I have a 30mp camera redux

"frederick" wrote:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/re..._vs_film.shtml

I suspect his outrageously expensive (US$8000 or so) Imacon FlexTight was
defective. Everyone else who has compared 6MP dSLRs to decently scanned film
finds that the film slightly edges out 6MP dSLRs. So this page is Journal of
Irreproducable Results class work.

http://www.normankoren.com/Tutorials/MTF7.html

"I estimate that a full-frame sensor with 8.3 megapixels would have
resolution equal to 35mm film."

(There are things I disagree with on that page, for example his uncritical
acceptance of the Foveon snake oil. But overall, it's quite good.)

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

On Nov 19, 2:48 pm, John Adams wrote:
More fuel for the fire. Looks to me like all you butt-****ers owe me an
apology. An 8mp DSLR don't give better resolution quality than a 35mm
when you are making larger prints. An 8mp DSLR would only look equal if
you stay within it's limitation in print size. Or do you all propose
that we throw away the print medium and just view photos on our
computers from now on?

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/mpmyth.htm

PRINT SIZES

If an image is clear you pretty much can print any image from any modern camera at any size. Sure, if you print mural size you won't have the sharpness you'd get from 4 x 5" film, but you'll have an image that looks fine when viewed from the reasonable distance at which normal people will view that image.

Ideally you'd like to print at 300 DPI to look sharp even when viewed too close. You can figure this by:

Long print dimension in inches = 4 x (square root of megapixels)

For example, for a four megapixel camera the square root of four is two. Two times four is eight. Thus the biggest print you can make without losing sharpness compared to film at normal viewing distances is is 6 x 8." From a sixteen MP camera likewise you could go 12 x 16." Of course you can print bigger, just you won't have the sharpness of film. Also few people are able to get all the sharpness of which film is capable, making this harder to compare.

Of course most people want to print bigger than that, and that's fine.

The entire resolution issue is one of scale and viewing distance. Sure, more resolution is better at bigger sizes, but how sharp your image is has little to do with how good it is. Far more important technically is whether or not the colors are correct and whether or not any sharpening was done tastefully. Many digital cameras add nasty looking sharpening that puts very artificial halos around sharp lines, making the image look obviously digital to those of us who recognize these things. Sloppy sharpening is done to impress the innocent by overemphasizing the lines around things if real sharpness and resolution is lacking.

Of course you can print much bigger, since sharpness isn't as important in color as most people worry. You can get great results from a 6MP camera at 20 x 30" if you want, since normal people view big images from further away. This is all art and in the eye of the beholder; I prefer huge prints made from my 4 x 5" film camera, and for portraits I prefer the smoothing of digital cameras.

Don't worry too much about this, since sharpness is not as important in color as it is in B/W. I make 12 x 18" color prints all the time from 3 to 6 MP cameras and they look great, since I only print images that are good to begin with.

TO REPLACE FILM

Digital does not replace film. Just look here for why a magazine like Arizona Highways simply does not accept images from digital cameras for publication since the quality is not good enough, even from 11 megapixel cameras, to print at 12 x 18."

If you do fret the pixel counts, I find that it takes about 25 megapixels to simulate 35mm film, which is still far more than any practical digital camera. At the 6 megapixel level digital gives about the same sharpness as a duplicate slide, which is plenty for most things. Honestly, I have actually had digital files written back out onto film to see this. See also my film vs. digital page here.

Of course I use much bigger film than 35mm for all the pretty pictures you see at my website, so digital would need about 100 megapixels to simulate medium format film, or 500 megapixels to simulate 4x5" film. This is all invisible at Internet resolutions, but obvious in gallery size prints.

For images seen at arm's length you need to have about 300 real pixels for every inch of your print's dimensions. If you are looking too closely, as with a contact print, then you'll love to have 600 real pixels or more for every inch of your print. Stand further away as you would from a huge print and even 100 pixels per inch (DPI) can look great. By real pixels I mean real optical pixels, not phony interpolated ones. Multiply the inch dimensions by these DPI figures to get the total resolution (horizontal and vertical, typically thousands in each dimension) you need for a decent image, and multiply these together to get a total number of pixels (usually in the millions, or megapixels.)

For instance, for an excellent 8x10 you need [8" x 300 DPI] x [10 x 300DPI] or 2,400 x 3,000 pixels, or 7,200,000 pixels, or 7.2 megapixels. This is what the formula at the top calculates the easy way.


