DPChallenge: A Digital Photography Contest You are not logged in. (log in or register) 
 

DPChallenge Forums >> Photography Discussion >> As Good As Medium Format
Pages:  
Showing posts 1 - 23 of 23, (reverse)
AuthorThread
 11/27/2005 10:08:06 PM · #1
My brother thinks his Nikon D-70 gets resolution as good as one of my medium format cameras. I definitely think it's as good as any 35mm, but not medium format.
 11/27/2005 10:12:11 PM · #2
Originally posted by ragamuffingirl:
My brother thinks his Nikon D-70 gets resolution as good as one of my medium format cameras. I definitely think it's as good as any 35mm, but not medium format.


no, not really possible I don't think (without Genuine Fractals anyways). the d2x is probably close, the 1dsMarkII most definitely.
11/27/2005 10:31:47 PM · #3
Have him take a look at this website and see if he still thinks so... There are a lot of reasons for using digital. At the moment ultimate quality is not one of them.
//www.kenrockwell.com/tech/filmdig.htm#examples
 11/27/2005 10:46:37 PM · #4
Originally posted by EricMGB1974:
Have him take a look at this website and see if he still thinks so... There are a lot of reasons for using digital. At the moment ultimate quality is not one of them.
//www.kenrockwell.com/tech/filmdig.htm#examples


I'd agree that the D70 (or the equivalent cameras of other brands) is likely to be able to achieve results as good or slightly better than 35mm color film, but will not equal MF. As previously posted, today's top-end full-frame DSLrs, and probably the D2X, are capable of aproaching parity with MF, with good glass of course.
FWIW, I'd take what Ken Rockwell has to say with a grain of salt. He is quite biased.
 11/27/2005 10:52:42 PM · #5
Obviously MF has more resolution but there MIGHT be a SMALL point if using the photo in a digital world (not printing the thing).

Unless you use a drum scanner then a scan will likely have more junk then a straight digital shot with a lot less native resolution.

Then it might be me just having a hard time with some 35mm negative scans :hate:
 11/27/2005 11:07:30 PM · #6
Originally posted by robs:
Obviously MF has more resolution but there MIGHT be a SMALL point if using the photo in a digital world (not printing the thing).

Unless you use a drum scanner then a scan will likely have more junk then a straight digital shot with a lot less native resolution.

Then it might be me just having a hard time with some 35mm negative scans :hate:


35mm negs are a royal biatch to scan. They are very dense, and it takes either multiple passes on a decent scanner, or a really expensive scanner, to get it right. I've actually had better success recently using my 10D as a capture device. I knocked the glass out of an old slide duplicator and made a mounting ring to attach it to my 100m macro lens, and boy does that work nice!
BTW, you alluded to the fact that there is more to it than resolution, and you are correct. Today's 1.5- or 1.6-crop cams are capable of more dynamic range than typical color emulsions. Many still don't believe this, but it's true, especially with respect to rendreing detail in deep shadows, DSLRs are superb.
With respect to resolution, it's often pointed out that the amount of "information" in drum scans of slide emulsions is huge, yielding files in the multiple hundreds of megabytes. Claims of extracting "more detail" at scan resolutions in excess of 4000DPI abound. Problem is, all they are extracting is more grain, there is almost no increase in true detail.
If one compares the output from a 1DsMkII with a MF color positive, the DSLR will compete head-to-head in rendering of detail, and will excel in rendering high contrast scenes with "open shadows."
11/27/2005 11:16:04 PM · #7
I was told that digital equals 35mm exceeds around 11-12 mp.

6x7 is 4 times 35mm film (roughly) so what would be 4 times 11mp?

All I know is that I can scan in my 6x7 @ 4000 dpi for a 270mb file. That prints a great 40x50.

There is more to resolution than MP. One of the reasons I've been holding off is the 35mm glass. It's just not as good as MF glass, unless you spend out the arse and get exotic glass with a canon adapter. It is true digital has a higher dynamic range, but with CS2 it's moot.
 11/27/2005 11:20:12 PM · #8
any one here ever look in to getting one of those new MF digital backed cameras?
11/27/2005 11:21:42 PM · #9
Originally posted by traquino98:
any one here ever look in to getting one of those new MF digital backed cameras?


When I win the lottery!
 11/27/2005 11:27:13 PM · #10
Originally posted by Brent_Ward:
I was told that digital equals 35mm exceeds around 11-12 mp.

6x7 is 4 times 35mm film (roughly) so what would be 4 times 11mp?


Mp is a multiplied number, so the increase in Mp is geometric. Given the same resolution of sensor, an increase in linear dimension by 4x would mean an increase in file size of 16x. If your Full Frame Canon image were 2Mb, the same pixel pitch in a 6x7-sized sensor would yield a 32Mb file.

