Hidden costs in medium format?

I've only vey recently got into medium format and the 6x7
transparencies I've got back are pretty impressive comapred with 35mm.
I've just had a look at scanning costs for 6x7 though, around £50 a
scan!! I wish I'd checked this out before buying my mamiya rb67, I
though MF was affordable now, my rb67 was basically new and only £650
with 90mm C and 180mm C lenses. I could have waited a year or
something and got something like the new kodak 14 Mpixal DSLR and used
my nikon lenses. Sure body only it's like £3000+ right now, but in a
year and at £50 a scan that would pay itself off pretty quickly. (My
back would also thank me the rb is a bot of a monster!)

How do you guys cope with getting prints? Only shoot print film?

Please note this post is in no way ment to start ANOTHER film vs
digital debate...

Mark Liddell wrote:


How do you guys cope with getting prints? Only shoot print film?


I go downstairs stick the negative in the enlarger and expose paper. Or
you could get it done professionally. 50 Britsh pounds is enough to get a
pretty big print done commerically here.

Nick

From: (Mark Liddell)

I've only vey recently got into medium format and the 6x7
transparencies I've got back are pretty impressive comapred with 35mm.
I've just had a look at scanning costs for 6x7 though, around £50 a
scan!

How do you guys cope with getting prints? Only shoot print film?

Buy your own scanner, something like a 4,000 dpi Nikon LS-8000 or LS-9000 or
the Minolta medium format model. In the US it will pay for itself in about
40-50 scans at the prices you mentioned. I've had the 8000 for almost three
years and it does very well on 645 and 6x7 cm chromes.

I could have waited a year or something and got something like the
new kodak 14 Mpixal DSLR and used my nikon lenses.

That's also a good idea, though the 14n has some problems that make it hard to
use in the field (very noisy at mid-range and high ISO's and too slow to
turn-on for most people ... more of a studio camera). Because the digital
files have so little grain they blow up as large prints much better than you
might expect.

I just bought a Canon 1Ds, with full-frame sensor and 11 Mpixels, and I get
much better large prints (20x30") from it than from 35 mm film, approaching the
quality of 645. I wouldn't have believed this had I not seen it myself. The
first 20x30" print I did was much better than I had hoped for.

I'm going to take the 1Ds and a Pentax 645 and my Mamiya 6x7 on a trip in two
weeks and shoot some of the same scenes with comparable focal lengths and see
how the prints compare up to 24x30". Wouldn't be surprised if I end up selling
off one of the MF systems after these tests are done.

Please note this post is in no way ment to start ANOTHER film vs
digital debate...

Probably wishful thinking ... Many film users have little experience with
digital and simply don't believe many of the claims. Try it and see for
yourself, that's what I did.

Bill

"Mark Liddell" wrote in message
om...
I've only vey recently got into medium format and the 6x7
transparencies I've got back are pretty impressive comapred with 35mm.
I've just had a look at scanning costs for 6x7 though, around £50 a
scan!!

For the price of 5 scans you can get a decent scanner and be done with it.

If you can afford them, look at a Nikon 9000 or Minolta Mulipro dedicated
film scanner. If that is too pricey, look at an Epson 4870 flatbed. If that
is still too pricey, look at an Epson 3170.

Doug
--
Doug's "MF Film Holder" for batch scanning "strips" of 120/220 medium format
film:
http://home.earthlink.net/~dougfishe...lderintro.html

Mark Liddell wrote:

I've only vey recently got into medium format and the 6x7
transparencies I've got back are pretty impressive comapred with 35mm.
I've just had a look at scanning costs for 6x7 though, around £50 a
scan!! I wish I'd checked this out before buying my mamiya rb67, I
though MF was affordable now, my rb67 was basically new and only £650
with 90mm C and 180mm C lenses. I could have waited a year or
something and got something like the new kodak 14 Mpixal DSLR and used
my nikon lenses. Sure body only it's like £3000+ right now, but in a
year and at £50 a scan that would pay itself off pretty quickly. (My
back would also thank me the rb is a bot of a monster!)

How do you guys cope with getting prints? Only shoot print film?

I only do prints for gallery exhibition, while my work only gets scanned.
The lab I use for processing does a great job at making prints from
transparency, and the cost is the same as for negative film.

One scanning cost savings choice is to get Kodak Pro PhotoCD of several
frames at a time. This can be more economical than getting your own
scanner, but only up to a point. Obviously, this is not as good as drum
scanning, but it is far less expensive. If you anticipate really large
prints, or need it for work, then get drum scans.

