[filmscanners] Good deal on nice digicam
;-) Since you mentioned image stabilization, I though I'd give a heads up on a potential buying opportunity that probably won't last long, for people looking for a great digicam who are spoiled on DSLRs, in terms of design and features, but who want to have a fairly small and lightweight substitute when they don't feel like carrying around a whole kit. Firstly, I want to be clear that I have no personal stake in this. I don't even own Canon stock, and I have no affiliation with any camera retailer, it's just my wife and I (we both bought one) are having a ball with this camera. We recently purchased a Canon S3IS. It was just replaced by the new S5IS. I tend to usually wait for the new model to come out before buying the one being replaced, to see if there is any glaring design error, and also to save some $. The new S5IS is about $200 US more than I paid, for what I consider little benefit (8MP versus 6MP, a hot shoe, a larger LCD screen (2.5 versus 2) and one higher and even more useless ISO step at 1600). The new one has the next generation processing chip, which seems to deal with the noise issue by smearing things more to get an extra stop, but from what I've seen of sample pics, I am not convinced the 8MP sensor and the new processor improves anything. Besides which, for any serious photographer, this is a camera you want to use at 200 ISO and under. Both models are digicams using the identical 12x optical zooms, and a silly little 1/2.5 sensor chip, but the camera is a mini-SLR design and it has a very well designed optical image stabilization system that is fantastic (I get an extra 3 f-stops from it, meaning I can hand hold an image I would have had to shoot at 800 ISO on a non-IS camera at 100 ISO). Of course, that doesn't answer a need for fast shutter speeds for moving objects, so probably not great for action stuff in low light. But the IS lessens the pain of the sensor size and the noise issues considerably. In the meantime, this thing fits nicely in ones hands (even small ones like mine and my wife's, has an almost fully articulating LCD screen, plus a dipper correctable electronic viewfinder, and double or triple the features most DSLRs have. It has all sorts of manual features for those who want them, and tons of programmed mode, as well as a pretty nice movie mode up to 640 x 480 at 30 fps and stereo sound. It uses standard (and cheap) MMC and SD flash memory. Is it a replacement for a DSLR? Not really, but it rocks for size, weight, features, and cost (they are selling for as little as $280 US now). Anyway, I've sold a good half dozen people on the S3IS (even before I bought one for myself - hey, they were in the market before I was ;-)) and not one of them has any remorse about the purchase (well, they all wish the LCD screen were larger and the manual was an easier read, considering all the features). As a digicam, the design and build is very nice (it actually is made in Japan for a change) and it even uses AA batteries (4). Its not for making perfect 16 x 20 enlargements, but as a everywhere camera, (really easy panoramic stitching and software package too) it is a great deal now, before it disappears (its discontinued due to the new model). As to image stabilization is general: Although there is some controversy as to if sensor chip based image stabilization is equivalent to optical stabilization in the lens (some claim optical is more accurate, or can add an extra stop), on DSLRs the beauty of the in-camera sensor chip based IS is that any lens you slap on the body has IS, where the optical system requires each lens to be designed with IS in it, which can add up and means a lot of legacy lenses are lacking the feature. Since I am heavily invested in Nikon lenses, I'm still waiting for Nikon to offer an in-camera IS body which is of reasonable size and weight (I find all the current higher end DSLRs cameras too large for my hands, and none have in-body IS). The D40X with IS would be near perfect. (if it functioned with the previous generation of AF lenses). Art James L. Sims wrote: Art, Well, we've sort of done that with digital cameras. They have also put my old Pentax cameras out of service, and after all the work I did fabricating a pressure plate that kept the film reasonably flat. At my age, I'm also an advocate of image stabilization - I'm taking sharp pictures, again - hand-held! Jim Arthur Entlich wrote: Hi James, Thanks for the formula. I guess we need to go back to glass plates ;-) Art James L. Sims wrote: Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: film and scanning vs digital photography
