The Difference between film and digital...

Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM

02/01/2004 11:13:30 AM · #1

I had an interesting discussion last night about the difference in sharpness between film and digital. Fairly timely I think considering more than 150 people have added dSLRs to their bag on this site in January alone (let's all say a collective 'thanks' to Canon). So often we hear about a new dSLR owner complaining about the softness in their pictures. As it turns out, it's a technical limitation as much as it is a user limitation (although we can never rule out user error with a new instrument, but the fact remains nonetheless).

One of the most important conclusions i got out of this, is that *digital cameras require sharpening*. here's a quote that I pulled directly from This Article:

"The precise comparison between the EOS-10D and 35mm film is highly dependent on the amount of sharpening. And you can't escape sharpening-- it's built in to most digital imaging devices including the EOS-10D and the Canoscan FS4000US. You need it to get the best image quality. I'd estimate that the sharpness advantage of the film image is around 10-20%, and I won't try to pin it down any closer. It's quicksand. Image quality involves more than sharpness. When you look at real images and observe the grain and color quality, the 10D is competitive with the best 35mm film. " (bolded parts theirs, not mine).

Basically this dispels the old-school film fotogs' belief that digital images are typically oversharp. I'll Grant that many prosumer digicams over-sharpen right out of the box to compensate for this, so this does not necessarily apply to them. But for those of you with 10Ds, 300Ds, D100s, D60s, and the like, just accept that a little sharpening post-processing will be necessary.

For those interested, Scablab posted this
Creative Pro Sharpening Article a while back, and is still the best read on the issue I've found.

have fun out there y'all.

Pedro

EddyG

Canon EOS-1D Mark II

02/01/2004 11:28:00 AM · #2

I find the 10D to be not just "competitive with the best 35mm film" but blow it out of the water.

Take a look at these two images, one shot with the 10D without any further enhancements, such as Unsharp Mask and the other shot using the same lens with 35mm Provia F ISO 100 film and scanned at 4000 dpi on a Nikon Super Coolscan 4000 ED negative scanner.

To me, the difference is night and day... and this is with an unsharpened picture from a 10D raw file (so not even the normal in-camera sharpening that is applied when shooting JPEGs). I certainly don't see any advantage to film... the sky looks horrible in the film version compared to what the silky-smooth CMOS sensor in the 10D captured.

Message edited by author 2004-02-01 11:30:16.

02/01/2004 11:30:45 AM · #3

Originally posted by EddyG:

I find the 10D to be not just "competitive with the best 35mm film" but blow it out of the water.

Take a look at these two images, one shot with the 10D without any further enhancements, such as Unsharp Mask and the other shot using the same lens with 35mm Provia F ISO 100 film and scanned at 4000 dpi on a Nikon Super Coolscan 4000 ED negative scanner.

To me, the difference is night and day... and this is with an unsharpened picture from the 10D. I certainly don't see any advantage to film... the sky looks horrible in the film version compared to what the silky-smooth CMOS sensor in the 10D captured.

Believe me Eddy...this is NOT me supporting film...just me supporting the sharpening of digital pics when necessary.

Message edited by author 2004-02-01 11:31:30.

02/01/2004 12:36:01 PM · #4

I dont have a 10d to compare for myself.

I do believe digital images are generally oversharpened. Purely because of misinformation not because of technology. Sites of pro photogs however dont seem to be.

Its not really fair to compare a scanned 35mm slide to a straight digital file. The skill of the person doing the scanning could make all the difference. It would be the same if someone took a digital file made a slide and compared it to a straight slide.

Here is a comparison I noticed a week ago. I had nothing to do with either photos. It was posted to compare crop factor. The top ones are the digitals.

and

Tim

I should make note that these images belong to jab119 to give proper credit.

Message edited by author 2004-02-01 12:38:41.

pitsaman

Canon EOS-30D

Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II

02/01/2004 12:45:47 PM · #5

Niten,
Those pics are different zooms(focal lenghth) which probably gives different metering values,those samples are not good to convince me about anything!

