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#21
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wrote in message oups.com... Hey folks - I was looking at picking up a used MF camera in my area ( ~ $500 ) and the sales guy was giving me a hard pitch on the digital cameras they have in stock. Specifically he was harping on the Canon 10D. He showed me a print that was larger than 2' in both dimensions that was made from the canon, and I was impressed. When you looked at it very closely, you saw what looked like weird Quake texture maps, but with film you would see grain, I guess, so it seems an even trade off. Anyway, my original thought was to buy a MF camera ( I like working with film and holding a mechanical device in my hands ) and buy a digital back for it later on when the prices fell. I asked the sales guy about the quality of the lenses, and he said they were worse on the MF, because poor quality lenses wouldn't be as noticeable on MF! Is this true? If so, it seems I should just go digital. ( or maybe try to get a deal on a used MF camera if I finance a digital -- I'll bet the sales guy makes more money of a new digital than a used MF. ) Interesting question. When I did this for a living full-time I had a 35mm, a Hassleblad and a 4x5. The 4x5 was just too big, and the Hassleblad produced stunning photos, but was a pain to carry around with a bunch of lenses and backs. I always kept gravitating back to the 35 and never regretted it. The vast majority of shots were more than good enough for any use, and it was expecially great for action photography. Now, having experienced the world of digital slr, I can only say that when I blow up an image to the equivalent of a 16x20 or more, it is possible to get an image that looks as good or better than 35mm film, and that's at 6.1 megapixels. I can make "noise" look like film grain with a tweak here and there. While the idea of a medium format digital looks great on paper, they are extremely expensive right now, and if you buy a camera that does not yet have a digital back, you have no guarantee they will ever make a digital back for that model. And if they do, what are the odds it will cover the same area as the original film size? Look at what's happened to most DSLR's, and many think that will be the "new" format for digital SLR's, which lenses to match the fact that the coverage area is smaller. |
#22
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In article ,
Roland Karlsson wrote: It is cleaner to detect the digital image directly instead of first using some electrochemical method. That is a trivial truth. The smooth pictures you get from high end digital cameras is a kind of proof. Film is grainy and have low fidelity. Of course a large format camera with superb lenses is much, much better than any digital camera. But at the same size film sux. And even medium format film has problems with graininess compared to DSLRs. Your basing your assumption on scanned film. Try basing your results on Optical prints for film versus computer generated ones. Sometimes the digital will be better, sometimes the film will be. I don't make generalized statements which is what my issue was. |
#23
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In article ,
Roland Karlsson wrote: It is cleaner to detect the digital image directly instead of first using some electrochemical method. That is a trivial truth. The smooth pictures you get from high end digital cameras is a kind of proof. Film is grainy and have low fidelity. Of course a large format camera with superb lenses is much, much better than any digital camera. But at the same size film sux. And even medium format film has problems with graininess compared to DSLRs. Your basing your assumption on scanned film. Try basing your results on Optical prints for film versus computer generated ones. Sometimes the digital will be better, sometimes the film will be. I don't make generalized statements which is what my issue was. |
#24
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wrote in message oups.com... Hey folks - I was looking at picking up a used MF camera in my area ( ~ $500 ) and the sales guy was giving me a hard pitch on the digital cameras they have in stock. Specifically he was harping on the Canon 10D. He showed me a print that was larger than 2' in both dimensions that was made from the canon, and I was impressed. When you looked at it very closely, you saw what looked like weird Quake texture maps, but with film you would see grain, I guess, so it seems an even trade off. Anyway, my original thought was to buy a MF camera ( I like working with film and holding a mechanical device in my hands ) and buy a digital back for it later on when the prices fell. I asked the sales guy about the quality of the lenses, and he said they were worse on the MF, because poor quality lenses wouldn't be as noticeable on MF! Is this true? If so, it seems I should just go digital. ( or maybe try to get a deal on a used MF camera if I finance a digital -- I'll bet the sales guy makes more money of a new digital than a used MF. ) Sure is nice to take pictures without all the computer fuss, which is the case when I shoot film and MF, and looking at MF slides, for the first time, on a light table, now that, for me, is excitement. I have digital gear that I use professionally, and it is fun, but for personal enjoyment, I prefer MF. My around town camera is a Fuji GA645, Zi. See, this argument about resolution is nonesense. MF has more than enough, so does digital. Patrick |
#25
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#26
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In article ,
Roland Karlsson wrote: When making professional prints film is normally scanned. Another generalized statement. Good scanners can extract more information from film than any enlarger can do. Have you ever made an optical print? I don't need the information gotten from scanning to make a better optic print than digitized film produces through a computer printer, provided the film is exposed correctly to start. |
#27
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"David Dyer-Bennet" wrote in message
... "jjs" john@xstafford.net writes: The hidden demon of digital at this time is the issue of replacing and upgrading cameras (or backs) to remain in the 60% sector. The $1,500 digicam you buy today will be worth zip in four years, but you will probably want to replace it in three years. If you want to be at the top of the professional game, it's far, far more expensive. Not really. If you want to be at the top of the professional game, you're spending 5-figure amounts in lab fees for processing and scanning each year. You get that free with your digital body. Film plus professional processing plus lab scanning (needed for nearly any professional use of images these days) comes to more than $20/roll, so a $1500 body is paid off in only 75 rolls -- far less than a single year of professional use. Maybe times have changed, but when I was involved in product and ad photography, the client picked up the bill for processing - from film to end. Now there is a trend to lay a lot of the expense on photographers for digal work because it seems so "can do", and cheaper for the client. This is another burden that pushes the pro to obsolete hardware for the next better thing. But I don't think they're 'failing' in the marketplace; I think the professionals are using them. They're just too expensive for the amateur market, unlike DSLRs. Well, of course I don't know, but I have a strong hunch that the spendy units are losing propositions. I'd not mind being completely wrong about that. |
#28
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"Roland Karlsson" wrote in message
... Inaccessible wrote in newsandemonium- : [...] Good scanners can extract more information from film than any enlarger can do. If a good scanner can resolve fine grain, then that's perfectly true, of course. But do the high-end printers print that grain, or is there the equivalent of dot-gain that blurs it? This is not an academic question because grain is not always an enemy; sometimes it can convey accutance where grainless cannot. |
#29
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Inaccessible writes:
In article , Roland Karlsson wrote: It is cleaner to detect the digital image directly instead of first using some electrochemical method. That is a trivial truth. The smooth pictures you get from high end digital cameras is a kind of proof. Film is grainy and have low fidelity. Of course a large format camera with superb lenses is much, much better than any digital camera. But at the same size film sux. And even medium format film has problems with graininess compared to DSLRs. Your basing your assumption on scanned film. Try basing your results on Optical prints for film versus computer generated ones. Sometimes the digital will be better, sometimes the film will be. I don't make generalized statements which is what my issue was. Well, high-end scanning and digital printing is the best way to produce professional-quality prints these days, at least unless you have a freezer full of dye-transfer materials left. In fact, this was true 3-5 years ago. -- David Dyer-Bennet, , http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/ RKBA: http://noguns-nomoney.com/ http://www.dd-b.net/carry/ Pics: http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/ http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/ Dragaera/Steven Brust: http://dragaera.info/ |
#30
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Inaccessible writes:
In article , Roland Karlsson wrote: When making professional prints film is normally scanned. Another generalized statement. Good scanners can extract more information from film than any enlarger can do. Have you ever made an optical print? I don't need the information gotten from scanning to make a better optic print than digitized film produces through a computer printer, provided the film is exposed correctly to start. I've made thousands of optical prints, and also own some really fine ones made by others (I'm a pretty good B&W printer, but I ain't no "master"). Consider, for example, this article from June 1999 by Galen Rowell about how he was converted to digital printing http://www.mountainlight.com/articles/op1999.06f.html: My miraculous conversion literally happened overnight. Federal Express delivered 50-inch prints outputted from my digital files that held all the saturation of my original 35mm transparencies with even better tonal separation and the apparent sharpness of medium format. -- David Dyer-Bennet, , http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/ RKBA: http://noguns-nomoney.com/ http://www.dd-b.net/carry/ Pics: http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/ http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/ Dragaera/Steven Brust: http://dragaera.info/ |
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