You're right, Olympus is taking forever to bring out the new model, which has probably cost them some market base, but I'm waiting for it. The leaked info sounds great. The 14-35mm f2.0 lens is taking even longer, and isn't expected until next spring, rumor has it. It would seem to me odd that they wouldn't introduce the news lens with the new camera. Maybe the camera will be further delayed and they will come out together after all. ~Berry On 7/6/07 10:04 AM, R. Jackson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yeah, I had an E-1. I actually gave it to a friend of mine last year and he's enjoying it. They've just taken so long replacing it that there's really no choice in a high-end E model right now, though the leaked document about the E-1 replacement looks promising. -Rob On Jul 6, 2007, at 7:00 AM, Berry Ives wrote: Just a detail, Rob, but the Oly E-1 has a weather-sealed magnesium body. It's quite solid. I don't know if any of their other models have the magnesium body, or if that feature is reserved for their pro line. Berry -- -- Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: film and scanning vs digital photography
From: Berry Ives [EMAIL PROTECTED] You're right, Olympus is taking forever to bring out the new model, which has probably cost them some market base, but I'm waiting for it. The leaked info sounds great. The 14-35mm f2.0 lens is taking even longer, and isn't expected until next spring, rumor has it. (Sorry to be on your case here: feel free to tell me to take a hike. I find format comparisons interesting, but end up being a larger-format partizan.) I realize that an f/2.0 28-70mm equivalent lens sounds pretty cool. But you are forgetting to take the other aspects of the format difference into account. For the same pixel count (to a rough first approximation, 10 is about the same as 12.7), a 4/3 camera's pixels are 1/4 the area, and thus are two stops less sensitive. And DOF scales with the format size, so you gain two stops of DOF. (Only at the wide end, at smaller apertures, diffraction kicks in two stops sooner, so while f/16 on FF results in sharp images, apertures smaller than f/8 on 4/3 will show diffraction effects. (One of the early 5D/D2x comparisons bogusly shot them both at f/16, unfairly making the D2x look soft.)) So that sexy-sounding f/2.0 lens will be functionally indistinguishable from an f/4.0 28-70mm lens on FF (with the FF at four times the ISO for identical noise/dynamic range). It may be that the f/2.0 bit buys you an AF advantage, but I'm not sure. In FF vs. APS-C arguments, the point that an extra 1.4x TC is functionally equivalent to a smaller pixel pitch (test show that TCs do not significantly degrade the angular resolution of the lens) fails since the 5D's AF isn't an extra stop better than the APS-C AF, and the 5D can't focus with an f/5.6 lens + 1.4xTC. Note that to actually be equivalent, the 4/3 lens has to provide _twice_ the resolution (twice the lp/mm at any given MTF, or an MTF curve shifted up by a factor of two due to the finer pixel pitch) at f/2.0 than the FF 28-70mm lens does at f/4.0. (Interestingly, MTF performance does scale up with decreasing format sizes, so this point may not be a problem; but the need for twice the resolution at a much wider f stop may be problematic.) David J. Littleboy [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tokyo, Japan Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: film and scanning vs digital photography
On Jul 7, 2007, at 7:34 AM, David J. Littleboy wrote: But you are forgetting to take the other aspects of the format difference into account. This seems like an assumption. ;-) For the same pixel count (to a rough first approximation, 10 is about the same as 12.7), a 4/3 camera's pixels are 1/4 the area, and thus are two stops less sensitive. Natch. And DOF scales with the format size, so you gain two stops of DOF. (Only at the wide end, at smaller apertures, diffraction kicks in two stops sooner, so while f/16 on FF results in sharp images, apertures smaller than f/8 on 4/3 will show diffraction effects. But since DOF is two stops shallower you don't need to stop the lens down as much to get the same effective DOF. So that sexy-sounding f/2.0 lens will be functionally indistinguishable from an f/4.0 28-70mm lens on FF (with the FF at four times the ISO for identical noise/dynamic range). That's assuming a linear comparison of sensitivity where the 4/3 sensor is functionally two stops less sensitive than the FF sensor across its entire ISO range, which in a technical sense it may well be. However, 100 ISO is 100 ISO on both a FF and a 4/3 sensor. From my experience shooting with 4/3 the images from my E-1 looked wonderful at ISO 100-200. The combination of the lovely color rendition of the Kodak CCD used in the camera and the microcontrast qualities of the Zuiko glass conspired to create a beautiful capture device. Where you started losing IQ with the E-1 was at 400 and above. Not terrible at 400. Mostly a luminance noise pattern that looked almost like film grain at 400. At 800 it was starting to contain enough color speckling from the rising curve of the chrominance noise to look more electronic. Which comes back to that issue of high ISO on the 4/3 chips being problematic. That doesn't mean that you're going to suffer at low ISO, though. So a birder, for example, will have a two-stop DOF advantage over a FF guy right out of the gate just because of his format of choice. Add in the faster Zuiko f/2.0 lens at ISO 100 and he can use a higher shutter