Robt.
 11/27/2005 11:34:08 PM · #11
Actually, Pentax is coming out with a 18mp version based on the 645. I'm hoping it's nice, mainly because I have all this great pentax glass.

I quit shooting 35mm a long time because I prefer the 6x7 crop. I hate thinking about leaving cropping room while I shoot, it gets in my way of creating.
 11/27/2005 11:35:16 PM · #12
Originally posted by Brent_Ward:
...All I know is that I can scan in my 6x7 @ 4000 dpi for a 270mb file. That prints a great 40x50.


Brent, I've no doubt that drum scans of good, crisp 6x7 positives (or negs) look great at that size. With a 6x7cm original, scanned at 4000dpi, you're printing at 220dpi when enlarged to a 50" length. A Canon 5D file would be printing just under 90dpi, so game, set and match to MF, right? Perhaps not. That same 4000dpi corresponds to 79 line pairs per millimeter. No way the emulsion is even approaching that resolution, and the lens is probably not capable of it either. What you are doing is "oversampling" which is the right thing to do to get the best looking print, but again, I'd put a 1DsII or even a 5D file up against it for sheer resolution. It would be a close race, and I would not want to predict which would edge out the other.

Originally posted by Brent_Ward:
...There is more to resolution than MP. One of the reasons I've been holding off is the 35mm glass. It's just not as good as MF glass, unless you spend out the arse and get exotic glass with a canon adapter. It is true digital has a higher dynamic range, but with CS2 it's moot.


I'd tend to agree that 35mm glass can be underwhelming, but there is great glass out there for at least sane, if not quite reasonable bucks. I'm interested in why you feel that CS2 is a solution for dynamic range? Information not captured cannot be recovered. The shadow/highlight tool can be a really good (or really bad) thing, but when it's black (or white) that's all she wrote.
 11/27/2005 11:38:56 PM · #13
Originally posted by kirbic:

35mm negs are a royal biatch to scan. They are very dense, and it takes either multiple passes on a decent scanner, or a really expensive scanner, to get it right. I've actually had better success recently using my 10D as a capture device. I knocked the glass out of an old slide duplicator and made a mounting ring to attach it to my 100m macro lens, and boy does that work nice!
BTW, you alluded to the fact that there is more to it than resolution, and you are correct. Today's 1.5- or 1.6-crop cams are capable of more dynamic range than typical color emulsions. Many still don't believe this, but it's true, especially with respect to rendreing detail in deep shadows, DSLRs are superb.
With respect to resolution, it's often pointed out that the amount of "information" in drum scans of slide emulsions is huge, yielding files in the multiple hundreds of megabytes. Claims of extracting "more detail" at scan resolutions in excess of 4000DPI abound. Problem is, all they are extracting is more grain, there is almost no increase in true detail.
If one compares the output from a 1DsMkII with a MF color positive, the DSLR will compete head-to-head in rendering of detail, and will excel in rendering high contrast scenes with "open shadows."


- I think I agree that digital SLR's are getting more detail in most cases. I read that some still think film has more dynamic range and that might be true for some film types but I just don't see that in my 35mm examples (I have a 20D, so am running around 8MP); although I have the odd slide where I see where it might have the edge.

- Funny you mention the extraction of more detail then is there because I suspect that is part of my problem. I have some amazing slides at 4000DPI (I have a Nikon 5000 film scanner) but am getting all sorts of what I think is false noise when playing with 35mm negatives - I can only assume that slides hold more detail then the negs (kinda makes sense I guess). It's a fight in progress, and right now I am losing but I will get there.

- I did think about tracking down one of those attachments that you built but in the end deceided to go the scanner path since I am also trying to get good images of very old family slides where stuff like ICE (dust removal) and ROC (colour restoration) are proving to be just pure magic - mine are more recent and in better condition, so I could probably get away with your faster/cheaper solution.
 11/27/2005 11:46:06 PM · #14
I don't know a lot about the technical details but I know my eyes. A local pro landscape photog here just put out a new book in which he has 35mm, DSLR and medium format shots. He brought an advacne copy to the last photo club meeting. I picked out every one of the medium format shots without looking at the index. Now the 35mm vs digital I could not tell. He used a Canon EOS 1D Mark II
 11/27/2005 11:46:34 PM · #15
Rob,
Your scanner is definitely better than mine, I have an LS-30. For difficult (dense) positives I need to use four passes with VueScan before I get detail in the shadows. I do much better with the 10D, even though the 10D "scans" at 2300dpi as opposed to 2700 on the LS-30. I'm thinking the LS-30 might be e-bay fodder soon.
I do miss the ICE for dust removal, though it only works marginally well with Kodachrome, which is mostly what I have to scan.
 11/27/2005 11:49:15 PM · #16
Originally posted by kirbic:
I'm interested in why you feel that CS2 is a solution for dynamic range?

Perhaps he's referring to the new HDR feature in cs2?

