Jack Dykinga: another one bites the d

[Drew Wiley]

Just imagine if Ansel had a cell phone instead, and his primary objective was sharing
the shot on the web. What a rich visual heritage that would represent!

[dperez]

So, umm, (in most cases) movement, skies, people, animals, time, and spontaneity are eliminated from the stitcher's vocabulary.... leaving buildings. Rocks. And trees in calm weather. Yep, it's the future of photography! Just like 1834!

(Boy I feel like scratching my APUG.)

What about Jeff Liao's use of stitching 8x10 E100G transperencies for his Habitat 7 series? He seems to be able to do a lot of those things in his stitched images.

-DP

[Greg Miller]

When you've learned about the lowered density of colour filters on digital sensors (to increase dynamic range at the expense of colour accuracy), loose IR/UV cutoffs, colour response curves and crossovers you'll start to realise that these 'transforms' are destructive and cannot be reverse engineered into 'accurate' colour (if there is such a thing).

Digital cameras are not 100% accurate recording devices - not only do they have their own frequency response but each colour channel bleeds into it's neighbours in different ways depending on many factors.

Hence, it is impossible to convert a digital file to look like a film look e.g. Velvia 50 separates green response somehow - expanding the hue range so that blue greens seem to look more blue and yellow greens more yellow. They also compress the orange/red range - which is why sunsets seem to block up on velvia and why they always seem richer in colour using Provia..

All recording devices are distortions - some distortions actually sound/look better than the real thing :-) (and I'm not just talking Velvia - new Portra for instance)

Tim

Tim,

While I am confident you are correct at the "quantum" level, I will disagree at the practical level. With over 28 billion colors to work with (and re-map, using layer blending modes such a luminosity, hue, and saturation), we are beyond what the human eye can differentiate except in a direct A/B comparison, and it is certainly possible to arrive at a digital image that is believable as a Velvia image in terms of color.

I have personally shot with Velvia 50, Velvia, 100, Provia, and Astia, and several generations of digital DSLRs. I processed all of those images in Photoshop to arrive at my final print and web files. These images have been used (mix and match) in all sorts of venues (museums, galleries, commercially published books, magazines, framed prints...). Not once has anyone ever commented about differences in the images, or lack of consistency between the prints (including color palette). Admittedly, I am not consciously trying to mimic Velvia, or any other film - I am simply trying to achieve a color palette that fits my vision of the world.

If you are ever in New York, let's get together and I will bring some prints. And you can tell me which film was used or if the print came from a digital source. There's noting better than a blind test to resolve issues like this. Whoever wins buys dinner.

[Kirk Gittings]

I have personally shot with Velvia 50, Velvia, 100, Provia, and Astia, and several generations of digital DSLRs. I processed all of those images in Photoshop to arrive at my final print and web files. These images have been used (mix and match) in all sorts of venues (museums, galleries, commercially published books, magazines, framed prints...). Not once has anyone ever commented about differences in the images, or lack of consistency between the prints (including color palette). Admittedly, I am not consciously trying to mimic Velvia, or any other film - I am simply trying to achieve a color palette that fits my vision of the world.

ditto

[tgtaylor]

I have personally shot with Velvia 50, Velvia, 100, Provia, and Astia, and several generations of digital DSLRs. I processed all of those images in Photoshop to arrive at my final print and web files. These images have been used (mix and match) in all sorts of venues (museums, galleries, commercially published books, magazines, framed prints...). Not once has anyone ever commented about differences in the images, or lack of consistency between the prints (including color palette). Admittedly, I am not consciously trying to mimic Velvia, or any other film - I am simply trying to achieve a color palette that fits my vision of the world.

Congratulations for you have truly found your vision of the world!

Thomas

[Lynn Jones]

Hey guys, have you ever noticed how many of the photographs published by "Outdoor Photograper" were made with Velvia!

Yes David, and I think his sister, and son are well known photographers, but when I was a student at Brooks in the late 50's, the elder Josef was the photographer we admired.

Lynn

[JeffKohn]

Hey guys, have you ever noticed how many of the photographs published by "Outdoor Photograper" were made with Velvia!

No surprise really. For the most part these magazines are publishing the same fairly small group of guys who have been doing this for decades and have huge libraries of chromes they've shot over the years. Even for somebody like Dykinga who's shooting digital now, the number of "keeper" film shots in his library still probably far outnumbers the number of digital shots he has.

[Bill Poole]

Oren - Ctein primarily shoots a Pentax 6x7 -strictly negs - then scans them for digital output (or less often uses Pan Matrix film for DT). Although he is quite versed
on many varieties of photo media, his personal working style and darkroom are
very elementary.

This is certainly not what Ctein himself is saying over on The Online Photographer. As I recall, he recently sold all his film gear and has written extensively about his commitment to digital. He writes a column there once a week - Thursdays as I recall.

[George Stewart]

I'm familiar with Ansel's Moonrise shot. I think it still would have been quicker to stitch the shot with a DSLR than to setup his 8x10 camera, install the filter, focus, etc.

[Kirk Gittings]

I'm pretty handy both ways. If it were a simple flat stitch I could do it quicker with a DSLR. If it was multiple row stitch the VC would be quicker.