Message edited by author 2004-02-01 12:46:35.

02/01/2004 12:52:17 PM · #6

Originally posted by Niten:

I do believe digital images are generally oversharpened. Purely because of misinformation not because of technology. Sites of pro photogs however dont seem to be.

but if you're talking about pro photogs' websites, those are scanned images anyway. The point (which you also refer do indirectly) is that it's not the technology that oversharpens *in general*, it's the users. Film users are equally capable of doing that if they chose.

My point remains that digital images often require sharpening to bring them up to the equivalent sharpness of their film cousins.

P

Message edited by author 2004-02-01 12:52:50.

02/01/2004 01:02:30 PM · #7

Originally posted by Pedro:

My point remains that digital images often require sharpening to bring them up to the equivalent sharpness of their film cousins.

P

I agree

It was the "I find the 10D to be not just "competitive with the best 35mm film" but blow it out of the water. " in someone elses post I wasn't agreeing with.

T

Nikon AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8G IF-ED

02/01/2004 01:07:45 PM · #8

Originally posted by Niten:

I agree

It was the "I find the 10D to be not just "competitive with the best 35mm film" but blow it out of the water. " in someone elses post I wasn't agreeing with.

T

Gotcha. yeah, that makes sense to me too. I'd agree that there could easily be a scanner limitation in those two images. having said all that, a few more generations of digital should unequivocally blow film out of the water :)

Kali

Nikon D7100

02/01/2004 01:20:44 PM · #9

For me film has alot more warmth and liveliness, the colors seem to be truer. Digital can sometimes be stark and too detailed, i.e. draws attention to details which your eyes don't normally focus on.
I'm a slave to digital photography for it's effortless versatility.

EddyG

Canon EOS-1D Mark II

Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM

02/01/2004 01:27:02 PM · #10

Originally posted by Niten:

It was the "I find the 10D to be not just "competitive with the best 35mm film" but blow it out of the water. " in someone elses post I wasn't agreeing with.

Obviously you're entitled to your opinions, but I want to point out that the Nikon Super CoolScan 4000 ED is not a "junk" scanner. It is a well-regarded film scanner, and although Nikon now has the Coolscan 5000 ED out, scans made by the 4000 can't simply be dismissed as "amateur". It certainly is nothing like scanning using a transparency adapter on a $150 Epson scanner.

Further, if look around Steve Hoffmann's site, you'll see that he's not just some schmuck trying to prove that the 10D is better than film. He's been a photographer since 1973 and not only shoots 35mm but also 4x5 medium format film. I'd guess he's fairly competent at scanning his transparencies and therefore able to make the comparisons that he does with some authority. His conclusion?

My opinion after doing these comparison images is that the Canon 1Ds 11mp DSLR exceeds 4000dpi 35mm film scan quality by a considerable amount. In fact, in some photographic situations 1Ds image quality may be competitive with a 4X5 camera image when the 4X5 chrome is scanned with a fixed focus scanner like the Epson 2450. The 10D 6mp camera image quality approaches and in some cases may equal or exceed Provia F film scan quality at 4000 dpi.

Message edited by author 2004-02-01 13:28:50.

Brent_Ward

Canon EOS-5D

Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L USM

02/01/2004 01:36:44 PM · #11

The main advantage for film is color depth. It still has a greater range than digital. When you can capture a "true" 16 bit image than things will be very, very close.

kirbic

Canon EOS R5

Canon RF 24-70 f2.8 L IS

02/01/2004 01:49:36 PM · #12

Originally posted by EddyG:

I do agree that the 10D does best film in many respects, including rendering of fine detail. Regarding the referenced test, however, I must state the playing field was certainly not "level" as the author maintains.