speed at a lower aperture all day long. You're right, though, when you get to the end of the day and the light starts to fall the extra speed of the lens becomes a crutch that attempts to overcome the limits of the sensor. Still, the high- end Oly glass tends to be very sharp wide open and you don't have to stop them down much at all to hit their sweet spot. Note that to actually be equivalent, the 4/3 lens has to provide _twice_ the resolution (twice the lp/mm at any given MTF, or an MTF curve shifted up by a factor of two due to the finer pixel pitch) at f/2.0 than the FF 28-70mm lens does at f/4.0. (Interestingly, MTF performance does scale up with decreasing format sizes, so this point may not be a problem; but the need for twice the resolution at a much wider f stop may be problematic.) This is the biggest problem with the format, IMO. You're always going to be fighting that battle. It's the same thing with shooting 16mm instead of 35mm cine stuff. The 16mm gear is lighter, has greater DOF for run-and-gun work and is obviously a lot less expensive to work with. But the frame is roughly a quarter the size of the 35mm frame, so the glass always has to be much better than glass would have to be on a comparable 35mm rig and obviously the grain is going to be magnified on top of that. A grain pattern that looks subtle and wonderful in 35mm may look really bad in 16mm, so you can't even use the same standards of judging what stock to use because 5263 is not the same at the end of the day as 7263 when you take the format into consideration. So that's the rub when you have to decide on buying glass from Olympus now. The 35-100mm f/2 is a really nice lens. Effectively a 70-200mm f/2 lens, but it carries a price tag of $2200. Is it equal to a Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 on APS? Or a Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 on a FF camera? Hard to say. More than the MTF numbers of the lens play into it, of course. Those Canon FF cameras have a sensor with a diagonal nearly as wide as their lens mount where the 4/3 sensor is tiny in comparison to the 4/3 mount. That allows a lot of advantageous geometry when it comes to lens design and how the light strikes their sensor it a big part of the 4/3 advantage (to quote the nauseating Olympus PR machine). At the end of the day I think it's about what camera you enjoy using as much as almost anything else, unless you have some particular application that draws you to one camera over another. I prefer CCD sensors and my E-1 and now my D200 both have CCDs. I don't know what options will be available to me in the future, though. I'd love to see the Foveon chips get it together. I'd take full color information over just about any other consideration, but so far I'm unconvinced that they've got that format ironed-out. I really like the highlight and color characteristics of the Fuji Super CCD SR Pro. If Olympus
[filmscanners] Re: film and scanning vs digital photography
Uh, this should be deeper...sorry. ;-) On Jul 7, 2007, at 12:08 PM, R. Jackson wrote: But since DOF is two stops shallower you don't need to stop the lens down as much to get the same effective DOF. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: film and scanning vs digital photography
From: R. Jackson [EMAIL PROTECTED] So a birder, for example, will have a two-stop DOF advantage over a FF guy right out of the gate just because of his format of choice. Add in the faster Zuiko f/2.0 lens at ISO 100 and he can use a higher shutter speed at a lower aperture all day long. It don't work that wayg. The 5D user shoots at ISO 400 with the same image quality (photon shot noise) and same shutter speed and sees the same DOF (and same background blurring effects) at f/4.0 as the 4/3 user does at f/2.0. It is seriously cool how digital cameras with the same pixel count scale across formats. (At ISO 100, the 5D should have a two stop dynamic range advantage, except that the A/D converters don't have enough bits.) Note, of course, that you have to use a larger lens on the 5D to get the low-light high-ISO advantage. The 100/2.0 is a bigger lens than the Oly 50/2.0 (I'd guess, anyway.) The bottom line is that if you think a smaller format buys you anything other than lighter weight/smaller size/lower price, you've done your math, physics, and/or optics wrong. You're right, though, when you get to the end of the day and the light starts to fall the extra speed of the lens becomes a crutch that attempts to overcome the limits of the sensor. Still, the high- end Oly glass tends to be very sharp wide open and you don't have to stop them down much at all to hit their sweet spot. You are already shooting two stops smaller with the 5D for the same DOF. And for portrait work, you don't shoot at f/4.0 with FF, you shoot at f/2.0 and wider. For a DOF effect that simply isn't available from the 4/3 format. (Although I wish Canon had an 75 or 85/1.4. The f/1.2 is overmuch.) Note that to actually be equivalent, the 4/3 lens has to provide _twice_ the resolution (twice the lp/mm at any given MTF, or an MTF curve