swilson

April 6, 2012

I bought a 5D mark II.

It did not seem like that much money cmpared to some of the other hobbies I have had over the years.

What I like about the 5D2 is my 28mm f/2.8 lens works as a wide angle on it. That with the high iso the 5D2 can shoot at means I am getting shots inside that I simply was not getting before. I am very happy with with my camera, for me it was well worth the money.

April 1, 2012

I can't see that it would be of much use. I learned in a darkroom years ago and of course much of what I learned relates to what I do now, but there nothing I learned in the darkroom that I use now that I could not have learned just shooting digital.

If somewhat wants to learn out of work in a darkroom then go for it, but I can't see it as something needed.

March 25, 2012

When I was shooting film I always put it back in the fridge after exposing a role. This was when we would be gone afew months, I did not want to getting hot for day after day before prosessing.

Having is exposed in no way protects it againts heat, you need to treat is the same after exposing just as nicely as you do before, maybe even a bit nicer.

March 9, 2012

The lens I use 90% of the time when walking around with the 5D II is my 28mm f/2.8, I have always found that 50mm does not give me the FOV I like.

August 10, 2011

In some cases that camera does not matter all that much, in other it does.

Shooting indoors with available light work far better with a good camera.

Sometimes a better camera will not produce images that are far better, but is still more fun to use, and for me photography should be fun.

For me I don't want to be limited to taking photo outside in good light, I want to be able to get photos in poor light and have them look good,for me the camera and lens do matter.

August 8, 2011

With small prints made from film shots it is not the extra resolution that makes the differance, it is the lower grain visibility you get with a larger format.

August 1, 2011

The limit to sharpness from diffration does not depend on the lens. Of course a poor lens will show less problems with diffraction simply because it is not sharp to begin with.

Put another way, not matter how good a lens is it can't get around diffection problems.

July 30, 2011

I see you are shooting around f/25, no way you can get a sharp image at that f stop, try dropping it to around f/11 or f/8.

At f/25 diffraction is a killer.

July 29, 2011

I use DPP, it is not the best but it comes with the camera and works well enough for me.

I rarely edit a photo after converting with DPP so I just save as jpeg. If I need to I can always go back and reconvert as a tiff.

July 29, 2011

Regarding the question of how large can you print with a given film format, there is an experiment that is fairly easy to help decide how large of a print you can make before moving up to a larger format film would show an improvement.

Using any format you wish take a photo with one of your sharpest lenses, in my case I use my 50mm, then change to a longer lens and take the same shot, in my case i would use around a 100mm lens. Make a series of print sizes from the photograph taken with the shorter lens and prints that match the scale with he longer lens. For example if I shoot my two photos with a 50mm and 100mm lens then for a 12x18 inch print from the 50mm shot I would make a 6x9 inch print from the shot using the 100mm lens. The result is that the two photos will have the same scale. When you get to a print size where you can see an improvement in the photo taken with the longer lens you are past the limit for the format the photos were taken with.

Of course the viewing distance you use is going to have a large impact on when you see the differences between the two shots.

This can all be done with a 35mm format and then scale up the results for larger format.

My guess is that if you are viewing the print close up that enlarging past around 8x will be produce a print that be noticeably poorer compared to going to a larger format and enlarging less, again viewing the print up close. Clearly the exact number depends on the film, lens and scanner (if use) to make the print.

Another way to look at this is some people are pretty happy with their 4000 ppi scans for film, but if they took the same shot with a format twice and large and scanned at 2000 ppi scan the larger format scanned at 2000 ppi would look far better.

June 7, 2011

I don't think they every said that their photos were as good as the pros, but they are good enough for what they are. I think spending that amount of tax payers money on photos is crazy.

May 30, 2011

For me the question of whether image quality is important if fairly easy, do I have photos where I would like them more if the image quality was higher? For me the answer is sure, I have lots of photos where better image quality would greatly improve the photo, less motion blur, less noise/grain, sharper image etc. Now I am an getting the best out of my camera, I have lots of light and a stable camera, then I would say that very few of these image would improve much with better image quality. But for me the question of image quality is most important when the conditions for shooting are not idea.

April 19, 2011

I know that for myself I have been getting better photos with a better camera, lens, tripod. Or at least I like the photos more, which is what matter to me. So for me the gear does make a differance. Just a simple thing like a cable release makes a big differance in many cases, sure it is simple and cheap but it is still gear and it improves photos a lot, as does a better body.