[soapbox]
The 10D has a crop factor of 1.6, so at 24mm, its FoV was significantly smaller than the full-frame 35mm negative. So we're really comparing a crop from the 35mm neg with the full 10D image. Yes, the author did upsample the 10D image, but NOT by a factor of 1.6. If you use a longer focal length, you should expect to see more detail in the same features, becaused of increased magnification.
I also question the wisdom of the lens choice; the 24-70 is a fine lens, however it is not the sharpest lens in Canon's line by a long shot. Of particular importance is enough resolving power to minimize impact to the digital imaging system, which has much higher LINEAR resolution at the sensor plane. The 24-70 (by Canon's MTF chart) is significantly worse at resolving fine dedtail, particularly sagittally, than one of Canon's razor-sharp primes. An unassailable lens choice would have been the 180mm f/3.5 macro, and use a center crop (as he did with he 24-70).
Bottom line, the referenced test was skewed, favoring the 10D because of the magnification issue, but slighted the 10D because of the lens choice. Personally, I think the 10D would still come out on top in resolution, however I don't have all the equipment to perform the test myself. (lack a good film body and a superb prime lens; OK I could prolly use the 100/2.8 macro, but it is not as good as the 180)
With reard to noise, there is absolutely no comparison, 10D wins hands down, every time. Since perceived image quality has a lot to do with noise (after all, added noise reduces the signal to noise ratio, which reduces information content) the 10D images will look better even if resolved detail is identical. Stated another way, the two could have equivalent extinction resolutions, in total line pairs resolved, but the 10D would retain higher MTF closer to it's Nyquist limit, due to lower noise.

[/soapbox]

I cannot wait to see sample images & noise figures from the Canon 1D Mark II, supposed to have even lower noise than the 10D, with 8.2Mpx. It's going to significantly push out the performance envelope, I think!

Edit:
Forgot to comment on the scanner... yes, the scanner is adding a bit of noise to the film image, something that could be reconciled by performing multiple scans & averaging (Ed Hamrick's VueScan is great at this). As for 4000 DPI affecting the sharpness of the film original, no, not unless the scanner is improperly focused. I've scanned about 2500 slides over the past year or so, at 2700 dpi. Many were taken with very sharp prime lenses (Steinheil, Zeiss). Nearly all were taken with ISO 100 or ISO 64 film. True, they're older slides, and todays films are less grainy, but film grain predominates at this resolution, the scanner is not really a factor in resolution. 4000dpi is a significant benefit for today's films, however, but 8000dpi gains next to nothing, IMO.

Message edited by author 2004-02-01 13:57:50.

02/01/2004 01:53:53 PM · #13

Originally posted by EddyG:

My opinion after doing these comparison images is that the Canon 1Ds 11mp DSLR exceeds 4000dpi 35mm film scan quality by a considerable amount. In fact, in some photographic situations 1Ds image quality may be competitive with a 4X5 camera image when the 4X5 chrome is scanned with a fixed focus scanner like the Epson 2450. The 10D 6mp camera image quality approaches and in some cases may equal or exceed Provia F film scan quality at 4000 dpi.

Anyone whos opinion is that the 1Ds image quality is better than a 4x5 camera, loses creditbility.

Gordon

RIM BlackBerry Curve

Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM

02/01/2004 02:43:44 PM · #14

Originally posted by Niten:

Originally posted by EddyG:

My opinion after doing these comparison images is that the Canon 1Ds 11mp DSLR exceeds 4000dpi 35mm film scan quality by a considerable amount. In fact, in some photographic situations 1Ds image quality may be competitive with a 4X5 camera image when the 4X5 chrome is scanned with a fixed focus scanner like the Epson 2450. The 10D 6mp camera image quality approaches and in some cases may equal or exceed Provia F film scan quality at 4000 dpi.

Anyone whos opinion is that the 1Ds image quality is better than a 4x5 camera, loses creditbility.

Quite a few people, who have a lot of experience in both formats, have similar opinions about the 1Ds quality for typical enlargment sizes.