shifted up by a factor of two due to the finer pixel pitch) at f/2.0 than the FF 28-70mm lens does at f/4.0. (Interestingly, MTF performance does scale up with decreasing format sizes, so this point may not be a problem; but the need for twice the resolution at a much wider f stop may be problematic.) This is the biggest problem with the format, IMO. You're always going to be fighting that battle. It's the same thing with shooting 16mm instead of 35mm cine stuff. The 16mm gear is lighter, has greater DOF for run-and-gun work and is obviously a lot less expensive to work with. But the frame is roughly a quarter the size of the 35mm frame, so the glass always has to be much better than glass would have to be on a comparable 35mm rig and obviously the grain is going to be magnified on top of that. A grain pattern that looks subtle and wonderful in 35mm may look really bad in 16mm, so you can't even use the same standards of judging what stock to use because 5263 is not the same at the end of the day as 7263 when you take the format into consideration. That's the difference with digital: you can get a reasonable 10MP image from the 4/3 camera at ISO 100. You really can't get a reasonable film image from 1/4 the area of 35mm. So that's the rub when you have to decide on buying glass from Olympus now. The 35-100mm f/2 is a really nice lens. Effectively a 70-200mm f/2 lens, but it carries a price tag of $2200. Is it equal to a Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 on APS? Or a Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 on a FF camera? Again, if you are using a 10MP 4/3 camera, then the comparison is with the 70-200/4.0 (IS). Without IS, it's half the price, with about 3/4 the price. And those are phenomenally good lenses that you are putting in front of very widely spaced pixels. There's no need to stop down with the 70-200/4.0. Hard to say. More than the MTF numbers of the lens play into it, of course. Those Canon FF cameras have a sensor with a diagonal nearly as wide as their lens mount where the 4/3 sensor is tiny in comparison to the 4/3 mount. That allows a lot of advantageous geometry when it comes to lens design and how the light strikes their sensor it a big part of the 4/3 advantage (to quote the nauseating Olympus PR machine). The telecentric bit strikes me as nothing other than lying snake oil. (Real telecentric lenses aren't used for pictorial photography, they're for machine vision applications, and the ray tracing diagrams on the Oly site show optically impossible paths.) As before, it's not even a 30 degree angle of incidence with the Canon mount, and there's no difference with longer lenses. At the end of the day I think it's about what camera you enjoy using as much as almost anything else, unless you have some particular application that draws you to one camera over another. I prefer CCD sensors and my E-1 and now my D200 both have CCDs. At the end of the day, one shoots a camera that meets one's needs. If the 4/3 meets your needs, there's no reason to move to a larger format (just don't try to tell me that it's better; it ain't). Just as 645 meets my needs but not the needs of someone making
[filmscanners] Re: film and scanning vs digital photography
On Jul 7, 2007, at 1:29 PM, David J. Littleboy wrote: It don't work that wayg. The 5D user shoots at ISO 400 with the same image quality (photon shot noise) and same shutter speed and sees the same DOF (and same background blurring effects) at f/4.0 as the 4/3 user does at f/2.0. It is seriously cool how digital cameras with the same pixel count scale across formats. (At ISO 100, the 5D should have a two stop dynamic range advantage, except that the A/D converters don't have enough bits.) So you have an unrealized two-stop advantage at low ISO. I can see how important that unrealized potential could be. ;-) The bottom line is that if you think a smaller format buys you anything other than lighter weight/smaller size/lower price, you've done your math, physics, and/or optics wrong. Theoretically. Funny how things don't always work that way practically. You are already shooting two stops smaller with the 5D for the same DOF. And for portrait work, you don't shoot at f/4.0 with FF, you shoot at f/ 2.0 and wider. For a DOF effect that simply isn't available from the 4/3 format. (Although I wish Canon had an 75 or 85/1.4. The f/1.2 is overmuch.) If you shoot portraits exclusively then the selective focus issue is always going to be your overriding priority. The larger the film the shallower the DOF. Large format is your friend in the studio. Of course, Olympus doesn't actually have a single decent portrait lens in their lineup. If that's the kind of work you do then the 4/3 line of cameras and optics isn't something to be considered. That's the difference with digital: you can get a reasonable 10MP image from the 4/3 camera at ISO 100. You really can't get a reasonable film image from 1/4 the area of 35mm. Well, it kind of depends. With cinema cameras you used to always be fighting against generation loss. I think I can get better IQ from a 16mm