April 12, 2011

I have had a lot of problems with lenses and have sent back something like 5 to date. If I recall correctly 3 of them where way blurry in one corner of the image and sharp in the others. The other two lenses did not auto-focus well, missing focus by a huge amount 80% of the time.

I don't buy lenses over the internet any more, I want to see how they will work on my camera before buying.

April 8, 2011

Dave that is all fine and good but Rihi was talking about Velvia 50 not Ilford Delta 100.

The point is pretty simple, if Velvia has a resolution of 160 then you need a really great lens if you are going to get 150 line pairs/mm.

In looking at the MTF curves Fuji only plots out to around 75 cycles/mm so it is hard to know what it would be at 150 cycles/mm. But it sounds like there is more data other places so maybe that is where the 160 cycles/mm number has come from.

April 1, 2011

Zach, you really don't konw what you are talking about here, sorry.

April 1, 2011

Zach, the camera is rotated around its entrance pupil, so there is no shift of perspective as you describe it.

I do multi row stitching all the time, typically 3 row x 8 to 10 columns, there is no problem with perspective at all.

March 31, 2011

PTgui will take out any warping and lens distortions. Once you have your photos to stitch you can choose what direction you want the image viewed from. You can get the same corrections that a view camera does when it shift the lens.

So take this for a case

That is an exterm wide angle view, but I can stitch it any number of ways, as follows

Those are all made up from the same soure images, just stitched pointing diferent angles

March 28, 2011

I doubt it will come close to a Nikon 9000, but maybe better then a flatbed.

I see its optical resolution is 3200 dpi, which tells me it is not going for the high end. But if it is sharp at 3200 dpi then it could do fairly well with MF.

March 22, 2011

To Kenneth Smith

Dude, it's just a camera.

March 21, 2011

I shot film for a lot of years before digital came along, and in a very real way I wish I have shot film more like I shoot digital now. When I was shooting film pretty much every shot had to be "worth" shooting. When I started shooting digital I started shooting a lot more of the date to date things in life that slip by, the kind of shots I mostly missed getting with film.

Whereas I loved the range of photos I was getting with digital it was pretty rough going in the beginning. I had a 1.3 mp camera that would take at least 2 seconds to take the photo once you pushed the shutter button. It was only good for print up to about 4x6, and not great at that size. It was not until I got a DSLR that photography really felt that same again, that responsive feel that I use to get with my film SLR.

I have digitized many of my old film photos, when I go through the years I much prefer the photos I have taken with my digit camera.

March 17, 2011

I have not had nearly the problems with stitching that Mauro would have us believe.

I am mostly going after a wider field of view. I like to shoot using a 28mm lens, my camera with a 28mm lens can see a bit more detail then I can with my eye, so I am capturing all that I can see in the scene.

Here is an example

<a href="http://sewcon.com/photos/pan11-rect-06-26-10.jpg">Pretry big photo</a>

This is just a photo of the road that I use to run on a lot, I took a bunch of stitched photos going up and down this road, just to have something to remember the road that I have spend so much time on.

I use a panoramic head and good stitching software, which might not be needed but it makes stitching very easy.

I can understand that stitching is not for everyone, but it can work very well indeed and is not nearly as hard as some would have you believe.

March 3, 2011

The Raw files can now also be found here

<a href="http://sewcon.com/raw_files/archive.zip">http://sewcon.com/raw_files/archive.zip</a>

This should download fairly fast.

March 2, 2011

Mauro, I am downloading the raw files, but the free account takes a fair bit of time. If you don't have objections I will put the raw files up on my server, where they will down load much faster.

March 2, 2011

There is clearly a difference in opinion as to how well defined the colors for a negative are. I would suggest that perhaps it would be good to make this a two part competition, the first part as it where the film images are not available and then a second part where we see how well we can make the film shots when viewing the film shots.

I don't believe that it will be possible to exactly match the film shots but depending on the subject I find I can get pretty close.

Now here is challenge for Mauro, when you have all the images that people have submitted make 4x6 inch prints of all of them along with the film scans. Give these groups of prints to people who have not seen the images before and see if they can guess which one is the film image.

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Posts posted by swilson