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Author Topic: Interesting comparison of IQ180 and 8x10" film  (Read 52968 times)

Stefan.Steib

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Re: Interesting comparison of IQ180 and 8x10" film
« Reply #120 on: October 17, 2011, 01:17:16 pm »

Nicolay

of course there are some people doing digital long time exposures with dedicated cameras and  P45+ backs ;-))) see here

http://www.bulbexposures.com/home/2011/10/13/out-there-with-the-hartblei-hcam-b1.html

regards

Stefan
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barryfitzgerald

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Re: Interesting comparison of IQ180 and 8x10" film
« Reply #121 on: October 18, 2011, 09:14:30 am »

About time we had another film v digital crop shot test  :o ;D
Anyway back to the topic if only resolution and crop shots mattered to real world photography, but unfortunately it's a lot more involved than this. IQ is more than just resolution taste plays a part as well.

Interesting thing is there is a bit of a revival in the old ways with newer folks coming along curious about film and trying it out. I'm glad to see we're not dancing on the grave of film which probably disappoints the digital die hard fans, but embracing a choice for photographers of a creative medium of their own choosing. Choice is good.
As for the tests, well it's a bit like the ex smoker who rants about those smoking..but secretly desires one more puff  :-X

Anti film folks need only visit ebay to relieve that desire completely  ;)
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Stefan.Steib

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Re: Interesting comparison of IQ180 and 8x10" film
« Reply #122 on: October 18, 2011, 01:25:45 pm »

As 8/10 " is actually not so big here a link for the current Large format crown:

http://www.canhamcameras.com/20x24.html

Contacts - I only say contacts !   :)

Greetings from Munich

Stefan
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ErikKaffehr

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Re: Interesting comparison of IQ180 and 8x10" film
« Reply #123 on: October 18, 2011, 01:44:02 pm »

Hi,

I'm doing some tests right now, comparing 24 MP DSLR with my Pentax 67. They are very different animals. It seems that drum scanning can improve significantly over CCD based scanners, the image are cleaner and have very nice grain.

Digital is simpler, you press the button and check the histogram for exposure and the image on display (zoomed 15X) for sharpness, with color negative you need to wait a week for the lab.

One area where analogue is advantageous is the rendition of specular highlights, where digital normally clips and analogue rolls off. I think there is place for film, but the question is if the market is large enough to sustain the film industry the way we now it.

Best regards
Erik

About time we had another film v digital crop shot test  :o ;D
Anyway back to the topic if only resolution and crop shots mattered to real world photography, but unfortunately it's a lot more involved than this. IQ is more than just resolution taste plays a part as well.

Interesting thing is there is a bit of a revival in the old ways with newer folks coming along curious about film and trying it out. I'm glad to see we're not dancing on the grave of film which probably disappoints the digital die hard fans, but embracing a choice for photographers of a creative medium of their own choosing. Choice is good.
As for the tests, well it's a bit like the ex smoker who rants about those smoking..but secretly desires one more puff  :-X

Anti film folks need only visit ebay to relieve that desire completely  ;)

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NicolasBelokurov

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Re: Interesting comparison of IQ180 and 8x10" film
« Reply #124 on: October 18, 2011, 10:35:53 pm »

Nicolay

of course there are some people doing digital long time exposures with dedicated cameras and  P45+ backs ;-))) see here

http://www.bulbexposures.com/home/2011/10/13/out-there-with-the-hartblei-hcam-b1.html

regards

Stefan

Well, thanks for the link Stefan, interesting indeed, but I still can't help to think about it as some kind of cool and interesting "experiment". Today they are doing 6 minutes on a 30000 dollars back and I hope the noise is better than the "golf ball" noise samples provided in a long exposure review here on LuLa. And they might even pull several shots out of it before the battery dries out. Tomorrow, or perhaps in a few years a 5000 dollars back would do hours and use a couple of AAA batteries bought in a convenience store in the middle of nowhere in Bolivia. It will happen indeed and it's going to be interesting.....
Best regards,
Nikolay.

NicolasBelokurov

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Re: Interesting comparison of IQ180 and 8x10" film
« Reply #125 on: October 18, 2011, 10:49:32 pm »


Digital is simpler, you press the button and check the histogram for exposure and the image on display (zoomed 15X) for sharpness, with color negative you need to wait a week for the lab.


Erik, histogram is a wonderful tool but an exposure is not such a difficult thing to determine, especially with print film, it's just a matter of self confidence and practice. And if you are willing to work with film once again and don't have a deadline, self developing is a pretty straightforward affair.
For instance, I can shoot all day, get back to the home lab, develop my color or BW sheets, hang them and in 2-3 hours they are ready for scanning, almost as fast as digital :) 

Stefan.Steib

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Re: Interesting comparison of IQ180 and 8x10" film
« Reply #126 on: October 19, 2011, 04:33:23 am »

Nikolay

the P45+ can do 1hour (which actually will be a 2 hour shot- because of the dark calibration...:-(((  )
 But you are of course right about the long time qualities of film. Do you know Michael Wesely ?
Currently holding the worldrecord on long time exposures with about 3 years ?

http://www.itchyi.co.uk/thelatest/2010/7/20/the-longest-photographic-exposures-in-history.html

This I think is probably something that will be possible ONLY with film (and I dare to say) ever.

Greetings from right now Karlsruhe
Stefan
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NicolasBelokurov

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Re: Interesting comparison of IQ180 and 8x10" film
« Reply #127 on: October 21, 2011, 02:37:46 pm »

Nikolay

the P45+ can do 1hour (which actually will be a 2 hour shot- because of the dark calibration...:-(((  )
 But you are of course right about the long time qualities of film. Do you know Michael Wesely ?
Currently holding the worldrecord on long time exposures with about 3 years ?

http://www.itchyi.co.uk/thelatest/2010/7/20/the-longest-photographic-exposures-in-history.html

This I think is probably something that will be possible ONLY with film (and I dare to say) ever.

Greetings from right now Karlsruhe
Stefan

Michael Wesely, yes I read about him some time ago. Very interesting, BUT, think about it, as much as I personally like film (and defend it here) I think a similar project in a urban area could be done with a web cam of some kind, connected to a harddrive. After all these images are interesting due to their aesthetics, not tech quality.
P45+ is great indeed, and from what I heard has been a LF killer for a lot of big names in landscape photography. The bang for buck isn't there yet for all the small fish like myself however.

ErikKaffehr

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Re: Interesting comparison of IQ180 and 8x10" film
« Reply #128 on: October 24, 2011, 01:43:10 am »

Hi,

Just for your information, I was shooting film for about 40 years...

Best regards
Erik

Erik, histogram is a wonderful tool but an exposure is not such a difficult thing to determine, especially with print film, it's just a matter of self confidence and practice. And if you are willing to work with film once again and don't have a deadline, self developing is a pretty straightforward affair.
For instance, I can shoot all day, get back to the home lab, develop my color or BW sheets, hang them and in 2-3 hours they are ready for scanning, almost as fast as digital :) 
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ErikKaffehr

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Re: Interesting comparison of IQ180 and 8x10" film
« Reply #129 on: October 24, 2011, 01:52:11 am »

Hi,

I will recall from my last in film shooting that there was something called Schwartzschild effect, or reciprocity failure for film. So film is loosing sensivity for long exposures. Digital sensors are not subject to reciprocity failure to the same extent. So with digital your exposures would be significantly shorter.

Reciprocity data from Kodak for TMAX 100 and Tri X included below.

Best regards
Erik



Stefan, actually I was going to argue right until the end of time but have to admit that I agree with you, like Gallen Rowell wrote:
"An equally important trait is the size of the rat...... The rat refers to the voracious creature gnawing at a person's stomach from inside that drives him or her to repeatedly leave the comforts and security of civilized life to challenge him or herself in the natural world".

Now, getting back to the whole technical topic, almost all the test I see tend to be presented on landscape oriented websites but ALL seem to ignore or leave aside several vital issues to the landscape photographer (at least for me :) )
1). Long exposures (battery issues): I do mountain photography, that is several days (quite a few sometimes) far away from any power supply. The solar packs add too much weight considering their effectiveness. About 2 or 3 long exposures with my 5d2 in low temperature with the consequent dark frame drain a complete battery, not fun at all. I can leave my 4x5 or almost any mechanical camera ticking for hours in below 0ยบ with no side effects.
2). Long exposures (highlights and DR): just a couple of quick and simple tests I did a while ago to calibrate my developing (all epson, I didn't drumscanned these samples):
Number 1 is a long exposure (more than 20min) made more than an hour after the sunset. The same shot on digital (at least with the 5d2) would have the sky completely blown to a thermonuclear white with absolutely no hope of recovery, I don't have the digital sample at hand but anyone who tried it, know that this is true. It can only be done on digi with some really heavy filtration, impossible to use in many cases.

Number 2 is a long exposure made in similar conditions, the same story here, I could leave my 4x5 ticking there for the whole night and walk away with a correct exposure.

3). Contrasted scenes: I'd compare the performance of digital and film in really contrasted scenes. For example a flat scan of a mountain forest scene shot during the winter (with temperature that have me swapping my digital batteries after a while outside). The sun is directly exposed with no filters. As I mentioned above, these are epson samples, I didn't drummed them yet. On the neg, the only thing blown out is the sun itself! Even the patches of snow on the PP have texture. And I have other scenes shot over glaciers in high mountain with the same result. And no flare!

4). Big prints or big upsamples of completely organic nature: Almost all the tests I see out there are usually done in some parking lot with some leaves on a wall, or cars, or other regular, monotone, man made objects. These are pretty easy to blow up, even a 6mpx DSLR can provide enough horsepower to upsample a regular, predictable surface to a huge size using the current interpolation algorithms. But landscapes are shot in the wilderness and usually are about the nature, not some license plates. I'd like to see how the digis hold up an interpolation to a 4000dpi scan size (from a 4x5 or a 8x10) of an organic, chaotic scene, full of textures, leaves, irregular patterns and completely random objects distributed all over the scene. In my tests, the digi that I own, that is a 5d2 is completely pathetic in this situations when compared to scanned film. How an MFDB would perform for example in the following situation? I shot this scene in the jungle some time ago using fine grain slide film, it has all the features I mentioned. Sorry, once again, it's a fresh sample and I have just the epson version at hand, but here is the full scene anyway in a pretty straightforward scan


And some random crops from my 11000 pixels sample scan. No PS sharpening applied, it's what it would look like on a 90cm print viewed from close distance and unsharped. And a drum scanner would add an additional truckload of info, and crisp info






I guess that a test published on a website that has the word "landscape" in its name, should at least try to walk through common landscapes situations and use real life scenes before drawing some conclusions :)

Best Regards
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NicolasBelokurov

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Re: Interesting comparison of IQ180 and 8x10" film
« Reply #130 on: October 24, 2011, 11:15:50 am »

So with digital your exposures would be significantly shorter.


Erik,
I happen to use this exact Kodak data sheet for my long exposures (well, at least used to, now I just memorized it from using). It does require some tuning.
But I think you've missed my point. The first exposure I presented was around 20 minutes, the equivalent digital one (canon 5d mark II), considering the film reciprocity compensation was around 8 minutes (the correct exposure) and it had absolutely, completely, totally blown sky. No RAW processing could recover it.
I shoot a lot during these hours of the day and know for sure that it's not possible to accomplish a long exposure with my digital equipment without some very heavy filtration or tedious expo blending.  
The same goes to the second long exposure and to the winter tree. In the winter tree scene, conserving the shadows in digital means blowing off the lights and the highlights or doing exposure blending. BW film just gets it from one click
I don't know what's your experience with long exposures is but digital or film, the scene reading are the same. For instance, during a starry night with no moon, I'd need more than just a few minutes of exposure with my digi, frequently half an hour or more, given the dark frame and cold weather I deplete a complete battery in just a few shots.
« Last Edit: October 24, 2011, 11:35:49 am by NicolasBelokurov »
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NicolasBelokurov

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Re: Interesting comparison of IQ180 and 8x10" film
« Reply #131 on: October 24, 2011, 11:33:28 am »

And here is an example of what I mentioned in the previous post:



This is a digital one I did with the canon 5d. It's a blend of two images- one for the FG and one for the sky. It was a dark, starry night, to expose a sharp FG from my position I had to shoot it during dusk at f8 and leave the camera there until the stars came up to make the stars exposure.
When I made my exposure for the sky, the metering for the FG was around 45min at f5.6, add to this the DF and bye bye battery.
One solution to this problem is to shoot at f2.8 and high iso and then stack for DOF, but if you have an object on the FG it'd take at least 10 or 15 exposures to accomplish the desired DOF.
With film, you can just stick the camera there, open the shutter and go to sleep.

Both methods give interesting results and I know several landscape photographers who create wonderful images using the "high iso open lens multiple shots for DOF at night" technique.

NicolasBelokurov

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Re: Interesting comparison of IQ180 and 8x10" film
« Reply #132 on: October 24, 2011, 11:44:09 am »

Hi,

Just for your information, I was shooting film for about 40 years...

Best regards
Erik


Erik, I didn't mean to imply that you somehow lack film handling skills or questioning your experience, just saying that given some background (and from your post, you have a lot), the exposure and developing is not a deal breaker when considering a landscape system,
Best regards.

ErikKaffehr

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Re: Interesting comparison of IQ180 and 8x10" film
« Reply #133 on: October 24, 2011, 12:15:29 pm »

Nicolas,

Sorry for my sneaky remark. Just wanted to indicate that I was not a SLR kiddy but have some real experience with the old way of making pictures.

Best regards
Erik

Erik, I didn't mean to imply that you somehow lack film handling skills or questioning your experience, just saying that given some background (and from your post, you have a lot), the exposure and developing is not a deal breaker when considering a landscape system,
Best regards.
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ErikKaffehr

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Re: Interesting comparison of IQ180 and 8x10" film
« Reply #134 on: October 24, 2011, 12:44:21 pm »

Hi Nicolas,

No, I have little experience with long exposures. Just wanted to mention the reciprocity failure. What I discovered in my film days was that once I exposed long exposure time would increase even more due to Schwarzschild. I also have the impression that the lack of reciprocity failure on CCDs is one of the main reason astronomers went for CCDs quite early. I also got the impression that quantum efficiency is much better on sensors compared to film.

Now, if you have tested both you obviously know what works best for your application.

I'm very much aware of negative film handling the high end of the brightness scale differently from digital. I'm doing some testing on it right now. Interestingly I have seen widely varying figures. The film I'm testing is Ektar 100, and my initial measurement gave 12 stops, but those measurements may have some issues, so there will be a retest. Roger Clark reported 7 stops for Kodacolor Gold ( http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/film.vs.digital.summary1/index.html ) and Tim Parkin about 16 stops for Portra.

Going back to the original posting, Tim Parkin posted some very interesting points on the 8x10" vs IQ180 test: http://www.landscapegb.com/2011/10/the-perils-of-testing/

My own view?

- Well to me it seems that my Pentax 67 using Velvia is about on par with my 24.5 MP digital DSLR
- Ektar 100 scanned on my own CCD scanner (Minolta Dimage Scan Multi Pro) has somewhat less detail than the DSLR
- Colors are less consistent both on Velvia and Ektar
- Professional drum scanning gives better results than my own scanning
- Tonal separation on low contrast detail is weaker on Ektar than on my DSLR
- Extrapolating from this I would not expect a Phase One IQ180 to match a well executed 8x10" film image when properly scanned
- But, 8x10" is very demanding and a perfect exposure may be hard to achieve

On the other hand I find digital more practical, and I have not seen that much real benefit from my testing the 67 film based equipment.

Best regards
Erik






Erik,
I happen to use this exact Kodak data sheet for my long exposures (well, at least used to, now I just memorized it from using). It does require some tuning.
But I think you've missed my point. The first exposure I presented was around 20 minutes, the equivalent digital one (canon 5d mark II), considering the film reciprocity compensation was around 8 minutes (the correct exposure) and it had absolutely, completely, totally blown sky. No RAW processing could recover it.
I shoot a lot during these hours of the day and know for sure that it's not possible to accomplish a long exposure with my digital equipment without some very heavy filtration or tedious expo blending.  
The same goes to the second long exposure and to the winter tree. In the winter tree scene, conserving the shadows in digital means blowing off the lights and the highlights or doing exposure blending. BW film just gets it from one click
I don't know what's your experience with long exposures is but digital or film, the scene reading are the same. For instance, during a starry night with no moon, I'd need more than just a few minutes of exposure with my digi, frequently half an hour or more, given the dark frame and cold weather I deplete a complete battery in just a few shots.
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NicolasBelokurov

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Re: Interesting comparison of IQ180 and 8x10" film
« Reply #135 on: October 24, 2011, 02:44:25 pm »

Hi Nicolas,

No, I have little experience with long exposures. Just wanted to mention the reciprocity failure. What I discovered in my film days was that once I exposed long exposure time would increase even more due to Schwarzschild. I also have the impression that the lack of reciprocity failure on CCDs is one of the main reason astronomers went for CCDs quite early. I also got the impression that quantum efficiency is much better on sensors compared to film.

Now, if you have tested both you obviously know what works best for your application.

I'm very much aware of negative film handling the high end of the brightness scale differently from digital. I'm doing some testing on it right now. Interestingly I have seen widely varying figures. The film I'm testing is Ektar 100, and my initial measurement gave 12 stops, but those measurements may have some issues, so there will be a retest. Roger Clark reported 7 stops for Kodacolor Gold ( http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/film.vs.digital.summary1/index.html ) and Tim Parkin about 16 stops for Portra.

Going back to the original posting, Tim Parkin posted some very interesting points on the 8x10" vs IQ180 test: http://www.landscapegb.com/2011/10/the-perils-of-testing/

My own view?

- Well to me it seems that my Pentax 67 using Velvia is about on par with my 24.5 MP digital DSLR
- Ektar 100 scanned on my own CCD scanner (Minolta Dimage Scan Multi Pro) has somewhat less detail than the DSLR
- Colors are less consistent both on Velvia and Ektar
- Professional drum scanning gives better results than my own scanning
- Tonal separation on low contrast detail is weaker on Ektar than on my DSLR
- Extrapolating from this I would not expect a Phase One IQ180 to match a well executed 8x10" film image when properly scanned
- But, 8x10" is very demanding and a perfect exposure may be hard to achieve

On the other hand I find digital more practical, and I have not seen that much real benefit from my testing the 67 film based equipment.

Best regards
Erik






Erik, I agree with each and every one of your points and actually use my Canon camera a lot.
BUT, in my opinion, if we speak about landscapes (and the site is called Luminous Landscapes after all) and stay in the MF vs digi 35mm terrain, a myriad of other factors are more important to the quality of the final print then the mere pixel by pixel comparing.
IMO, a very well scanned slide creates a better looking big print than 35mm digital. No matter how hard I try, I can't match the color and the clarity I get with a MF slide with 21mpx digital. The objects have volume and the colors are rich, tasty and naturally deep. For me in a color photograph, the colors and the contrast weigh way more than resolution. The tonality and highlights are more important for me in BW than resolution. I only shoot digital because it's light, fun and good enough for small prints and every time I catch an interesting scene in digital, I can't help saying to myself: "Oh man, I wish I had my 4x5 for this"
A similar digi frame looks plasticky and requires a lot of postpro. The same happens with BW.
I can't speak about high end DMFB vs 4x5 or 8x10 because I never used one or seen digital prints from those backs. I do suspect however that if we compare real life landscapes with lots of shapes and textures, the film would look better to me.
My own view?
I'm 29, I have a different job and I pretty much can shoot whatever I like without some art director breathing on my neck and demanding some files just for yesterday. I'm extremely lucky I still have a chance to shoot at least a couple of more years of film before they blast it away to the digital darkness.

Best regards,
Nikolay :)
« Last Edit: October 24, 2011, 02:48:57 pm by NicolasBelokurov »
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ErikKaffehr

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Re: Interesting comparison of IQ180 and 8x10" film
« Reply #136 on: October 24, 2011, 05:05:44 pm »

Hi,

Do you mean a well scanned 4x5" slide or smaller ones, too? My testing so far is not very favorable to 67 Velvia, but I could see that 4x5" would be different. How do you scan?


I have published my findings on Velvia 67 vs. Digital here: http://echophoto.dnsalias.net/ekr/index.php/photoarticles/16-pentax67velvia-vs-sony-alpha-900

I have also some work in progress here: http://echophoto.dnsalias.net/ekr/index.php/photoarticles/59-sony-alpha-900-vs-67-analogue-round-2

The latter article also compares with high end drum scans.

This article compares some of my scans with drum scans made by http://www.high-end-scans.de in Berlin.

Best regards
Erik

IMO, a very well scanned slide creates a better looking big print than 35mm digital. No matter how hard I try, I can't match the color and the clarity I get with a MF slide with 21mpx digital. The objects have volume and the colors are rich, tasty and naturally deep. For me in a color photograph, the colors and the contrast weigh way more than resolution. The tonality and highlights are more important for me in BW than resolution. I only shoot digital because it's light, fun and good enough for small prints and every time I catch an interesting scene in digital, I can't help saying to myself: "Oh man, I wish I had my 4x5 for this"


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