scanned negative than we used to get from a 35mm negative that had gone through four or five generation losses. This would make 16mm an ideal format for television if those productions were still shot like they were 20 years ago, but with faster film stocks the evolution of the medium has favored using less lighting for heat/ power cost savings as well as the need for less crew. 35mm using ISO 500 stocks (pretty much the standard now) doesn't translate down to 16mm because the apparent grain signature will be more dominant. Again, if you are using a 10MP 4/3 camera, then the comparison is with the 70-200/4.0 (IS). I know you like that f/4 comparison, but like you said earlier, with the A/D converters as they are you aren't seeing a dynamic range advantage at low ISO, so the comparison doesn't hold. Unless you're still dwelling on DOF. Any excuse to erect a straw man? :-) The telecentric bit strikes me as nothing other than lying snake oil. Heh...makes you feel better about that CMOS dust-magnet you bought? ;-) At the end of the day, one shoots a camera that meets one's needs. If the 4/3 meets your needs, there's no reason to move to a larger format (just don't try to tell me that it's better; it ain't). It's better at some things, certainly. If, for example, you're doing forensic work you have additional DOF and since you can use lower stops you extend the range of your strobes. Just as 645 meets my needs but not the needs of someone making larger landscape prints. I prefer my 6x7. ;-) Foveon doesn't buy you anything the human eye can actually see. And not using a low-pass filter reduces real resolution by it's snap-to- grid effect which puts features in the wrong place; it's an artificial sharpening trick at best. Foveon, and actually any capture medium that delivers 4:4:4 color, should really shine when you start manipulating the image in post. The more color timing you do the quicker a Bayer image will fall apart when compared to, say, the image from a scanning back. I assume Foveon will hold up the same way, but the implementation of the technology seems shaky at best right now. Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: film and scanning vs digital photography
I have been trying to follow this thread, with some difficulty - probably my old age. But to keep perspective and depth of field equal, when comparing Full Frame with smaller formats, lens focal length, circle of confusion, or blur circle, size must be adjusted proportionately. Control of chromatic aberrations become proportionately more restrictive. Then there's Lord Rayleigh's Criteria regarding Diffraction Limit is just as true today as it was when he published it. Therefore, with today's APO lenses, we can achieve very high quality images, with smaller formats. BUT, to achieve sharp images, the minimum acceptable lens aperture size will increase (f:# will decrease) because of diffraction. Having said this, I'm very pleased with my Canon 20D, The two lenses I have are incredibly sharp, and zoom lenses at that (I did think that no zoom lens could equal a prime lens but that may be changing) but I try to stay within its limitations - shoot at the lowest ISO that I can get away with and control exposure time to stay within a range of f:4 to f:11. Jim David J. Littleboy wrote: From: R. Jackson [EMAIL PROTECTED] So a birder, for example, will have a two-stop DOF advantage over a FF guy right out of the gate just because of his format of choice. Add in the faster Zuiko f/2.0 lens at ISO 100 and he can use a higher shutter speed at a lower aperture all day long. It don't work that wayg. The 5D user shoots at ISO 400 with the same image quality (photon shot noise) and same shutter speed and sees the same DOF (and same background blurring effects) at f/4.0 as the 4/3 user does at f/2.0. It is seriously cool how digital cameras with the same pixel count scale across formats. (At ISO 100, the 5D should have a two stop dynamic range advantage, except that the A/D converters don't have enough bits.) Note, of course, that you have to use a larger lens on the 5D to get the low-light high-ISO advantage. The 100/2.0 is a bigger lens than the Oly 50/2.0 (I'd guess, anyway.) The bottom line is that if you think a smaller format buys you anything other than lighter weight/smaller size/lower price, you've done your math, physics, and/or optics wrong. You're right, though, when you get to the end of the day and the light starts to fall the extra speed of the lens becomes a crutch that attempts to overcome the limits of the sensor. Still, the high- end Oly glass tends to be very sharp wide open and you don't have to stop them down much at all to hit their sweet spot. You are already shooting two stops smaller with the 5D for the same DOF. And for portrait work, you don't shoot at f/4.0 with FF, you shoot at f/2.0 and wider. For a DOF effect that simply isn't available from the 4/3 format. (Although I wish Canon had an 75 or 85/1.4. The f/1.2 is overmuch.) Note that to actually be equivalent, the 4/3 lens has to provide _twice_ the resolution (twice the lp/mm at any given MTF, or