What happened to low ISO?

[Jeremy Payne]

Digital tends to appear as to record color, while a quality slide film tend to record light (and with a magic interpretation of it).

That's so funny ... I was just saying to my wife that I thought film tends to appear as to record color, whereas a quality digital capture tends to record light (and with a magic interpretation of it.)

 

[Dick Roadnight]

...yes, but, if you want a nice smooth pictures without banding, you need the pixels for the darker parts of the picture to be capturing a minimum 20 or so photons each, and the light parts 2^8  to 2^16 times as many photons.

If you do not have a very large number of shades of each colour you get banding.

When you are trying to stretch the ISO, and one pixel (photon bucket) in a hundred captures a photon, and you amplify the signal until your photon buckets overflow (blown-out highlights or clipping), I assume you try to get clever software to transfer the overflow to adjacent pixels, which tends to result in digital grain, or noise, or Canon balls or Phase lumpiness or whatever you want to call it.

I am (OK "has been") many things.. including a qualified and experienced electronic engineer and real-time programmer.

[Anders_HK]

That's so funny ... I was just saying to my wife that I thought film tends to appear as to record color, whereas a quality digital capture tends to record light (and with a magic interpretation of it.)

 

You may wish to revisit your sunset gallery. Contrary to a quality slide film it come across to my eye to render color but not much of light.

Above is my humble and honest impression. The obvious should be that it is not by obsession for gear that I amuse to carry multiple cameras with lenses - film and digital - around not only to the field but on travels. I much would prefer one camera, however I see that both digital and film excels for different things. What I pointed out in above of color vs. light was a point made of the way digital tend to render with emphasis on color but not of light. I guess it is simply how film is tuned in comparison and how the silver particles in it add sparkles in magic ways which yet is not achieved for digital. Sure it is ok to have differing view, but also to be suffice educated for the fact that while for sure digital excels at some things and film excels at some, they are simply different medias. For landscapes... low ISO excels and seem much forgotten by Nikon, Canon and the likes. They wish to sell more cameras simply. A capture of a waterfall at 200ISO and a neutral density filter is hardly the optimum for image quality, just a way around the sensors that are not tuned for that kind of purpose.

I shot Nikon before; F100 and Velvia 50. Great camera, and great film, albeit I now feel was small format. Last Nikon I had was D200 at the time it was raved about being superior to film and of such very magic greats. Frankly my eye failed to be seduced by the technology and failed to see superiority to film. In fact I experienced its color rendering and brilliance of light to be crap compared to Velvia. Nikon has significantly improved with D700/D3/D3X, but they still do not reach MFDB, and those not near film in some of renderings: namely light.

Regards
Anders

[Jeremy Payne]

...

Please define the following terms if you would like to have a conversation that is meaningful to anyone other than yourself:

*** Light
*** Color
*** Magic

[Dick Roadnight]

Frankly my eye failed to be seduced by the technology and failed to see superiority to film. In fact I experienced its color rendering and brilliance of light to be crap compared to Velvia. Nikon has significantly improved with D700/D3/D3X, but they still do not reach MFDB, and those not near film in some of renderings: namely light.

Regards
Anders

Man serious 10 * 8 landscape photographer are now turning to MF, and I believe that something like...

Apo-digitars
Sinar P3
Hasselblad H4D-60

...is fully up to matching Velvia, and will soon be the tool of choice for Landscape photographers not very limited re budget.

[clkirksey]

smaller maximum ISO speed before noise is unacceptable (to 100% pixel peeping at least!), but no change in minimum ISO speed, which seems to be the main topic of this thread.


A dubious claim since the vast majority of sensors made these days have photosite spacing of less than 2 microns, and some are as small as 1.2 microns. It is not entirely clear than even the wavelength of light is an absolute minimum limit: antennas can be considerably shorter than the wavelength of the signal they receive. For example, AM wavelengths are about 200 to 400m, but most AM radios are smaller than that!

