oskar_ojala

If you ignore small price differences for a second, it's much about what kind of equipment suits you. Eg. I've got some great shots made with a Mamiya C2/C3 (don't remember which it was right now), but the camera is heavy and bulky, and the mechanisms on Rolleis feel more refined. So I bought a Rolleiflex and it was the right camera for me, with many nice features. The Mamiyas, however, offer interchangeable lenses, if you think you'll need that.

Peter, the '54 MX 75/3.5 'flex is indeed excellent quality and the price is quite reasonable. Can't manage without mine!

Color neg film holds a quite impressive range of highlight detail, so you could expose on the safe side to get decent shadow detail while retaining good highlight detail. However, with color negs you'll probably run into reciprocity problems, some films can get nasty casts on longer exposures (these films were designed for portrait use, which doesn't require 30 sec. exposures), especially if you want to shoot at something like f22 and set the time accordingly. Fuji Reala might be worth trying because its color layer technology, but then you'd have to shoot roll film.

 

Remember that for night photograpy there isn't a single "correct" exposure; a lot depends on the mood you're trying to achieve. I also suggest shooting close to dusk, since a hint of blue in the sky usually looks better than the blackness of the night. Also, I've had good experiences using tungsten film, ie. Ektachrome 64T, to balance for the lights and create a different mood than daylight film.

The Kiev (the better one, forgot its number, the worse model should not be worth the trouble) is dirt cheap but can provide good pictures (check the equipment before you buy, as with all cheap cameras). It's an SLR, so if you like that it's the way to go.

 

Among more established SLRs, the RB67 Mamiyas seem to go relatively cheap now on the used market, but they're bigger and much more expensive than Kiev. However, they have their advantages.

 

The Mamiya TLRs offer decent value and expandability. Not really cheap, but certainly not expensive.

 

The less-legendary Rolleiflexes (ie. those with a max aperture of 3.5) and Rolleicords are nice for the money. Someone might disagree, but I think they're far more ergonomic than the Mamiya TLRs and thus prefer them.

 

As in everything, "inexpensive" is somewhat relative (photography is NOT inexpensive, IMO).

Well it would be a useful camera unless it would cost so much, which it does, because so few

were/are made and they atract collectors. But frankly, I think that overpriced MF numero uno

is the Hassy; used (and not even mint) stuff costs a lot, new stuff costs a fortune and the

bodies are way overpriced. Here in Europe, a Hassy H1 costs twice as much as a Rollei 6008AF

and I frankly don't see what you get for the money (compare it to AF 6x4.5 cameras and it seems

even more ridiculous). And look at the prices of 200-series bodies! Compared to Mamiyas, Rolleis

(6000-series) and view cameras, they are very expensive systems.

 

The most economic way to buy a Rollei TLR is still buying used: there are plenty available,

the prices are very reasonable and the cameras are simply great.

Well I haven't looked at many pictures from the PM, but the optics should be excellent. Likewise, I really love the look of the CZ Tessar 75/3.5 (sharpness is great, ghosting non-existant). So it's not going to be easy for you, you really must choose which "look" suits you better and how you like to handle the cameras (IMO, the 'flex seems to have better ergonomics than the PM, but others might disagree).

There are some minor but useful improvements (mainly to usability) with the G3, but I think that the G2 could be a much better deal: since everyone wants the latest, it can be had for reasonable prices and it's a fairly good digicam.

<i>Is there any reason to shoot at the higher resolution given that interpolation can be controlled and varied in the computer?</i>

 

<p>Yeah, that's the real question...there could be an advantage using the camera-interpolation, since the programmers of the camera had an idea of how the hardware works and could have optimized the software for that. But I don't think the difference can be great.

They probably want to collect the money at every point in the chain and since Canon is large company, they can probably get away with it quite well.

<p>Having studied maths and/or physics helps a bit...

 

<p>Interpolation is essentially estimating unknown values based on known values (see temperature example above). This can be done by averaging, eg. if the temp of a developer is 75 F in the beginning of development and 65 F at the end, we can interpolate that mid-way through development the temperature was 70 F. <b>NOTE:</b> the key point is that there are different algorithms for interpolation; this is important for many imaging applications, eg. digicams.

 

<p>A digital camera has sensors for the three primary colors separately (the Foveon is the exception), which means that to produce a full-color image for us humans, the values from the sensors must be <b>interpolated</b>. The interpolation will then result in the images we use, ie. a full-color image on the computer.

 

<p>Since the CCD sensors can be arranged differently and the values can be interpolated in different ways, manufacturers can advertise slightly different megapixel counts (ie. the Fuji S2). What counts is that the number of the sensors place an upper limit on the achievable resolution, leading to the fact that one camera can produce 3 megapixels and another 5 megapixels, but their resolution could be the same (it's just a difference in the number of pixels, it does not measure actual resolution). (it's very roughly like "not all 100-speed films are the same in terms of resolution")

In addition to what Lex said, also look for distortions in the bokeh, eg. a typical Nikkor 50 has roundish out of focus highlights only in the center, while in the corners the highlights get a more elongated shape - like they're squashed. Combined with the "double edge bokeh", this looks particularly bad.

