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Digital quality (vs 35mm): Any real answers?
A 2MP DSLR often does better than a 35mm camera because the depth
of field is so much greater for the tiny focal length lens. Another thing you might ask is how many pixels are you actually using in your eye? If you only have 2MP in the area that the photo is in your visual range it no longer matters if there are 2 or 200MP. And unless you take your film to a professional photo lab the processing lab will likely print it out of focus anyway. The net result is I find even my 5 year old 2MP camera delivers sharper pictures than my pile of 35mm equipment does. "MXP" wrote in message . .. All the tests I have seen where 35mm film is compared to a modern DSLR (6-11MP)...the DSLR pictures shows more detail and less noise than a fine grained film like Provia 100F. It is quite fustrating that 6MP can beat 35mm. I know many scanners can do 4000 dpi but if most of the information is noise? I still use film and it will be quite interresting to see a test where e.g. Provia 100F shows more detail than an e.g. D1X/D70 or 1Ds/300D. When I see my slides projected it seems strange that a 6MP DSLR can do better.... Max "Toralf" skrev i en meddelelse ... Hi. I'm still wondering about how good the image quality of modern digital cameras (especially SLRs) really is, in particular how it compares with 35mm film. I've seen many articles on the subject on the Net, but few of them seem to give you a lot of tangible information (I want to see the numbers, please), and I can't help feeling that tests they refer to are usually done to prove a point, i.e. that digital cameras are as good as 35mm, which is not the way you do proper research. To say a few words about myself, I'm working for a company that makes high-accuracy, large-format scanners, so I'm not particularly impressed when I hear e.g 6 million pixels (you need to talk about *billions* of pixels if I'm really going to listen), and the word "interpolation" leaves a bad taste in my mouth. But this also means I know that high resolution isn't everything, of course; parameters like geometric precision or signal-to-noise ratio also count a lot. Be that as it may, some of the questions I'd like to have answered are these: 1. What is the resolution of a 35mm film anyway? I think I read somewhere that a colour negative is at least 3000dpi. Is that correct? How about black&white? (Yeah I know, a film doesn't have pixels in exactly the same sense as a digital image, but it *is* made up of discrete elements after all.) 2. What about the print? 300dpi? 3. I know that the most common sensors are made up of individual elements for the read, green and blue channels, arranged in a special pattern, whose data is somehow interpolated into RGB pixels. But what exactly does e.g. 6 megapixels mean in that context? Does it mean that the sensor has (just) 6 million elements, or that data from a higher number (like 18 or 24 million) is combined into 6 million RGB pixels? The same question more bluntly put: When Canon/Nikon/Pentax is talking about 6MP, is that just a big a lie as the one about 10MP on Sigma cameras? (I'm hoping not, as I think the Sigma/Foveon way of counting really takes the cake.) 4. Can the inaccuracy associated with the above mentioned interpolation be quantified and/or measured against e.g. the error introduced by scanning a negative with a film-scanner? And how does it compare with pixel interpolation in the scanning sense? 5. And how about those other parameters I mentioned briefly above - like different kinds of geometric distortions, noise, flat field bias etc.? Can those be compared with the ones of plain old film? 6. And the chromic aberration effects? How serious are they these days? And are the full-frame sensors that are actually found in some high-end cameras now, in any way comparable to film in that respect? Well, maybe some people will say I have a somewhat critical or conservative attitude towards digital cameras, but I actually think you ought to be a bit sceptical when something "new and wonderful" comes a long; new technology is too often introduced for technology's own sake, IMO. - Toralf |
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