an MTF curve shifted up by a factor of two due to the finer pixel pitch) at f/2.0 than the FF 28-70mm lens does at f/4.0. (Interestingly, MTF performance does scale up with decreasing format sizes, so this point may not be a problem; but the need for twice the resolution at a much wider f stop may be problematic.) This is the biggest problem with the format, IMO. You're always going to be fighting that battle. It's the same thing with shooting 16mm instead of 35mm cine stuff. The 16mm gear is lighter, has greater DOF for run-and-gun work and is obviously a lot less expensive to work with. But the frame is roughly a quarter the size of the 35mm frame, so the glass always has to be much better than glass would have to be on a comparable 35mm rig and obviously the grain is going to be magnified on top of that. A grain pattern that looks subtle and wonderful in 35mm may look really bad in 16mm, so you can't even use the same standards of judging what stock to use because 5263 is not the same at the end of the day as 7263 when you take the format into consideration. That's the difference with digital: you can get a reasonable 10MP image from the 4/3 camera at ISO 100. You really can't get a reasonable film image from 1/4 the area of 35mm. So that's the rub when you have to decide on buying glass from Olympus now. The 35-100mm f/2 is a really nice lens. Effectively a 70-200mm f/2 lens, but it carries a price tag of $2200. Is it equal to a Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 on APS? Or a Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 on a FF camera? Again, if you are using a 10MP 4/3 camera, then the comparison is with the 70-200/4.0 (IS). Without IS, it's half the price, with about 3/4 the price. And those are phenomenally good lenses that you are putting in front of very widely spaced pixels. There's no need to stop down with the 70-200/4.0. Hard to say. More than the MTF numbers of the lens play into it, of course. Those Canon FF cameras have a sensor with a diagonal nearly as wide as their lens
[filmscanners] Re: film and scanning vs digital photography
On Jul 7, 2007, at 3:59 PM, James L. Sims wrote: Control of chromatic aberrations become proportionately more restrictive. Then there's Lord Rayleigh's Criteria regarding Diffraction Limit is just as true today as it was when he published it. Therefore, with today's APO lenses, we can achieve very high quality images, with smaller formats. BUT, to achieve sharp images, the minimum acceptable lens aperture size will increase (f:# will decrease) because of diffraction. Having said this, I'm very pleased with my Canon 20D, The two lenses I have are incredibly sharp, and zoom lenses at that (I did think that no zoom lens could equal a prime lens but that may be changing) but I try to stay within its limitations - shoot at the lowest ISO that I can get away with and control exposure time to stay within a range of f:4 to f:11. Jim These are excellent points. The thing I notice most about working with digital cameras in general is that all that nonsense about automation making the process easier is pretty much just that. At this moment in time you really need to have a very tight leash on your aperture and ISO, at the very least. If you let the camera pick your aperture and/or ISO it's just going to lead to trouble. On the other hand, the output from almost all DSLRs anymore is really exceptionally good. A few months back I had decided to leave Olympus and spent a long time agonizing over where I was going to migrate. I'd owned Canon stuff in the 70's. Loved the L lenses back then. Thought the F-1 was the greatest camera in the world until I was at a photo show given by a local paper and they were bench-testing cameras for free. My Canon wasn't even close to specs. I spent the whole day there watching cameras being tested. My unofficial tally at the end of the day showed a higher percentage of Olympus cameras testing close to spec and that's when I started looking at the Oly stuff. I was an OM-2n user a month later and hadn't really even looked at another camera manufacturer seriously since the late 70's. It was kind of a tough change for me. Heh...anyway, I borrowed cameras from friends quite a bit during my painful migration. I tried out a Minolta 7D that seemed really nice. I tried a Pentax K100D that seemed excellent, actually. I tried a Canon 30D which seemed nice, as well. At the end of the day the only reason I bought the Nikon was that the D200 had weather seals and seemed really durable and it could shoot at 5 fps. I picked up a D200 and an F80 at the same time because I wanted to be able to share glass between a film body and digital body. I grabbed a few lenses and they've proven to be really quite good within a certain range of apertures. BTW, one of the lenses I bought was the 18-200mm novelty zoom that's been hammered pretty much continually since it was released. My prime lens set for shooting 35mm cinema is comprised of 18mm, 22mm, 28mm, 35mm, 50mm, 75mm and 200mm primes. The cinema frame size is very comparable to the APS sensor size and having