Image quality from digital vs analog lens both shot on film

[bob carnie]

Hi Paul

I live in a city with one of the great contemporary colour photographers {IMO} Ed Burtynsky.
Very nice individual who does a lot of work in our market to give a positive edge to our profession and really is a leader in our community.
I have competed against his lab now for over 25 years. He owns Toronto Image Works, and I have worked for his competition and for the last 20 years owned my own small lab which now competes on a daily basis in our market.

I remember the late 90's Ed started to introduce digital prints into his shows, the trick was he would never tell anyone which ones were digital,{ at least he wouldn't tell me} He used this as an test to see which prints were better, and I would love going to his shows and trying to decide which ones were analoque and which ones were from digital exposure. It was hard to tell them apart after a few shows, and this little game of mine was part of my labs change to digital exposing units.
Today all of Ed's prints are done digitally, as well all of our colour prints are done digitally either by Chromira or Lambda RA4 or inkjet.
The reason was not image quality superiority issues, rather than one unit was like having 29 enlargers onboard and operating, as well both our client base are primarally capturing digitally and using PS . If either of our Labs felt we would get better quality colour prints from an enlarger and original neg we would still work that way.
For black and white, I still make mural prints by enlarger as well as digitally, Once again , very hard to distinguish the two methodology. Certain clients insist on historically correct printing ie enlarger, over a digital version, I think you can figure that one out.


Most of Ed's work was with a 4x5 camera and this move to the Hasselblad system is interesting and I want to see the prints, and see if he continues on this route.
He just invested heavily in this system and I truly kick myself in the ass for not seeing the show. He had two running at the same time here in Toronto and I went to the wrong show so I have not been able to see his new big prints from this camera system..
To date I have not seen much work on the big ass systems that incorporate the new lenses , using phase backs, we have a phase system here at our lab but it is attached to historical Hasselblads using conventional lenses , and it seems a lot of our clients attach the old lenses as well.

Obviously this is not the same for the new Dslr cameras, which are great, but IMO still light years behind Leica rangefinder or Contax G2 systems. Leica lenses are wonderful, and I imagine their digital lenses will be as well.
Maybe its me but I remember a day when most of my clients would not be caught dead with a mirror slap 35mm camera.

I think some workers , know the way to make great enlarger prints, the pressure comes when you are in a large market competing against other printers , you soon learn all the tricks or you sink financially. So yes there is a way to make great prints both ways, and the learning curve is steep no matter what method you use.

regards
Bob

I don't question the viability of any method; I like some of my silver prints more than some of my digital prints for various reasons.

But I cannot make an enlarger print that has the sharpness and clarity and sense of detail that rivals a digital print from the same negative.

I don't know how my enlarging methodology could be improved; it's something I labored over for years. I'd be interested in comparing notes.

[ic-racer]

4x5 film has a diagonal of 150mm, and the widest coverage Schneider "Digital" lens I can find is 120mm. What exactly is the Large Format "Digital Lens" under discussion??

[Don Dudenbostel]

I haven't read the entire thread through but let me add that I purchased a Hasselblad CFV39 back early this year to use both on my V series cameras with Zeiss glass and my Technikardan 23 with a mix of glass. I've been in the commercial photo business for 43 years and am a darn good printer both in B&W and color. I shoot all digital for my commercial work and film and digital for my personal.

The lenses of interest are the wides for my Technikardan. I have a 58 and 47mm Super Angulon XL and a 35mm Apo Grandagon (Sinar version) Digital lenses. I haven't shot these side by side as a critical comparison but on jobs I use a mix of these lenses and others up to 300mm. The native file of the CFV39 is 111 megs @ 8 bits which is 18x24 inches @ 300 dpi. Pixel peeping at 100% the image is equal to a 100 inch image and viewing it at 1 ft. you see everything the lens can do.Looking at shots with these three lenses I see no difference in image quality. On a recent architectural exterior shoot of a 6 story hotel the texture of the stucco was easy to see enlarging the image to 100% using the 47mm XL. The shot of the building was the full width of the building plus some on each end. In other images the 35mm Digital performs equally as well as does the 58mm XL. My point is these lenses are so good and so highly corrected there are no bad performers with current glass at least nothing I've shot to date.

I don't know for a fact but I think the Apo Grandagon Digital is nothing more then a optimized Apo Grandagon. My guess is it has been optimized for flat field and hand picked for resolution. In any case the three mentioned lenses perform equally as well and I would expect them to perform about the same on film.

I might also add that the Zeiss lenses for my V system are superb. As mentioned at 100% you see all the flaws and can separate the good from the very best. I was stunned to see that my 80 Planar was the least performer of my system. I have a 38 SW/CM, 40 CF FLE, 50 CF FLE, 60 CF, 80 C T*, 120 CF Macro Planar, 180 CF Sonnar and 250 C T*. The worst performer was between the 250 and the 80 but still not bad and the best were the 180 and 120 and 50 about equal. As expected the 38 was exceptional but no better than the 180. Per an article by hasselblad in Victor magazine they stated the Zeiss lenses stacked up quite well against the new Fuji mad H series lenses. In some cases the V lenses outperformed the H series by a very slight margin and in some the H series outperformed the V slightly. In each case the difference was extremely small.

