Digital: The more expensive the camera or scanner the better results you get (by a large factor). The more expensive the software you use the better the results you get.
Film: The more expensive the lenses you use the better the results you get (nowhere near as large a factor as in digital).
Both: The more knowledge and practice you have the better your results.
Conclusion: Initial dollar outlay is far higher to get great results with digital. Time factors for good prints are similar and prices about the same. So film cost is the only real disadvantage to the older technology, but film is the reason a $200 camera can make the same quality image as a $2000 one.
Note: the time to a viewable image is much quicker for digital, but the time to finished print is about the same.
--
Herb Chong wrote:
i don't take my images intending to process all of them. i want to leave open as many options as possible and so i shoot in RAW mode. the storage cost and write time are nothing compared to the cost of going back and trying to get the shot again under exactly the same lighting conditions. i seldom shoot action, so there isn't the possible missed moment of that kind. RAW gives a 12-bit/channel image and a 16-bit/channel file. every manipulation costs some slight posterization and running in 16-bit mode gives me all the chances possible to postpone the time when the posterization becomes visible. top that off with the fact that the Pentax *istD firmware is apparently able to put about 1 stop more headroom into an image in RAW mode than JPEG mode and there is no question that i will shoot in RAW mode. every stop additional dynamic range/latitude is gold. the *istD RAW images are also sharper than the JPEG images before manipulation.
about 80% of my images just sit there and never get looked at again. 20% goes through basic cropping, sharpening, and color correction/adjustment. these are the ones that i will at least consider for my stock collection. this process is automated enough that i click once, decided if i like the results, choose from 1 of 4 or 5 presets if i don't like what came up to see if the image previews better, and either apply or cancel. usually, about half of them get placed into the stock pile. about 1/3 to 1/2 of the ones that get there get printed. that means about 3-5% of the images i shoot get printed. usually, my first set of adjustments are the only ones i ever make aside from cropping for a specific paper size's aspect ratio.
it takes about 3-4 times a long to go through this process with a scan from slide as it does for a digital camera image. most of the time used to be spent scanning, but now because i run FocusFixer on a lot of my images, it takes most of the time. i usually rez up my digital camera images to be about the same resolution as my 4000dpi scanner, so that means i end up with digital image files of about 5000 pixels along the longest dimension no matter what my source. i have two expensive Photoshop color adjustment plugins that i like, trust, and can predict their effects. they make near perfect color adjustment usually an under 30 second task even with these large images. the rest of my system is color managed well enough that once i see what i like on the screen, i know what i am going to get on the printer and that it will be good enough not to need any work to print very well. putting the time in up front makes all this run smoothly. some of it is spending some money up front too. color adjustment with only the tools in Photoshop is much more time consuming. AutoColor and AutoLevels really aren't able to cope with anything complicated. doing it the hard way makes you appreciate how hard it is and also makes you learn what to do when even the really good automatic tools fail. i haven't had many failures with the tools i use though, and i have learned a few tricks since then to make those situations much easier to deal with.
Herb....
----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2003 9:46 PM
Subject: Re: Pentax *ist D vs. Fujifilm S2 Pro: final update
I have done a lot of work post processing to print the approx. 10 pics I
have
printed thus far (scanned from slides -- well, 10 pics framed and on the wall, forget how many rejected trials -- and don't know how many hours and
hours,
days).
So don't get huffy. :-) I am also ignorant here, admitted it. But I wanted
to
know if one had to post process EVERYTHING, which would be extremely, extremely tedious. Bill said not, which was good to hear. And I am glad to
hear there
are batch processing methods, although I don't have PhotoShop, just
Elements.
-- graywolf http://graywolfphoto.com
"You might as well accept people as they are, you are not going to be able to change them anyway."
