Has anyone compared the image quality of a ca. 24 x 30 enlargement from a large format wide angle digital lens (e.g. Schneider digitar 47mm) shot on 6x6 film versus the same size enlargement shot with an analog lens of equivalent focal length shot on 4x5 film? I'd really be interested to know which version produces the "better" enlargement. Thanks!
Not done the exact comparison but I've had a few 1dskm3 files taken on a 16-35mm and some 5x4 ektar enlarged to 30"x20", taken on a 150mm, and then drum scanned.
Film easily wins.
The gradation between the tones is much better and the film has a softness I much prefer.
The more film I shoot (after a break of a few years) the more I think it's still better than digital, except maybe commercially. Wouldn't like to go back trying to mix different light sources and shooting in low light.
Ed,Originally Posted by edtog
I use Canons as my main digital workhorses. First the 16-35 mm Canon lens is hardly stellar. As a standard the 14-24 Nikon is accepted to be the lens to refer to for resolution and contrast reference. But then one should adapt the Ektar to that format. 4x5 has 20 square inches of real estate compared to the 1DsIII. so at the outset there's ~ 15 times resolution to start with if they were equal!
Asher
Just hope you never had the unfortunate experience of using the mk1 version
Rick - I've found that the biggest problem if lenses are used optimally is simply the film
itself. You can only capture so much. For example, my sharpest Pentax 6x7 lenses require an extremely fine film like R25 to illustrate their full potential, which allows me
a surprisingly detailed 16x20 silver print but obviously no movements. So I'm doing things like pitting the 165/2.8 Pentax again a 180 Fuji A on a roll-film back to make a
comparison at comparable apertures. With the Pentax I find that I often have to use
smaller than ideal apertures just to cope with the depth of field issue; but this camera is known to hold film flatter than many roll film backs. The shortest focal length lens I
own for 4x5 which seems really sharp enough for MF work is my Fuji 125/5.6 W. My main personal interest is in very long focal lengths relative to format. Once you get way way out there, the nature of the intervening atmosphere is a bigger issue than
nitpicking MTF. It's those shorter focal lengths where the digital lens category would
seem enticing; but I notice there are different series based upon the intended size of
the sensor, and only certain lenses are suitable for MF film sizes. Precise focus becomes a big deal. I printed a 20x24 C-print the other nite from 6x7 Ektar just to
see what would hold. Of course I double masked it for contrast and saturation, and I
basically hate to try this degree of enlargement from something that small; but it still came out crisper than what I'd expect from a scan and digital prints. Trying to kill a
number of birds with a single stone, and believe me, that Ektar is some impressive film
both in terms of color response and sharpness.
What is wrong with the MkI version?Just hope you never had the unfortunate experience of using the mk1 version
I think the OP is inquiring about using lenses optimized for digital on film, not (yet another) film vs. digital debate.
It's a good question, though to be fair I think you'd need to compare film of the same size. Even with the resolution advantage of the latest digital lenses, the larger 4x5 film will probably win out over the smaller 6x6 film, at least when it comes to grain and tonality, which in my opinion are more important to the look of a print than resolution.
I know that 4x5 beats out my Mamiya 7 negs at larger print sizes. The M7 lenses aren't digital lenses, but they are quite good. The difference has less to do with resolution and more to do with better separation of tones. Having said that, I switched to 4x5 more for the perspective control than the image quality.
Films are very good these days, and if you're drum scanning you should have no problem with making a good 24x30in. print from a MF neg, though 6x7 would be much better than 6x6, which would need to be cropped down to enlarge to that proportion.
Based on my experience with scanning and printing 6x7 and 4x5 negs, I'd say that a 24x30 would be slightly better in terms of tonality and grain. These characteristics are primarily determined by the film and enlargement factor and have less to do with the lens.
As for resolution, I can't answer that definitively since I've never shot with digital lenses, but my guess would be that it would be very, very close in a 24x30in. print.
An interesting question, but somehow I doubt that 'digital' LF lenses are any better than very good lenses for medium-format film. And if that's true, then we already know what wins between medium format and 4x5. 4x5 tends to win on resolution and tonality grounds, other things being equal (and they are never equal, because medium format is a much different way of working).
Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do.
--A=B by Petkovšek et. al.
They are. The MTF results show it. I've seen at least two reviews of digital technical cameras where the reviewer made the assumption that they couldn't better, and continued to use their medium format optics. When they finally got their hand on an a digital lens, they said the differences were eye-popping.
The Schneider and Rodenstock versions are the sharpest and highest resolution camera lenses that have ever been made, and in addition to that they are optimized for the idiosyncrasies of digital sensors.
I've never used one of these but have looked at both the curves and a number of test images. They're startling. The big compromise is the size of the image circles. You don't get much in the way of movements. No idea what their out-of-focus qualities are like.
As far as performance differrences at 24x30, I don't know. That's in a range where I can imagine the best digital backs beating 4x5. Much smaller than that you'll see no significant difference in sharpness. Much bigger, you'll get to a point where the 4x5 wins.
This topic has come up before, and Bob S. has weighed in with useful info regarding
Rodenstock MF digital lenses. A couple of side issues: although these dedicated digital
lenses have higher MTF, a smaller viewing area requires more careful focus, and additonally, most film does not lies on quite as flat a plane as a digital sensor. Third, the limited images circles of some of these lenses would restrict their use of larger film
and might be inadequate for 4x5 use. As to the wider debate over scale of reproduction, there is simply no way any kind of MF capture, digital or film, can
compete with the detail of a proper 4x5 shot (let alone 8X10), especially if it is optically printed. But versus MF film, digital workflow either direct or scanned is going to be a much more convenient path for cleaning up little inevitable zits or dust spots and so forth on these smaller images, which get magnified to a much higher degree in the print than with LF film. In my opinion at least, digital capture is at its best in the
medium format range, beyond that traditional analog is hard to beat if you want maxiumum information in the print itself. But check with Bob - I believe the Rodenstock
dedicated digital lenses need some kind of correction element if film is used.
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