One day I will post a few images form each with 100% crops so you can see.

After using the V system digital for six months now I'm sold that it will exceed or equal the quality of 4x5. I truly believe that the new 80 mp back will equal 8x10 or very closely edge up to it.

[Drew Wiley]

This is my first experience experimenting with a 6x9 roll film back. It's a very clean
Horseman which seems reasonably precise, and I've been testing it on an Ebony 4x5 with a measured film plane. But so far, I've come to the preliminary conclusion that this
kind of system would be tricky for significant magnifications with short focal length lenses regardless of their own quality. Very minor focus or film plane errors become exaggerated in cases we would ordinarily ignore with LF sheet film (which doesn't typically stay completely flat in a holder but requires less enlargement, and is easier to
focus due to greater groundglass presence). I've look at a lot of 6x9 negs taken with
a 4x5 Technika too, and found a significant percentage slightly out of focus - not my
own work, but I knew the parameters, so just look at this according to the odds. I'm
mainly interested in long lens use anyway, but in terms of optimum f-stops, need some
follow-up testing, but suspect that it will generally be around f/16 or f/22 just to cover for focus issues. My test lenses were very high quality. This is probably old news
to some of you, but thought it would be worth relating anyway. So at least at this
stage of the game, I doubt that wide-angle digital lenses on a conventional film system are going to perform as well as on a completely flat sensor and dedicated camera. Long lenses, if they are good enough, are another story. My 300 Nikkor M did
superbly.

[Drew Wiley]

The lenses under discussion are not large format lenses. A few of them have sufficient
coverage for medium format with moderate view camera style movements; others work
only on small sensors and would be of little interest here. All these digital lenses appear to be completely reengineered items with an extremely high MTF, and which apochromatically align the primary colors exceptionally well to minimize color fringing on
digital receptors (a difficult engineering problem with wider angles). They also offer a
selection of lenses where standard view lenses fail to fill the void. Once you get below
100mm, only wide-angles lenses are available for 4x5, for example, plus some obsolete
specimens. Part of the trick, of course, is to redesign view cameras with exceptionally
fine focus capability, which is something Sinar and Linhof have already done in studio
equipment. I personally consider this part of a large format discussion because a roll
film back can be instantly interchanged with an ordinary 4x5 filmholder, with the lenses
themselves potentially having a duplicate function. This past weekend I was testing
a 125 Fuji W, 180A, and 300 Nikkor M on Pan F roll film, but also popping a few shots
of 4x5 in between. Just doing my homework well in advance in case I ever need to travel with a roll film back.

[paulr]

I'd like to hear from people who have actually used some of the digital lenses about their more subjective qualities, like how they render out of focus areas. This hasn't been much of a concern for my own work, but it would be interesting to hear comparisons.

I've heard anecdotally from some of the connoisseurs of blur that simple lens designs often do better. These new lenses are anything but simple.

[Drew Wiley]

Paul - with these relatively tiny lenses there simply is no place to put in a multi-bladed aperture, even if these were still being mfg for view-style lenses, so one would expect the "bokeh" to be disappointing. I'd imagine their primary use to be commercial tabletop and architecture.

[Don Dudenbostel]

I have no idea about bokeh, it's not my style of shooting. I do however know super wides are very critical with regard to precise focus when using smaller formats and especially digital backs. In and out of focus transitions seem to be exagerated with digital particularly MF digital where DOF is much more shallow for a given magnification vs smaller format DSLR's. Using a 5x magnifier I've really had no big problem hitting focus and if i connect my digital back to my computer (laptop or desktop) I have a digital magnifier available to hit focus exactly using live view from the back. I haven't shot nearly as much MF digital as I have MF film with my Technika V 23 but in any case I've never had anymore problem with accurate focus than any other format. In any case it requires care when focusing any camera. I think the focus issue is over blown a little. if we shot only 2 dimensional subjects then it might be more of a problem but most of us shoot in a 3D world and I find focus much less of an issue than shooting flat art. If focus is a problem it's easy enough to put a black ink cross mark on the frosted side of the glass and a clear spot such as a microscope cover slip mounted with balsam on the ground side of the glass. I did this on my old 8x10 Deardorff and used it for aerial image focusing. Aerial image focusing is about as precise as can be had.

[paulr]

Paul - with these relatively tiny lenses there simply is no place to put in a multi-bladed aperture, even if these were still being mfg for view-style lenses, so one would expect the "bokeh" to be disappointing. I'd imagine their primary use to be commercial tabletop and architecture.

I wouldn't assume that the aperture ring makes such a big difference. Some lenses seem to do fine even with odd shaped apertures. Other factors, like the manner in which spherical aberration is corrected, seem to matter more. I've heard (also anectdotally) that aspheric elements can sometimes do strange things with blur, but I have no idea how true or universal this would be.

[paulr]

I think the focus issue is over blown a little. if we shot only 2 dimensional subjects then it might be more of a problem but most of us shoot in a 3D world and I find focus much less of an issue than shooting flat art.

That's a good point. I hear about technical camera users deploying laser rangefinders and all manners of arcana to get perfect focus, but I'm left thinking "focus on what?" In most of what I photograph focus is a compromise. If the thing I'm aiming at doesn't end up in perfect focus, then the thing right next to it will.