a single zoom that could cover the range of all my primes made it a nice tool for location scouting. Look at the EXIF data later and know right up front what lenses will need to come out and when. So from that standpoint it's been handy. It's not the nicest zoom I've ever owned and it's very plastic-y and it creeps really bad, but for an example of a bad lens even it isn't all that bad. Somewhere in the middle of its zoom range the complex distortions go away and image quality gets pretty decent. Certainly a lot nicer than what we considered to be a bad lens 20 years ago. And at the end of the day, it's still all about getting out and taking photos. I have a little day trip planned for tomorrow. I was just getting ready. ;-) http://home.comcast.net/~jackson.robert.r/DirtyCrazy.jpg Tomorrow morning I am headed out to Tracey, Farmington, Linden, Clements and Sonora. I'm off to hunt down the locations used in the filming of 'Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry' and take photos of them from as close as possible to the perspectives used in the film. Just for kicks, really. Those cities are all still really small. Sonora is the biggest at about 3000 people. I tend to imagine that a lot of the locations haven't changed much. It should make a fun little document of those places and it gives me an excuse to shoot some film in an interesting way. I printed out a bunch of frame grabs from the movie, put together some maps and pulled out some film to shoot. It's the nerdy days out doing stuff like this that make all the sweating out technical details worthwhile. ;- -Rob Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: film and scanning vs digital photography
From: R. Jackson [EMAIL PROTECTED] Again, if you are using a 10MP 4/3 camera, then the comparison is with the 70-200/4.0 (IS). I know you like that f/4 comparison, but like you said earlier, with the A/D converters as they are you aren't seeing a dynamic range advantage at low ISO, so the comparison doesn't hold. It holds because under ISO 400 on the 5D is irrelevant; you don't have under ISO 100 on the 4/3 cameras. The 5D doesn't deliver a dynamic range advantage (at low ISOs), just a two stop sensitivity advantage across comparable ISOs. At the end of the day, one shoots a camera that meets one's needs. If the 4/3 meets your needs, there's no reason to move to a larger format (just don't try to tell me that it's better; it ain't). It's better at some things, certainly. If, for example, you're doing forensic work you have additional DOF and since you can use lower stops you extend the range of your strobes. Again, no. It all scales; ISO 400 is the same noise performance as ISO 100. So ISO 400 at f/4.0 is exactly the same photographically as ISO 100 at f/2.0. Just as 645 meets my needs but not the needs of someone making larger landscape prints. I prefer my 6x7. ;-) I like my Mamiya 7, too. But it doesn't replace an SLR, and you have to need to print larger than A3 to need 6x7. David J. Littleboy [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tokyo, Japan Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: film and scanning vs digital photography
From: James L. Sims [EMAIL PROTECTED] I have been trying to follow this thread, with some difficulty - probably my old age. But to keep perspective and depth of field equal, when comparing Full Frame with smaller formats, lens focal length, circle of confusion, or blur circle, size must be adjusted proportionately. Exactly. The neat thing is that it all scales. All of it. Very very cool. A larger format gives you exactly the same functionality as the smaller format, plus more if you are willing to buy larger lenses or use longer exposure times. (Assuming identical pixel counts.) Inversely, if you don't mind the lower sensitivity and lower dynamic range, you can pack as many pixels as you want into a smaller sensor and still get high-resolution images. With film, ISO and film resolution didn't scale, so the lenses seemed faster and the resolution worse with smaller formats. http://www.clarkvision.com/photoinfo/dof_myth/ http://www.clarkvision.com/photoinfo/f-ratio_myth/ http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedetail/digital.sensor.performance.summary/index.html Control of chromatic aberrations become proportionately more restrictive. There must be some things in here that don't scale, I suppose. But for practical purposes, small cameras work. Very strange. Then there's Lord Rayleigh's Criteria regarding Diffraction Limit is just as true today as it was when he published it. Therefore, with today's APO lenses, we can achieve very high quality images, with smaller formats. BUT, to achieve sharp images, the minimum acceptable lens aperture size will increase (f:# will decrease) because of diffraction. Having said this, I'm very pleased with my Canon 20D, The two lenses I have are incredibly sharp, and zoom lenses at that (I did think that no zoom lens could equal a prime lens but that may be changing) but I try to stay within its limitations - shoot at the lowest ISO that I can get away with and control exposure time to stay within a range of f:4 to f:11. Yep. The Tamron 28-75/2.8 does amazing work here on the 5D. David J. Littleboy [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tokyo, Japan Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: film and scanning vs digital photography