Message edited by author 2005-11-27 23:54:21.
 11/27/2005 11:54:23 PM · #17
Originally posted by justin_hewlett:
Perhaps he's referring to the new HDR feature in cs2?


Yes! That would make sense... bracketed shots, merge to HDR. More trouble, but doable.
 11/27/2005 11:57:55 PM · #18
I don't know if this helps, but when I was trained to make digital slides, the hardware rep (from AGFA) said that the grain of the ISO 100 slide film we were using fell between the 4000 and 8000 DPI of the imager.

To me, that says that a digital image would have to be about 9000x6000 pixels to equal a 35mm frame in "true" maximum resolution.

That said, we generally got perfectly decent slides sending a 2048x1366 pixel (8MB) image at 4000 dpi; for "best quality" we'd use a TIFF twice that size (32MB).
 11/28/2005 12:13:29 AM · #19
Originally posted by kirbic:
Originally posted by Brent_Ward:
...All I know is that I can scan in my 6x7 @ 4000 dpi for a 270mb file. That prints a great 40x50.


Brent, I've no doubt that drum scans of good, crisp 6x7 positives (or negs) look great at that size. With a 6x7cm original, scanned at 4000dpi, you're printing at 220dpi when enlarged to a 50" length. A Canon 5D file would be printing just under 90dpi, so game, set and match to MF, right? Perhaps not. That same 4000dpi corresponds to 79 line pairs per millimeter. No way the emulsion is even approaching that resolution, and the lens is probably not capable of it either. What you are doing is "oversampling" which is the right thing to do to get the best looking print, but again, I'd put a 1DsII or even a 5D file up against it for sheer resolution. It would be a close race, and I would not want to predict which would edge out the other.

Originally posted by Brent_Ward:
...There is more to resolution than MP. One of the reasons I've been holding off is the 35mm glass. It's just not as good as MF glass, unless you spend out the arse and get exotic glass with a canon adapter. It is true digital has a higher dynamic range, but with CS2 it's moot.


I'd tend to agree that 35mm glass can be underwhelming, but there is great glass out there for at least sane, if not quite reasonable bucks. I'm interested in why you feel that CS2 is a solution for dynamic range? Information not captured cannot be recovered. The shadow/highlight tool can be a really good (or really bad) thing, but when it's black (or white) that's all she wrote.


I saw a chart that gave the resolution stats for the canon sensors. the 1Ds resolved more than the Mark II version. Then we have the glass. Most of the Canon WA glass just doesn't have the sharpeness or the resolving power of it MF cousins.

Here is some info about velvia:
Resolving power
At a chart contrast of 1,6:1 80 lines/mm
At a chart contrast of 1000:1 160 lines/mm

And I've seen reports that list Pentax 67 lenses upto 76 LPM

I mentioned CS2 because of it's HDR. I normally bracket exposures anyway, so this is an easy way for me to get more dynamic range out of my scans.
 11/28/2005 12:23:55 AM · #20
numbers game aside.... looking at a good slide from my 6x6 yashicamat, or my 6x7 mamiya 7 and I am always glad I captured it on film and not a digital file...I think I'd feel that way even if I had a 16 mp camera.

But no, a d70 wont compare to medium format....I can tell you because, well I have a d70 and 2 medium format cameras. I've compared.

I don't bother with 35 mm anymore though I'd like to get an old f4 or f5 eventually for fun.
 11/28/2005 01:04:30 AM · #21
I'm actually looking into shooting 8x10 and dumping my 67.
 11/28/2005 03:53:44 PM · #22
I also have two medium format cameras. Yashica-D and Mamiya C220. They're both older double lens reflex cameras. I haven't shot with either of them in a couple of years now just because the combined cost of film and processing can be prohibitive.

I keep seeing this adapter that says it will make it so I can put Pentax lenses on my Olympus E-300. Is that something I should consider buying? I love my camera, but I'm completely unimpressed with the accessories that are available for it.
 11/28/2005 04:23:43 PM · #23
Originally posted by ragamuffingirl:
I also have two medium format cameras. Yashica-D and Mamiya C220. They're both older double lens reflex cameras. I haven't shot with either of them in a couple of years now just because the combined cost of film and processing can be prohibitive.

I keep seeing this adapter that says it will make it so I can put Pentax lenses on my Olympus E-300. Is that something I should consider buying? I love my camera, but I'm completely unimpressed with the accessories that are available for it.


Olympus has great glass. At least there high end stuff is.
Pages:  
Current Server Time: 08/26/2025 11:20:15 PM

Please log in or register to post to the forums.


Home - Challenges - Community - League - Photos - Cameras - Lenses - Learn - Help - Terms of Use - Privacy - Top ^
DPChallenge, and website content and design, Copyright © 2001-2025 Challenging Technologies, LLC.
All digital photo copyrights belong to the photographers and may not be used without permission.
Current Server Time: 08/26/2025 11:20:15 PM EDT.