Having been a professional printer of digital and scanned images,
digital just enlarges better. Even a 6mp camera will do better than a
35mm image. Go to medium format and still only the best cameras will
do better than 8-10mp. Go to large format and of course it is a slam
dunk for film. Now that I'm shooting for myself I can get great 16x24
images off of my 10mp camera of almost any image I shoot, the shot is
a failure if I don't, but only exceptional 35mm images will make it to
16x24 and in most cases the grain will effect the image. For book or
screen images film and digital is a toss up, for big images digital
works so much better.

Tom

David J. Littleboy wrote:

"frederick" wrote:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/re..._vs_film.shtml

I suspect his outrageously expensive (US$8000 or so) Imacon FlexTight was
defective. Everyone else who has compared 6MP dSLRs to decently scanned film
finds that the film slightly edges out 6MP dSLRs. So this page is Journal of
Irreproducable Results class work.

http://www.normankoren.com/Tutorials/MTF7.html

"I estimate that a full-frame sensor with 8.3 megapixels would have
resolution equal to 35mm film."

Yes, and RWG Hunt says the same thing in [1]. It looks like most
people are converging 8 Mpx is about the equivalent of 35mm colour
transparency film. It's really hard to compare, though: you have to
consider a whole bunch of parameters like MTF, noise, colour reponse,
and so on. Simply photographing a test target doesn't do it.

Andrew.


[1] R.W.G. Hunt , The Reproduction of Colour, 6th Edition, 2004.

Andrew Haley wrote:

David J. Littleboy wrote:

"frederick" wrote:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/re..._vs_film.shtml

I suspect his outrageously expensive (US$8000 or so) Imacon FlexTight was
defective. Everyone else who has compared 6MP dSLRs to decently scanned film
finds that the film slightly edges out 6MP dSLRs. So this page is Journal of
Irreproducable Results class work.

http://www.normankoren.com/Tutorials/MTF7.html

"I estimate that a full-frame sensor with 8.3 megapixels would have
resolution equal to 35mm film."

Yes, and RWG Hunt says the same thing in [1]. It looks like most
people are converging 8 Mpx is about the equivalent of 35mm colour
transparency film.


There were claims made that 1.0 MP digital cameras would offer quality
equivalent to 35 film. They didn't. When the best you could get was
a 6 MP digital SLR, it was claimed that this was finally equivalent to
35mm film. It wasn't.

People like Michael Reichmann (Luminous Landscape) have always made
unsubstantiated claims about digital "superiority" that are seized on
as though they were fact by people who desperately want to believe
that their digital camera is as good as 35mm film.

The truth is that digital is good enough for most applications, but
the sensors in the very best 12 MP digital SLRs are still not as good
as the very best films. At 16.7 MP and above the differences are
small and the 21.1 MP Canon EOS 1Ds Mk III will probably be the first
of the "35mm" DSLRs to equal or even improve on the results from film.

It's really hard to compare, though: you have to
consider a whole bunch of parameters like MTF, noise, colour reponse,
and so on. Simply photographing a test target doesn't do it.

Even with 21.1 MP, or 39 MP in a Hasselblad H3, dynamic range is still
the killer. Digital sensors still cannot match the dynamic range of
good quality colour negative film such as Kodak Portra and Fujicolor
Pro 160S. Only the FujiFilm FinePix S5 gets anywhere close, and that
is basically a 6 MP camera with enhanced dynamic range.

For the average photographer with a 10 MP camera, his/her results will
compare well with the mass market 35mm films of the 1990s. But the
best films are very much better than either.

Digital is now good enough for most photographers but let us not fool
ourselves that film lags behind. There are many very good reasons to
choose digital over film. However, ultimate quality is not one of
them, despite what "Luminous Landscape" and its sycophants would like
us to believe.

"Tony Polson" wrote:

The truth is that digital is good enough for most applications, but
the sensors in the very best 12 MP digital SLRs are still not as good
as the very best films. At 16.7 MP and above the differences are
small and the 21.1 MP Canon EOS 1Ds Mk III will probably be the first
of the "35mm" DSLRs to equal or even improve on the results from film.

That's not the experience here. I find that at 11x14, 645 is a noticeable
improvement over 35mm but that at 12x18, there's no reason to shoot 645 if
one has a 5D.

