Digital (Canon 5D/Betterlight/etc.) vs. Large Format Film

[Marko]

Well, to think a

anon 400 XTi with 17-85mm IS lens and a battery ~ $1000

Will give you high quality images - and that is this thread about - is a very high risk assumption.

But, of course both have some truth in what they say, I don't understand why take it that personal.

Stefan, if you go back and read it more carefully, you will notice three things that you missed the first time:

1. It was me who stated earlier in the thread that DSLRs cannot compare with 4x5 as far as quality is concerned, because if they could, nobody would be buying many times more expensive MF digital backs.

2. What you quote here was only a part of a response to the poster who stated that one cannot put a digital setup for anything close to $1500 and that digital is useless without electricity available.

Therefore, the post you are replying to was not about comparing image quality but about comparing the economy of two different setups. Those are very different aspects.

3. It was not personal, it was simply a response to a silly game of name calling.

[Marko]

Dakotah,

Well guys, not everyone lives where there are power lines coming in or even regular power available. With a nice blizzard, wind storms and the like being without electricity is something that we can rely on for a number of weeks out of each year.

Well, what can I tell you? Google is my friend and it can be yours too. Simply type in "Solar Power Charger" or "Solar Power Generator" and let it search. You might just find what kind of things people invented in the last hundred years or so...

Of course, you will have to initially do it during those periods when you do have electricity, since you obviously already have a computer.

The fine examples you bring up of pixelography convenience just don't apply to the LF gear.

...

Pixelography has its advantages but it has major disadvantages.

Frankly, I find this name calling game just plain silly, even infantile. How does one argue with an infant? Much less explain the meaning of the phrase "Horses for courses"...

Very literally in this case, since cars were invented even later than electricity...

[Rakesh Malik]

When digital first started making inroads on film - back when prosumer digital cameras got up to about 3mps - I never thought I'd see the day when there'd even be a legitimate comparison between 4x5 film and digital. And now that day has clearly arrived and I'm thinking it's just a matter of time, and not a long time, before affordable digital cameras will surpass 4x5 in terms of technical quality of photographs. That doesn't mean 4x5 film will totally disappear in our lifetimes but it's a little discouraging.

I don't think it will happen until we get a new sensor technology. Don't forget that most of the data coming from today's 35mm and most medium format cameras is interpolated, not captured, due to the fact that current CCD and CMOS sensors are monochromatic.

Jenoptik and Mamiya have features that work around this in various ways; Mamiya's newest digital back lets you pull the Bayer filter out of the back so that you can use the sensor's full resolution for a shot, and Jenoptik has a feature that catpures 4 frames, one for each color (2 for green due to the fact that silicon has low sensitivity to green), and combines them to form a full-resolution color image.

Foveon is doing something like this also, and BetterLight has been doing it for quite a while, actually capturing full color... and even the Foveon sensor interpolates from 4.7 megapixels to 14 megapixels. At least they're starting with pixels, rather than partial pixels like everyone else in 35mm.

In the end though, I use 4x5 because I enjoy it. I prefer it to using 35mm, because of the groundglass focussing, and the main reason I don't use anything bigger is weight -- I routinetly carry my kit pretty far offroad.

I don't mind that people use and are satisfied with digital... but the ones that claim that digital has better resolution than film seem to be trying to justify their use of digital rather than film. People have already commented on the sheer detail as well as the sharpness of my LF images -- and they've only seen web-sized images (1600 pixels on the long side) -- and I'm a beginner at photography AND scanning.

It makes me look forward to the time when my skills catch up to my gear... which is further incentive to keep learning (as if the fact that it's so much fun on its own isn't enough).

Of course, having said all that, I'll probably be getting a dSLR sometime in the near-ish future (how near depends mainly on my budget ), mainly for use in macrophotography and record shots when hiking, and that sort of thing. That they don't have the resolution of LF film doesn't make them suck, as at least one other poster has already pointed out.

[David Luttmann]

Dakotah,



Well, what can I tell you? Google is my friend and it can be yours too. Simply type in "Solar Power Charger" or "Solar Power Generator" and let it search. You might just find what kind of things people invented in the last hundred years or so...

Of course, you will have to initially do it during those periods when you do have electricity, since you obviously already have a computer.



Frankly, I find this name calling game just plain silly, even infantile. How does one argue with an infant? Much less explain the meaning of the phrase "Horses for courses"...

Very literally in this case, since cars were invented even later than electricity...

Marko,

Maybe he can try some of that pesky electricity with a Betterlight on his 4x5....then he'll be able to see what a view camera is really capable. Of course, he'll have to move away from that nasty Grainography process.

