Here's a mental experiment -
Let's say you take a sweeping landscape shot that is 300 feet along the horizontal axis with an *ist-D. You have 3000 pixels, so each pixel is 1/10th of a foot in terms of what is being sampled. That is more than 1 square inch per pixel.
The same shot on 35mm film, scanned at 4000 dpi, results in ~5000 pixels along the same axis. You are now getting about 3/4ths of an inch per pixel.
Now move up to a 6x7 negative. If you scan it at 4000 dpi you have roughly 11000 pixels. So now each pixel is 1/3rd of an inch.
Now move up to 4x5 inch large format (a format I have never shot). At 4000 dpi your pixels now represent about 1/8th of an inch.
And 8 x 10 inch negative will result in each pixel being less than 1/16th of an inch.
If your landscape consists of pine trees, only the 8x10 LF shot will come close to resolving the individual pine needles. If your landscape consists of sky scrapers - the results of the digital vs the largest format shot may be irrelevant.
Granted, the digital camera will have better acuatance and less noise. But if you are taking a landscape where there is lots of info (like the pine trees), the larger the film format, the more detail you'll get. When considering noise you have to consider the signal to noise ratio - so if you are taking a landscape with lots of stuff in it, even 35mm will beat a 6 megapixel digital every time. But if you taking a photo of a car, for example, where there is little ultra fine detail, the digital will beat out the film shot due to less noise and better acutance.
But flip that mental experiment over and consider taking a head shot of a person - maybe 1.5 feet total.
With a 6 megapixel camera, each pixel now represents just 0.006 of an inch. Really small, but a fine human hair can be less than 1/3rd that. But, odds are you do not need to (or want to ) reveal every pore and hair in your subjects face. So at that magnification you can probably do equally well between a 6 mp digital and any film format. Some folks may disagree.
Get into macro photography and the scales seem to tip all the more to digital. My snowflake shots taken with the *ist-D blow away the best I ever took with Velvia. The detail is there and the lack of noise and better acuatance really comes into play.
Ironically, I think if you took really sweeping landscapes - like mountain ranges where the horizontal axis represent a mile or more - digital and film would again equal out. Even though film could, in theory, resolve more data, atmospheric distortion takes it's toll, and at that distance there is just not that much fine detail to resolve.
IMO, the whole film vs digital debate really boils down to what kind of film you are shooting (110 formal film shooters really should go digital by now, those 8x10 Anselites might want to hold off) and what you are shooting - how much data is there to collect in the image. At 6 megapixels (maybe the toddler stage of digital development) digital images can resolve sufficient detail in many circumstances. Couple that with the lack of noise and better acuatance in digital, you get images equal to or better than many film images. But are still situations where the superior resolution of film - particularly in medium format or large format - blows away digital.
My 2 cents.
- MCC
Mark Cassino Photography
Kalamazoo, MI
www.markcassino.com
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----- Original Message ----- From: "Herb Chong" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, April 30, 2005 6:09 PM
Subject: Re: Apples and Oranges
my belief is that people who continue to like color film over digital today like the qualities of film that i consider flaws. i've scanned about 1500 of my own slides on my Nikon Coolscan 4000ED, always at 4000dpi, 16-bit mode, and with 4X multipass to get a little more reach into shadows. i've shot a little over 7000 frames on my *istD and about 4000 frames on my various digital cameras preceding the *istD. since the *istD, i have had a fair amount of time to compare the output i get with film and digital using the same lenses and different lenses, especially during the 3 or 4 month transition period when i shot the same scenes by swapping cameras on the tripod.
shooting Provia 100F, the detail is slightly higher than the *istD, but i get what i consider objectionable grain. other people don't notice on prints up to 11x14, but i do and for me, that grain, unless i am using it for artistic effect, is something i don't want. Velvia increases the detail noticeably and decreases the grain, but only the best lenses can make effective use of it. i never minded Velvia's color rendition, but i did mind its low latitude and high contrast. getting good color on the scans was something i never was happy with. there always was a slight color cast except in full daylight and it took far too much effort to get good color balance. warming filters helped, but they just moved the point on the color temperature scale.
for much less effort and cost, i can go to 11x14 or 13x19 using the *istD, get more accurate color rendition, and be much more sure i got the shot i wanted. there are few times i think that a film shot would have given better results. having a film body with me just for those few shots hasn't been worth it for me in my day to day shooting. when i was in the Canadian Rockies last winter, i took only the *istD because i had to travel light. when i was in the Adirondacks last summer for a week, i had film with me, but the number of times i was sure that i would get a spectacular image was zero. i never broke out the film at all. instead, i got very good images only on the *istD.
Herb....
----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Stenquist" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, April 30, 2005 5:08 PM
Subject: Re: Apples and Oranges (was Re: Why and How I switched to Canon (for those who care) long)
Digital compares favorably with a good film image. No, in fact, a 6.1 megapixel digital image is better than almost any 35mm film image. That's true even with great scans and expert printing. As Herb notes, perhaps only Velvia can equal or better it. It quickly becomes obvious once you've worked with both for a considerable amount of time.
