300d as an elaborate light meter?

[Jonathan Wienke]

I wouldn't bother with the film body. The 300D will give you better image quality than 35mm slides. The lack of grain is a major advantage of digital; digital has a 2-3 stop ISO advantage over film. Digital sensors do not suffer from reciprocity failure; but the noise does increase somewhat with long exposures. Especially when shooting RAW, the flexibility in adjusting the color temperature and white balance after-the-fact is another huge advantage. If you see "something special" in the viewfinder, you are much more likely to get a frame-worthy 16x20 from digital than from film.

[Dale_Cotton]

jlanng: David Meunch or his son wrote up using a compact digicam to preview compositions for their 4x5s several years ago (in Outdoor Photographer?). There really should be no discrepancy in metering between digital at, for example, 100 ISO and slide film at 100 ISO. They both share the same critical 2.5 stop highlight latitude limitation. However, I wouldn't bet the farm on theory; I'd take the setup into my backyard and blow off a test roll first, preferably in high contrast light.

[AJSJones]

I'll be trying to track down the Muench article but had good experience with the 10D.  I now have a 4x5 and a Sekonic light meter, spot metering the highlights shadows etc (the old-fashioned way  ) for 100 speed transparency film.  I'd had the same thought as you and decided to check out the exposure using the 10D and similar field of view.  The evaluative metering came within 1/2 stop of the Sekonic.  The scanned transparency did indeed have no blown highlights and some good shadow details.  I will always have the 10D when shooting 4x5 and will continue to check the correspondence but so far so good!  I suspect I could rely entirely on the 10D and will probably do that for rapid setup shots or rapidly changing lighting conditions...  No reason why it should fail very often.  I'd agree with the other comments that you need bigger than 35mm to get a "better" image than from the sensors in the 10D and 300D.  That's essentially why I got the 4x5 in the first place (I like BIG detailed prints!)

Andy

[pmkierst]

I seem to recall on one of the VJ's (from this site) Alain Briot saying he also uses a P&S digital for previewing his 4x5 work.

Or I could be imagining things..

[jlanng]

(First post, hello all! )

Has anyone compared metering on your DSLR and film cameras?  I plan to shoto digitally most of the time. but if I come up with an image that looks a bit special on the digital preview window, the plan is to whip off the 300d and plug in the film body loaded with slide film - when exposure is critical.  I'd transpose the exact settings used on the digital camera to my film camera, so effectively I'd be using my 300d as a glorified light meter!  Can anyone see a flaw in the plan?  Do digital sensors exhibit reciprocity law failure too?

[BruceK]

I agree with Jonathan that you can get a better digital image from a 300D than 35mm film. But I'm (theoretically) going to be trying the same thing you describe during the Muskoka workshop except I'll be using my 10D and Mamiya 6x4.5. That is, of course, the plan and will be subject to change. There's something about looking at medium format transparencies on a light box that attracts me.   ::

    Bruce

[JeroenM]

(First post, hello all! )

Has anyone compared metering on your DSLR and film cameras?  I plan to shoto digitally most of the time. but if I come up with an image that looks a bit special on the digital preview window, the plan is to whip off the 300d and plug in the film body loaded with slide film - when exposure is critical.  I'd transpose the exact settings used on the digital camera to my film camera, so effectively I'd be using my 300d as a glorified light meter!  Can anyone see a flaw in the plan?  Do digital sensors exhibit reciprocity law failure too?

the problem could be that the 300D and your film camera have different ISO meanings.
try it out and you'll see it right away.

[Dale_Cotton]

Andy:

I'll be trying to track down the Muench article

...and at least you know how to spell the name correctly.  It was called The Digital Camera Viewfinder, and was in the April 2001 Outdoor Photography. It had Marc Muench on location in some dramatic mountain setting experimenting with using a 2 or 3 mp Kodak digicam for previewing before exposing a 4x5. I thought I had this issue in my collection, and I'll check again tonight, but all I could find last night was one in Outdoor Photographer dated Dec 2000, which focused on their digital darkroom. Reading it again was very enlightening.

Back then, there wasn't anything like a Nikon 8000 or multi-hundred-GB hard drives, so they bought a baby drum scanner and a special RAID disk farm of 350 GB with tape back-up. They scanned their 4x5 Velvia frames at 315 ppi, creating a 150 MB file, then saved both the raw and the edited versions.

[AJSJones]

Thanks Dale - I might still have that particular issue (pack rat that I am).  At the time a 4x5 was still a dream so I didn't pay much attention, but now... looking forward to a helpful read!

Andy

[Dale_Cotton]

Found the article, re-read it, and Marc did trust the digicam as an exposure referent. However, his primary purpose was for composition - instant Polaroid.