You are correct about small antennas. But small antennas are not very good at collecting incoming radiation. The larger the better. With light photons you can still have small apertures but the output direction or even the color of the light now becomes questionable. The CFA performance will start to really suffer if the photodetector pitch is less than a wavelength. Perhaps ejmatin can put some real numbers to this.

[Dick Roadnight]

The CFA performance will start to really suffer if the photodetector pitch is less than a wavelength. Perhaps ejmatin can put some real numbers to this.

I was thinking that as the pixel pitch gets less than about three times the wavelength of the incident light, there would be little increase in the resolution of the camera system... no need for AA filters as a high proportion of the light will be spread over more than one pixel... but it depends on the size of the sensitive area of the pixel relative to the pixel pitch.

[Anders_HK]

Man serious 10 * 8 landscape photographer are now turning to MF, and I believe that something like...

Apo-digitars
Sinar P3
Hasselblad H4D-60

...is fully up to matching Velvia, and will soon be the tool of choice for Landscape photographers not very limited re budget.

Ehh. Regardless that does not mean that a P65 have details of 8x10 (albeit on this very site it was years ago claimed a 6MP camera was about equal to 35 film, nonsense). More so it is difficult to achieve the rendering of Velvia using a MFDB or any digital, simply they are different medias. That said MFDB excels over smaller digital. The difficulty in gaining pleasing rendering of light with digital is in particular at the for landscapes most magic minutes of low sun and sunrise/sunset.

One very successful landscape photographer who have turned towards also use digital is Peter Lik. In his online videos he has quick gone through DSLR -> Hassy -> Mamiya 645 / Phase One -> P45 on Alpa. Yet... the rendering still appear different from these than his 617 Velvia 50. Make a search on Youtube 'Peter Lik'. He is arguably at the very top end, perhaps in $$ earnings the most successful landscape shooter ever. It appears he still keeps using his old Linhof 617 mated with Velvia @ ISO 50 alongside digital. One must ask why?

Now if you want to argue digital beats film, that is rather childish and outside the point I made. I shoot both, and I prefer digital for certain applications, and am very very please with my Leaf Aptus and the colors it records, albeit not Velvia. Still slide film simply excels at others. In many landscape applications slide film is a lot easier than digital, the main problem is the scarcity of labs.

Albeit, this is a site where many advocate DIGITAL. Some nice film images can be found among posts here http://www.largeformatphotography.info/for...isplay.php?f=30

One post above asked me to quantify light, color etc. I decline, because if you cannot see it with eye, then what is point? Photography is artistic and visual arts.

Regards
Anders

[Anders_HK]

Peter Lik -- Here is one; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moutL1dHaTY...feature=related

 

[Dick Roadnight]

Ehh. Regardless that does not mean that a P65 have details of 8x10

I think 645 digital is equivalent to 645 film.

More so it is difficult to achieve the rendering of Velvia using a MFDB or any digital, simply they are different medias.

I like to look at the picture (not the media) and see the original subject through the picture like it was an open window. (Peter Lik said something similar on one of the videos) Oil and watercolour are different medias... and some people like to see brush strokes or film grain in pictures as anything pre-digital can appeal to traditionalists.  

One very successful landscape photographer who have turned towards also use digital is Peter Lik. In his online videos he has quick gone through DSLR -> Hassy -> Mamiya 645 / Phase One -> P45 on Alpa. Yet... the rendering still appear different from these than his 617 Velvia 50. ... It appears he still keeps using his old Linhof 617 mated with Velvia @ ISO 50 alongside digital. One must ask why?

It seems that he uses the 617 for panoramic format, and the digital for everything else. If he thought res was the limitation he would use 10 * 8. If he thought that digital was not as good as Velvia, he would not use digital. For panoramic I intend to use 3 * 645 with a triple stitch back

In many landscape applications slide film is a lot easier than digital, the main problem is the scarcity of labs.

In what landscape applications is film easier than digital, and why? Any fool can use digital, so how can you argue that film is easier?

The way I see it, you get more DR and more control with digital, (like being able to develop the film, do a trial print, and them go back and give the film more development to bring out shadow detail).

...and if Latitude was the limitation, you would use colour negative film rather than transparencies.

 ...and you get instant feedback so you can go home knowing that you have got the shot.

[Jeremy Payne]

One post above asked me to quantify light, color etc. I decline, because if you cannot see it with eye, then what is point? Photography is artistic and visual arts.

Guy ... you are the one making the post on a forum message board ...

If you are gonna invent words for which only you know the meaning, you can talk until you are blue in the face and nobody will ever have a clue what you are saying.

Good luck with your magic.

[BernardLanguillier]

Nikon has significantly improved with D700/D3/D3X, but they still do not reach MFDB, and those not near film in some of renderings: namely light.

Anders,

Have you used a d3x since we last discussed this? At that time you had not if my memory serves me well.



Cheers,
Bernard

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

I would say that there are significant differences between digital and film.

1) Digital sensors are nearly linear devices, when they saturate they essentially "clip", film has toe and shoulder characteristics and avoids clipping, essentially by compressing highlights and shadows.

2) Negative film has a lot of latitude for overexposure

3) Color film is subtractive while digital is additive

4) Color films (like Velvia) have very special tonal and color characteristics. Digital applies color mostly in post processing (it's called profiles, color matrix, etc)

Some additional differences:

- In general digital sensors have much less noise than film (at comparable ISO)
- Digital sensors are limited by sensor resolution while resolution on film drops gradually
- Film has a significant thickness

In my view the undisputed advantage of film is in handling extreme highlight. Other than that digital is preferable to film in my opinion.

Best regards
Erik

I think 645 digital is equivalent to 645 film.

I like to look at the picture (not the media) and see the original subject through the picture like it was an open window. (Peter Lik said something similar on one of the videos) Oil and watercolour are different medias... and some people like to see brush strokes or film grain in pictures as anything pre-digital can appeal to traditionalists.  

It seems that he uses the 617 for panoramic format, and the digital for everything else. If he thought res was the limitation he would use 10 * 8. If he thought that digital was not as good as Velvia, he would not use digital. For panoramic I intend to use 3 * 645 with a triple stitch back

In what landscape applications is film easier than digital, and why? Any fool can use digital, so how can you argue that film is easier?

The way I see it, you get more DR and more control with digital, (like being able to develop the film, do a trial print, and them go back and give the film more development to bring out shadow detail).

...and if Latitude was the limitation, you would use colour negative film rather than transparencies.

 ...and you get instant feedback so you can go home knowing that you have got the shot.

[Anders_HK]

Anders,

Have you used a d3x since we last discussed this? At that time you had not if my memory serves me well.

Cheers,
Bernard

Bernard,

Nope I have not. I think it too is simply a tool, just like any of my cameras are or any of the other posters'.    I seen images, tried raws out of curiosity and read what others using it and MFDB says. I do respect you like your D3X and that you like rotational stitching. And no, I see no point in trying out D3x, why? It is destined to bring me less than my 28MP MFDB brings on all counts. Besides... I like medium format and up and not DSLR. The sensor in D3x is smaller and less capable than my MFDB (low ISO). And as I respect that you have a different preference, I hope that you are able to see respect as such both ways. You found what you experience as good tool in D3x, I in mine, others in theirs. I simply prefer using the two tools I experience as good; Leaf Aptus and slide film.

B.t.w. I read your write up of Pentax 645. Any consideration of stepping back to medium format digital again, or you prefer Nikon?


To all,

Not against anyone or anyones opinion, but too many of the posts above appear to come across as replying with quotes from mine to seemingly argue (e.g. a few words tossed without substance) against what I clear expressed as my view and observation, or did I misunderstand? It feels tad like one have to be careful on LL to whisper the word FILM or people jump at you and argue of digital. I shoot and like both. It is ok to have different opinion and likes and to express them. Also on likes of Peter Lik and his art and tools. I thought that referring to him would make a tad clear, simply there are different tools for different purposes; such as film and digital, and low ISO and higher. Seem odd if Peter Lik stuck to film for the 3:1 proportions of 617 when that can be stitched with digital also, even round stitch as he also done. Digital and film simply render different. However, when come to light I pointed out and gave two example photos that to my eye clear seem to highlight that example. Peter Lik is a good example, because he is a shooter of trancient light and color.

Yes, in detail I find my 28MP MFDB about similar to 6x7 (because 22MP ZD was short of it), but... in rendering the MFDB is complete different. For "sweet light" I find slide film often render superior of lights in landscape, as I showed in my example photos.

The thing that is not ok and very impolite is when someone argue of that mine is better than yours, and stick it out that "no digital eats film". That is plain silly, for digital is still learning.  

Thank you! Now lets move on...    Subject was low ISO? Any other users of 50 ISO here?

Regards
Anders

[BernardLanguillier]

B.t.w. I read your write up of Pentax 645. Any consideration of stepping back to medium format digital again, or you prefer Nikon?

Not too sure yet. My choice in favor of the D3x is based on an objective assessment of its value as a tool for my applications. I do not like or dislike MF. I did shoot MF quite a bit in the past with both Hassy H1 film and Mamiya digital.

Following my 1+ year ownership of a Mamiya ZD, the 645D is the first medium format digital camera I could see myself buying thanks to is ruggedness, cold weather battery life and reasonable pricing but...

- I would have to invest in lenses as well (although a 120mm f4 macro would cover 95% of my stitching needs),
- the value relative to the D3x for stitching will be pretty little as there are not that many more pixels on the long end due to the 4:3 aspect ratio vs 3:2,
- the lack of live view is also an issue for me as well since I like my images to be focused on the very subject and not a bit in front or behind. I have gotten really used to seeing 99% of tack sharp images when viewed at 100% on screen and going back to lower success ratio is a depressing thought,
- the lack of T/S lenses also means a lot more DoF stacking which is often difficult to perform in cold weather conditions,
- there will probably be no RRS plate for the 645D until it is sold in the US which is a problem as well,
- the 645D is a camera that is a lot more specialized than the D3x and I would therefore have to keep both which isn't too reasonable from an economic standpoint.

So all in all, I have not taken a firm decision yet, but the probability I buy the 645D is fairly low.

Cheers,
Bernard

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

Will you have an opportunity to evaluate the Pentax 645?

As things are now there is a lot of talk but I have seen very little evidence. Myself, I don't really see myself going for the P645, except if it can use my Pentax 67 lenses. I would expect a 645 camera to have something like a one and half stop advantage, all other parameter being the same. It's quite obvious that the parameters are not the same. Your 3DX seems to have better IQ than my Alpha 900, although much of the sensor technology is shared, AFAIK.

My main interest is to understand the differences. Would be nice to have some good and comparable raw images from DSLR and MFDB.

Best regards
Erik

Not too sure yet. My choice in favor of the D3x is based on an objective assessment of its value as a tool for my applications. I do not like or dislike MF. I did shoot MF quite a bit in the past with both Hassy H1 film and Mamiya digital.

Following my 1+ year ownership of a Mamiya ZD, the 645D is the first medium format digital camera I could see myself buying thanks to is ruggedness, cold weather battery life and reasonable pricing but...

- I would have to invest in lenses as well (although a 120mm f4 macro would cover 95% of my stitching needs),
- the value relative to the D3x for stitching will be pretty little as there are not that many more pixels on the long end due to the 4:3 aspect ratio vs 3:2,
- the lack of live view is also an issue for me as well since I like my images to be focused on the very subject and not a bit in front or behind. I have gotten really used to seeing 99% of tack sharp images when viewed at 100% on screen and going back to lower success ratio is a depressing thought,
- the lack of T/S lenses also means a lot more DoF stacking which is often difficult to perform in cold weather conditions,
- there will probably be no RRS plate for the 645D until it is sold in the US which is a problem as well,
- the 645D is a camera that is a lot more specialized than the D3x and I would therefore have to keep both which isn't too reasonable from an economic standpoint.

So all in all, I have not taken a firm decision yet, but the probability I buy the 645D is fairly low.

Cheers,
Bernard

[BernardLanguillier]

Will you have an opportunity to evaluate the Pentax 645?

Erik,

I don't know. I don't have any particular relationship with Pentax.

It would be fun to run it against the D3x, but either way we know that people will read whatever they want in the results...

Cheers,
Bernard

[ErikKaffehr]

Bernard,

Yes, whatever you do you always get a lot of "flak".

Best regards
Erik

Erik,

I don't know. I don't have any particular relationship with Pentax.

It would be fun to run it against the D3x, but either way we know that people will read whatever they want in the results...

Cheers,
Bernard

[Anders_HK]

Not too sure yet. My choice in favor of the D3x is based on an objective assessment of its value as a tool for my applications. I do not like or dislike MF. I did shoot MF quite a bit in the past with both Hassy H1 film and Mamiya digital.

Following my 1+ year ownership of a Mamiya ZD, the 645D is the first medium format digital camera I could see myself buying thanks to is ruggedness, cold weather battery life and reasonable pricing but...

- I would have to invest in lenses as well (although a 120mm f4 macro would cover 95% of my stitching needs),
- the value relative to the D3x for stitching will be pretty little as there are not that many more pixels on the long end due to the 4:3 aspect ratio vs 3:2,
- the lack of live view is also an issue for me as well since I like my images to be focused on the very subject and not a bit in front or behind. I have gotten really used to seeing 99% of tack sharp images when viewed at 100% on screen and going back to lower success ratio is a depressing thought,
- the lack of T/S lenses also means a lot more DoF stacking which is often difficult to perform in cold weather conditions,
- there will probably be no RRS plate for the 645D until it is sold in the US which is a problem as well,
- the 645D is a camera that is a lot more specialized than the D3x and I would therefore have to keep both which isn't too reasonable from an economic standpoint.

So all in all, I have not taken a firm decision yet, but the probability I buy the 645D is fairly low.

Cheers,
Bernard

Bernard,

I am not trying tempt you over the fence, if there at all is one. However I could advise of the AFD III camera as already being rather plenty. The DF also here in Asia is much more $$, heavens knows why. It might be a tad faster at AF, but also an old AFD already works to capture images. Any of these not near as fast AF as Nikon. Reading your thoughts, the old 120mm is cheap on Ebay, and just as sharp as the brand new, the downside is stopped down metering. There is the Mamiya 50mm shift lens to buy used as well, also that is reportedly very sharp. Hartblei are hard to come by, and unsure if one catch a quality optic copy. This said, not at all as many tilt shifts as for Nikon and of course a smaller sensor give more DOF. For tilts one could go with large format lenses on a technical camera, such as Sinar arTec, but... then very sharp lenses but very $ camera + large format shooting style.

Actually, for my own use I have not found tilts critical. Rather, I experience some controlled out of focus to lend pleasant rendering but that is personal. One wish would be if they made a more affordable small tech camera with rise or shift. There is none. Perhaps I should trade for a Mamiya 50mm shift. The reflection I made when I stepped to Mamiya from Nikon was that you can buy parts of the lenses for less than Nikon, and with no extra weight in bag.

Fingers crossed for Pentax that they pull their 645 digital off tuned right to deliver very high quality images, and also send it out to the world market.

Regards
Anders

[Anders_HK]

My main interest is to understand the differences. Would be nice to have some good and comparable raw images from DSLR and MFDB.

Erik,

You can download from Leaf here http://www.leaf-photography.com/rawimages.asp

Regards
Anders