On Jul 7, 2007, at 5:15 PM, David J. Littleboy wrote: The 5D doesn't deliver a dynamic range advantage (at low ISOs), just a two stop sensitivity advantage across comparable ISOs. Sure. I thought I'd already made that stipulation clear. Yes, a bigger sensor will get you more high-ISO sensitivity. Of course. I don't think anyone's going to question Canon FF cameras when it comes to available-light photography. Above ISO 800 pretty much nothing can touch them. Again, no. It all scales; ISO 400 is the same noise performance as ISO 100. So ISO 400 at f/4.0 is exactly the same photographically as ISO 100 at f/2.0. Eh, good point. The Guide Number for range will double with the ISO boost, even though the modifier for F-stop will be lower. I like my Mamiya 7, too. But it doesn't replace an SLR, and you have to need to print larger than A3 to need 6x7. HA! So IQ is vital to you unless it isn't. Heh...I guess we could go on for a couple of days with me saying that 645 isn't a serious format and you can choose to use an inferior format if it suits your needs, but that doesn't make it worth using. ;-) And FWIW, a medium format SLR is only useful, IMO, if you lock up the mirror. When you start moving big mirrors like that around it defeats the purpose of using a larger format. I tried out a couple of Pentax 67s at camera shows and releasing the shutter was like tripping a mouse trap. The Mamiya is really well-behaved, IMO. I can live without it being an SLR in exchange for not having a bid sheet of glass swinging wildly to and fro inside the body. I've actually been thinking about picking up a Fuji GX-680 III. Being able to change off between 120 and a digital back plus having view camera movements (although somewhat limited) makes a pretty strong argument for owing one, but every time I pick one up at a camera show the sheer bulk of it scares me away. It's a lot cheaper option than the SInar M route, though. -Rob Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
[filmscanners] Re: film and scanning vs digital photography
From: R. Jackson [EMAIL PROTECTED] So IQ is vital to you unless it isn't. Heh...I guess we could go on for a couple of days with me saying that 645 isn't a serious format and you can choose to use an inferior format if it suits your needs, but that doesn't make it worth using. ;-) Exactly! But I ain't telling you that 645 is better than 6x7. Only that it's cheaper, lighter, easier to use, and meets requirements. Tell me that about the 4/3 cameras and you don't get an argument. But blame digital for 4/3's problems, tell me that it does something better, and you get an argument. And FWIW, a medium format SLR is only useful, IMO, if you lock up the mirror. When you start moving big mirrors like that around it defeats the purpose of using a larger format. I tried out a couple of Pentax 67s at camera shows and releasing the shutter was like tripping a mouse trap. That's true of the P67, but the M645 delivers the goods at 1/125 handheld. About one in three images fail at 1/60. According to both my microscopes and Nikon 8000. I've seen people using P67s handheld, but that's outdoors on bright sunny days. The Mamiya is really well-behaved, IMO. I can live without it being an SLR in exchange for not having a bid sheet of glass swinging wildly to and fro inside the body. The M7 doesn't get close (without going to heroic efforts), polarizers are a pain, it doesn't really do portraits. It's a two-trick pony (43 and 65 (three if you like 80mm)), but the 43 is expensive enough that it never showed up here (oops: for 1/2 the money I could have had the GSW690III with full 6x9, but the lack of interchangeable lenses put me off). And I'm not convinced the M7 is any better on the shutter speed than the M645. If I need 1/60 or slower with either of them, the tripod gets used. People insist rangefinders work handheld, but that's a lot of film and a lot of lens to waste. I've actually been thinking about picking up a Fuji GX-680 III. Being able to change off between 120 and a digital back plus having view camera movements (although somewhat limited) makes a pretty strong argument for owing one, but every time I pick one up at a camera show the sheer bulk of it scares me away. It's a lot cheaper option than the SInar M route, though. HEADS UP! The GX-680 III doesn't have movements; you need the GX-680 IIIS. I was looking at old TLRs on the lowest shelf of a glass case on the dusty second floor of a used camera shop here in Tokyo, and when I stood up and turned around, there was a Fuji GX-680 on the top shelf of the case behind me ready to pounce. I practically had a heart attack; that guy's enormous. David J. Littleboy [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tokyo, Japan Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