It takes 6x7 to capture more detail than the 5D, but you need to print at
16x20 or larger to see the difference.

(Shooting Provia 100F and TMX 100 and scanning on a Nikon 8000.)

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

In article 4742aacc$0$29812$5a62ac22@per-qv1-newsreader-
01.iinet.net.au, says...
-
-"John Adams" wrote in message
. ..
- Wolfgang Weisselberg wrote:
-
- Hundreds? Millions! All the grain in perfect definition!
-
- -Wolfgang
-
- For the reading comprehension challenged. I realize that English is not
- your first language but do try to keep up.
-
- "Digital does not replace film. Just look here for why a magazine like
- Arizona Highways simply does not accept images from digital cameras for
- publication since the quality is not good enough, even from 11 megapixel
- cameras, to print at 12 x 18.""
-
-ROFL. Top mag that. A 6MP D-SLR will make 12x18 prints easily.

arizona highways is beyond your standards

lets see, 18" x 300 dpi = 5400 pixels long
12" x 300 dpi = 3600 pixels wide
= 19.44 mp

with no crop margin of course.


-
-
-

David J. Littleboy wrote:
"frederick" wrote:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/re..._vs_film.shtml

I suspect his outrageously expensive (US$8000 or so) Imacon FlexTight was
defective. Everyone else who has compared 6MP dSLRs to decently scanned film
finds that the film slightly edges out 6MP dSLRs. So this page is Journal of
Irreproducable Results class work.

http://www.normankoren.com/Tutorials/MTF7.html

"I estimate that a full-frame sensor with 8.3 megapixels would have
resolution equal to 35mm film."

I know that LL article was controversial.
I doubt the author would claim that measured resolution of
the D30 was better than Provia 100. However, I doubt it was
a faulty scanner. His conclusion seems to be that the 3mp
dslr images _looked_ better than, or at least as good as
35mm at normal (up 10 18"x12") print sizes.

On Nov 19, 11:08 am, John Adams wrote:
Those of you saying my slides will be mush if I scan them at 4800DPI are
clueless. Scanning film and slides DPI depends on the size one intends
to print at. For a very large print size scanning film and slides at
2400 or even 4800DPI is the correct way to do it. You bozos had no idea
what the slide scan was for or intended print size so you were talking
out of your arse. Oh, and working at a high end printers doing limited
edition prints is a lot different than printing photos in magazines so
of course they will scan at a much higher DPI, all depends on the final
print size needed. Limited edition prints are much larger than images in
a magazine.

BTW, I went and bought an Oly E510 a few days ago so welcome me to the
group. I ain't going any where any time soon so get used to it.

http://www.scantips.com/basics13.html

For example, a full frame 35 mm color negative scanned at 2400 dpi will
be about 3400x2200 pixels, and about 22 megabytes. Scanning at 2400 dpi
and printing at 300 dpi allows enlarging that printed image 8 times more
than the original film size (2400/300 = 8). Scaling by 8, so that the
1.4 x 0.9 inch film size (36 x 24 mm) prints 8X larger gives 11.2 x 7.2
inches. It will look great in regard to detail if printed at 200 to 300
dpi (assuming the printer can handle it). Scanning film originals can
support this level of detail. Scanning a 6x4 inch photo will not.

Let's quickly review scaling again, to make the point about large
images, and to make sure the simple arithmetic is understood. The basic
fact is that dpi means "pixels per inch". The main point is that the
image size in inches is computed from the image size in pixels, using
resolution to space those pixels on paper.

The ratio of (scanning resolution / printing resolution) gives the
enlargement factor. If scanning at 2700 dpi, and printing at 240 dpi,
then the printed image is 2700/240 = 11.2 times larger than the original
film. We can adjust the printed size by varying the printing resolution,
maybe 200 or 300 dpi instead of 240 dpi.

Saying the same thing another way to make sure it is clear: If we scan
1.4 inches of 35 mm film at 2700 dpi, then we get (1.4 inches x 2700
dpi) = 3780 pixels. If we print 3780 pixels at 240 dpi on paper, then
that image size is (3780 pixels / 240 dpi) = 15.7 inches. 15.7 inches is
11.2 times larger than 1.4 inches. Large images in pixels are needed to
print large images in inches.