 

I have a 3.5 Tessar and it seems to have somewhat similar to the examples posted (ie. good).

Provia 400F if significantly grainier than 100F but in 6x6 and larger I don't find this to be any problem. It is, however, far more difficult to expose and has higher contrast than the negative films listed, so if you're not familiar with it and intend to use it, I suggest you shoot something else in addition to it "just in case".

Since someone who makes prints needs a cutter anyway, it's much more economical to buy A4's (or whatever equivalent you have in the US) and then cut them down if you want smaller images. Plus, you don't need to have ten different paper sizes hanging around.

Color negative films: Fuji NPH (discussions seem to indicate that the new on is actually 400 speed). Kodak Portra 400NC (or 400UC if you like more agressive colors and contrast). I've liked the new Agfa Optima 200 in MF and the 400 has been good too (I've only shot it in 35 mm, though). These are all pro films designed with portraits in mind and give excellent colors.

The way to do it is with a script, eg. Photoshop action (Fred Miranda has one for sale, with all kinds of small improvements to the basic idea) - if you have the time to do it by hand, you have too much time on your hands!

 

I think the method is overrated - a good interpolation algorithm (eg. Lanczos) will produce comparable results with one step - saves time, even with scripts. There's no silver bullet; if you want a large, sharp image, you need a big file to begin with.

The bicubic algorithm in PS7 seems to produce very nice, smooth images. You can then sharpen according to your taste after using it. Personally, I don't see much point in downsampling in small steps, but the discussion Gordon linked can provide some interesting thoughts.

Before is better, but I don't think there's a difference in quality worth talking about. Much more important is what algorithm do you resize with, how do you sharpen, how do you convert to jpeg...

Digital zoom is really a waste of time: the quality is bad and it does nothing which can't do with a computer afterwards. Check closely the specs of the 4 Mpix camera, most digicams have some sort of optical zoom.

 

There are differences between megapixels and megapixels, but 2.1 sounds awfully low. I would recommend a 4 or 5 Mpix camera (and it's good to have a little "room for growth": you'll never know when you'll take a memorable shot of your kids which you want to have an 8x10" of.

Tha channel mixer (and Photoshop) is a great tool, but it requires practice and developing your visualization so that when you take a picture you know exactly how you want it to look and how to accomplish that. But I'm sure you'll learn a great deal in the process, good luck!

the price is higher for a reason :)

 

I haven't scanned Xtra, but based on negs and prints I've looked at, I'd say that the adjustments needed in Photoshop are so significant that they'd be a major time sink (if possible).

I don't have that camera available right now, but take the camera, put the filter in front of the lens and see if it block any of those important "windows" and how turning the lens part is affected. My guess is there shouldn't be any serious problems, the optical viewfinder could be blocked, but you can always use the LCD. It will probably block flash, though, so you can't use flash when using the 52 mm filter.

 

Instead of using a BW contrast filter on the camera, you could shoot color and then use the channel mixer in Photoshop to bring out a similar BW picture as you had used a filter (there might be slight differences, but I don't think they'll matter for "general" photography.) But if you want to use the filter (eg. in case you use a very strong filter requiring considerable exposure adjustment), there should be no problems.

I once had to shoot Fuji Xtra 400 this year and it seems the main problems with it are excessive contrast, not-quite-perfect skin tones and modest color saturation, in that order. NPH is low contrast, but the colors are good.

 

Personally, I would pick NPH anytime, but for travel and especially landscape I frequently want a little more punch, so I shoot slides. You can't have it all and tastes differ...However, the speed and low contrast makes NPH quite versatile.

Flare. Sun is just outside frame, the lens elements get many reflections and the contrast is too great for the CCD to handle, resulting in blooming. Solution: re-compose and/or use a lens hood.

 

Note that the situation is a torture test for any lens, but the purple glow is particularly bad here.

I think we will see such a body at some point. Two years ago full-frame DSLR's were by some considered as too hard to make due to economics and the vignetting issue, but I haven't heard Canon 1Ds or Kodak 14n owners complain about such issues. I believe that engineers can devise a working, full-frame RF camera.

<p>HT is an interesting technology that will probably be standard in the future and provide

even better performance for multiple threads/processes than it does now. That said, I think

that in terms of PS (and image editing), your money is better spent on an AMD XP with a large

memory. HT does have inherent limitations, which will place limits on how much speed up PS

can achieve with it in theory, ie. don't expect it to suddenly double speed for typical editing.

 

<p>And I don't see why PS (or any app for that matter) should be aware of HT; it's just an underlying

hardware implementation, something the OS should deal with. PS is threaded (maybe it could be threaded better?) so it should automatically support HT <i>given that</i> the version of Windows

you're using supports HT.