[Stefan Lungu]

Stefan, if you go back and read it more carefully, you will notice three things that you missed the first time:

1. It was me who stated earlier in the thread that DSLRs cannot compare with 4x5 as far as quality is concerned, because if they could, nobody would be buying many times more expensive MF digital backs.

2. What you quote here was only a part of a response to the poster who stated that one cannot put a digital setup for anything close to $1500 and that digital is useless without electricity available.

Therefore, the post you are replying to was not about comparing image quality but about comparing the economy of two different setups. Those are very different aspects.

3. It was not personal, it was simply a response to a silly game of name calling.

Sorry Marko, I reread the thread more carefully and I think you are right on many points. I also think that depending on the purpose, a 6MP P&S has it's place as well as a 8x10 and for me it's not about one or the other. I prefered to stay with my old 300D and get some nice Leica glass around it. On the other hand, what I liked about the Mamiya RB is that it operates without batteries. But for me the main point remains, as you say "Horses for courses", and also a problem of personal taste in enjoying to work with one tool or the other and also the pleasure of learning the tools...
Regards, Stefan

[Marko]

Marko,
I probably know more about Solar power and have installed and worked on more Solar systems than you have read about.

Probably. But then again, probably not. I can't really say because I don't know anything about you. Just as you know nothing about me.

As for the snide remarks on pixelography and film, this is a LF forum and most here shoot film in their view cameras. A $20,000 digital back is not to be found in the workflow of most of us. Even many who can afford one don't use them for many reasons.

Yes, this is an LF forum and yes, very few here use those expensive digital backs. But I'm fairly certain that even fewer participants live in such primitive conditions. What does this have to do with calling them "pixelography", "digitoys" or similar silly names?

Maybe one of these days you and your pals will be in areas of the world where Ugly Americans are treated as they deserve while you come in and tell everyone how to do things your way. There are other ways of doing things and very real limitations in many places across the globe, including right here in the USA.

Me and my pals? Ugly American? Wow!

Looks like somebody woke up on the wrong side of the rock, as the commercial goes...

[Marko]

Sorry Marko, I reread the thread more carefully and I think you are right on many points. I also think that depending on the purpose, a 6MP P&S has it's place as well as a 8x10 and for me it's not about one or the other. I prefered to stay with my old 300D and get some nice Leica glass around it. On the other hand, what I liked about the Mamiya RB is that it operates without batteries. But for me the main point remains, as you say "Horses for courses", and also a problem of personal taste in enjoying to work with one tool or the other and also the pleasure of learning the tools...
Regards, Stefan

No problem Stefan, like you said, it's all about enjoyment and learning.

[RDKirk]

I have some close up, head and shoulders portraits taken on the 5D on my hard drive.

If I bring them into PhotoZoom Pro, I can enlarge them to ANY size, and I mean ANY size I want, and they will print with incredible skin texture and detail, probably too much for a portrait.

However, if I take that same 5D and try to shoot something that requires distant-detail (ahem, a landscape, perhaps?), then it just won't cut it for a 40x50. EVEN if I mount the 5D on a Cambo Ultima view camera with Rodenstock HR digital lenses, it's not going to cut it for the larger prints SOME of us want.

This is where 4x5 film and the newer MF digital backs come in. The 39MP backs do a better job of giving us that infinite detail we're looking for in a landscape, and 4x5 and larger film are the same and/or better when done correctly.

It depends so much on what you shoot, it's insane.

What you said is just what I'd said above.

As for film being superior to digital when the weather knocks out the power...well, when that happens in my house, I stop fooling around with photography, light a fire, and fool around with my wife.

[Neal Shields]

Take, as I have, a unfolded newspaper and pin it to the wall. Fill the view finder of both a digital camera and a 35mm camera on tripods and take a picture. Use a 40 power loupe ( I salvaged mine form an old microfilm reader) and read the paper on the negative and blow up the digital on the screen and read the paper. Now half again the distance and try it again. You will still be backing up with film long after you can't read the newspaper from the digital file.

You will find, (as athe FBI did in a 2 year study) that 200 asa film is about the same as a 16 meg camera.

http://www.fbi.gov/hq/lab/fsc/backis...wgitfield1.htm

It is also interesting to note that Zeiss reproduces 80 to 400 lp/mm on film.

http://www.zeiss.de/C12567A8003B58B9?Open

My point is that it doesn't need to be debated because it is so easily measureable.

Note many people that get different results are measuring scanner resolution not film resolution.

[Marko]

As for film being superior to digital when the weather knocks out the power...well, when that happens in my house, I stop fooling around with photography, light a fire, and fool around with my wife.

What's weather got to do with that?