Depending upon your computer, there may be some used flat scanner
choices. The old AGFA DuoScan series included some impressive choices.
Others to investigate are the Leaf flat scanner, and the Linotype Hell
flat scanners, with several choices. Some newer flat scanners may also be
good choices, and might cost less.

The last option is to get a lab to dupe your images onto 35 mm film, and
scan those instead. While these would not be as high a quality, if you
really needed a digital file, these would work okay, and the cost would
be low.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio
http://www.allgstudio.com

Mark Liddell writes:

I've only vey recently got into medium format and the 6x7
transparencies I've got back are pretty impressive comapred with 35mm.
I've just had a look at scanning costs for 6x7 though, around £50 a
scan!!

With any type of film photography, the cost of scans is prohibitive if
you plan to do them on a regular basis ... and most labs do very poor
scans, anyway.

It's much more economical to buy your own scanner.

I wish I'd checked this out before buying my mamiya rb67, I
though MF was affordable now, my rb67 was basically new and only £650
with 90mm C and 180mm C lenses.

MF isn't much different from 35mm in terms of costs.

I could have waited a year or something and got something like
the new kodak 14 Mpixal DSLR and used my nikon lenses.

MF provides a good 80 megapixels, and even 35mm beats 14 Mp, so that
would be quite a step backwards ... especially for £3000, which would
pay for the camera, lens, _and_ the scanner for 35mm film.

How do you guys cope with getting prints? Only shoot print film?

I almost never do anything with my film except scan. I only have prints
prepared if someone wants to buy prints.

--
Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly.

(Mark Liddell) writes:

I've only vey recently got into medium format and the 6x7
transparencies I've got back are pretty impressive comapred with 35mm.
I've just had a look at scanning costs for 6x7 though, around £50 a
scan!!

Which is a problem if you scan all your transparencies. I am curious why
you scan them all.

How do you guys cope with getting prints? Only shoot print film?

Prints? I am curious why you shoot transparencies, when you want prints?
And why scan, if you shoot film?

I have a file cabinet full of transparencies (35mm and 6x7), which are not
going to be scanned, and some few dozen Kodak Photo CDs of transparencies
which have been scanned for the Web. Much fewer than the total. I probably
have not had a dozen prints made from the slides, and those were for
payment to models who gave me a release in exchange for prints.

If you want lots of digital images, you probably are better off with a
digital camera. If you want lots of prints, you probably are better off
with print film.

What goal are you achieving shooting 6x7 trannies?
--
Philip Stripling | email to the replyto address is presumed
Legal Assistance on the Web | spam and read later. email to philip@
http://www.PhilipStripling.com/ | my domain is read daily.

"Mark Liddell" wrote in message
om...
I've only vey recently got into medium format and the 6x7
transparencies I've got back are pretty impressive comapred with 35mm.
I've just had a look at scanning costs for 6x7 though, around £50 a
scan!! I wish I'd checked this out before buying my mamiya rb67, I
though MF was affordable now, my rb67 was basically new and only £650
with 90mm C and 180mm C lenses. I could have waited a year or
something and got something like the new kodak 14 Mpixal DSLR and used
my nikon lenses. Sure body only it's like £3000+ right now, but in a
year and at £50 a scan that would pay itself off pretty quickly. (My
back would also thank me the rb is a bot of a monster!)

The Kodak Pro/14 is a disaster: no microlenses and no antialiasing filter.
Ugly Moire and aliasing artifacts, and hideous high-ISO performance.

In contrast, everyone raves about the Canon 1Ds.

IMHO, 645 will be pointless at some point in the near future.

How do you guys cope with getting prints? Only shoot print film?

The Epson 4870 should do quite well for up to 13x16 on an Epson 2200 from
6x7. A careful application of a series of (sharpen very lightly and
downsample by a factor of 1/4.14 or so) steps should get you a reasonably
sharp image around 1800 to 2100 dpi for decent 6x or 7x enlargements (6x7 x
6x = 13x16!). Even the Nikon 8000/9000 only gets 2400 dpi or so of dSLR
quality information (on a good day, at that). IMHO, film is really only good
for 8x enlargements, so the 4870 gets you close and the Nikon gets you
there. (There is a bit more to be had with perfect technique and drum scans,
but IMHO it's better plan so that you don't need it than to be unhappy when
you don't get it.)

David J. Littleboy

Tokyo, Japan

Mark Liddell wrote:


How do you guys cope with getting prints? Only shoot print film?

Uh yea, there's a reason it's called "print film". I think they call it
that because it's the kind of film you shoot if you are wanting prints.

--

Stacey