For example, to print 8x10 inches at 240 dpi requires (8 inches x 240
dpi) x (10 inches x 240 dpi) = 1920 x 2400 pixels. It takes (1920 pixels
/ 0.9 inches) = 2135 dpi to create this image from 35 mm film (full
frame, so even more if it is cropped).

We do need large images to print large at high scaled resolution. Film
scanners will give us those large images while retaining very good image
quality.

2700dpi on a 35mm frame = 9 megapixels which is good enough.

Tony Polson wrote:
Andrew Haley wrote:

David J. Littleboy wrote:

"frederick" wrote:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/re..._vs_film.shtml
I suspect his outrageously expensive (US$8000 or so) Imacon FlexTight was
defective. Everyone else who has compared 6MP dSLRs to decently scanned film
finds that the film slightly edges out 6MP dSLRs. So this page is Journal of
Irreproducable Results class work.
http://www.normankoren.com/Tutorials/MTF7.html
"I estimate that a full-frame sensor with 8.3 megapixels would have
resolution equal to 35mm film."
Yes, and RWG Hunt says the same thing in [1]. It looks like most
people are converging 8 Mpx is about the equivalent of 35mm colour
transparency film.


There were claims made that 1.0 MP digital cameras would offer quality
equivalent to 35 film. They didn't. When the best you could get was
a 6 MP digital SLR, it was claimed that this was finally equivalent to
35mm film. It wasn't.

People like Michael Reichmann (Luminous Landscape) have always made
unsubstantiated claims about digital "superiority" that are seized on
as though they were fact by people who desperately want to believe
that their digital camera is as good as 35mm film.

The truth is that digital is good enough for most applications, but
the sensors in the very best 12 MP digital SLRs are still not as good
as the very best films. At 16.7 MP and above the differences are
small and the 21.1 MP Canon EOS 1Ds Mk III will probably be the first
of the "35mm" DSLRs to equal or even improve on the results from film.

It's really hard to compare, though: you have to
consider a whole bunch of parameters like MTF, noise, colour reponse,
and so on. Simply photographing a test target doesn't do it.

Even with 21.1 MP, or 39 MP in a Hasselblad H3, dynamic range is still
the killer. Digital sensors still cannot match the dynamic range of
good quality colour negative film such as Kodak Portra and Fujicolor
Pro 160S. Only the FujiFilm FinePix S5 gets anywhere close, and that
is basically a 6 MP camera with enhanced dynamic range.

For the average photographer with a 10 MP camera, his/her results will
compare well with the mass market 35mm films of the 1990s. But the
best films are very much better than either.

Digital is now good enough for most photographers but let us not fool
ourselves that film lags behind. There are many very good reasons to
choose digital over film. However, ultimate quality is not one of
them, despite what "Luminous Landscape" and its sycophants would like
us to believe.

I think you're mostly wrong wrt 35mm.
I guess Roger N. Clark can't be bothered with these
arguments any more. Here's a link to his "executive summary":
http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedeta....summary1.html

"frederick" wrote:
David J. Littleboy wrote:
"frederick" wrote:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/re..._vs_film.shtml

I suspect his outrageously expensive (US$8000 or so) Imacon FlexTight was
defective. Everyone else who has compared 6MP dSLRs to decently scanned
film finds that the film slightly edges out 6MP dSLRs. So this page is
Journal of Irreproducable Results class work.

http://www.normankoren.com/Tutorials/MTF7.html

"I estimate that a full-frame sensor with 8.3 megapixels would have
resolution equal to 35mm film."

I know that LL article was controversial.

"Off the wall" is the correct term.

I doubt the author would claim that measured resolution of
the D30 was better than Provia 100. However, I doubt it was
a faulty scanner. His conclusion seems to be that the 3mp
dslr images _looked_ better than, or at least as good as 35mm at normal
(up 10 18"x12") print sizes.

I printed out quite a few D30 samples at the time. They were nowhere close
to what 24x36mm of quality film scanned well can do. 35mm can put a lot of
detail and texture on an 8x12 print, the D30 can't.

So it's reasonable to assume that he has a nasty problem in his scanning
workflow, and was incapable of producing a sharp scan.

He also has put up scans with that scanner from medium format that were
nowhere close to what I was seeing every day with the Nikon 8000.

(His claim that the 1Ds was better than 6x7 was also off, but he was
printing on 13x19 paper with fat margins, and the 1Ds does makes a very nice
print at that size.)

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan