I continue to watch developements in digital to see if there is something I am missing. This morning I had coffee with a young competitor who wanted to pick my brain and show me some images. His is all digital capture from a Kodak DCS Pro (14 MP full chip) and Nikon lenses. I am still shooting film in a view camera but scanning the film. He had some very competent and beautiful images but....

My brief impressions were these:

There are still problems with blown out highlights in light sources and posterization in deep shadows compared to my scanned film method.

Perceived sharpness is comparable up to 11x14 then beyond that scanned film has a definite advantage. Upresing does not compete with a good scan.

Mixed lighting latitude and ability to white balance (grey with film) is comparable to NPS and NPL.

Allot of problems in dim light and long exposures with noise and artifacts. For instance when doing twilight shots.

He says he is not using PC lenses because the radical light angle causes noise along the edges. But the PS perspective correction, when it stretches the image more than about 1/3 of the frame width causes some odd interpolation issues. So the use of very wide angle non-PC lenses which require allot of perspective correction in PS has serious drawbacks too. There was also some evidence of ballooning distortion.

And everthing still has that crappy overly-smooth midtone transitions that sceam out at you that this is digital capture!!!

Now granted some of this could be fixed in PS but at what time costs?

It still appears to me that for architecture, view cameras and film still have a significant edge.