_smithers]

Hi Trace: It looks like many of us are on the same wavelength. I have been using my Nikon cp5000 in just this fashion. I find that by using the manual settings on the camera I can come close to the Bronica +Provia product. I find that being able to quickly check the exposure histogram( press quick button right after exposure) you can see not only the pattern but also if you have any burnout. Obviously you can check framing . You do need to have a light hood for the lcd and you have to get used to shutter speeds which may be fractions of full speeds. You can use fine adjustments of white balance to get close to a kelvin value for light quality. I think that colour saturation would be close to that of Velvia using minus .3 ev compensation.

I use spot ttl metering and on shutter preferred check highlights,blue sky ,vegetation in shadow and darkest shadow. This gives me a range of f stop readings which I can use in a modified zone system. I can then transfer the zone5 reading to the manual user setting to make my test exposure.

The real beauty of this approach is the fact that the Nikon 5000 can be slipped into almost any shirt pocket and is virtally weightless.

You will be amazed just how handy this system can be.