phase one iq180 and film

[david distefano]

on the nikon forums the introduction of the d800 36 mp camera is touted as the beginning of the end of medium format digital photography. i know my hasselblad cfv-39 will blow the socks off the d800. but the d800 will do a better job with wildlife and sports and fast breaking news events. a little while ago on luminous landscape a test was done with the iq 180 and 8x10 film and suprise, suprise the digital back won. it kind of reminds me of the d800 forums. the 180 has more resolution etc. as you can see i have a digital mf back but i also shoot lf film for the best in landscapes. i have visited literally hundreds of galleries and no digital work by anybody comes close to the work of michael fatali. his 8x10 chromes are breathtaking. when his prints are viewed at his gallery you feel one with nature. yes i purchased one of his prints. you can do all the tests you want but to me the ultimate test is the final product and can it equal what i and many people consider the A+ in landscape photography the work of michael fatali. and in my opinion, digital medium format backs have not met that test. maybe thats because digital never captures the total scene in its entirety that film does. maybe thats why vinyl albums are making the comeback they are  with high end turntables, because the analog sound captures the total sound that the digital sound doesn't. digital at the consumer level was looked on by nikon, canon and others as a cash cow that they could milk every couple of years. every type of camera has its place. the dslr for sports and wildlife, the medium format for fashion, product, etc and in my opinion for the very best in landscape the 8x10. there is no such thing as the camera that can do everything. that is like saying that one tool can do every job to fix a car.

[simonstucki]

there is another very well made comparison of various cameras and here 8x10" beat the iq180.

http://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2011/12/big-camera-comparison/


and vinyl is definitely analog, but that doesn't mean it is more accurate than a cd. I'm not saying it sounds worse (or better) but it definitely is not more accurate as far as I know. but that's a bit off topic.

[Anders_HK]

Of course, and few seem intelligent to compare correctly, which includes articles and postings here on Lu-La. What few seem to realize is that also here on Lu-La it is driven by gear and latest gear, thus no matter what Michael says or claims, Lu-La is acting as a marketing machine to sell people on new gear and latest megapixels, and to make them spend $$$$$$$ that they could have spent on more useful things such as house. I too have shot film alongside with digital because contrary to all raving in internet last five to ten years, digital has not measured up. The interesting now is that pixel detail of latest 80MP backs (Leaf & Phase One) are about equal to 4x5, but even more interesting is that their rendering is to the levels of film. Thus that the renderings are significant improved to prior digital backs. Having the Leaf 80MP back has made me prematurely give up on film, not because film is not an excellent media (which indeed it is), but because this level of digital back brings me to same sensation of film in rendering and colors. Actually it brings me further because I can do more to the raw file. Am I raving? It is my third back, go figure why I shot film meanwhile before...

A dslr being end of medium format is plain nonsense and only marketing from Nikon. Early digital backs were around 6MP... so what? They are different tools. I suppose LG and Nokia will start claiming end of dslrs??? The sample images of D800E does not look better than even the 20MP ZD did (not even with a Mamiya D lens!). The D800E look very dslr, only with more pixels... yet people keep dreaming, led to believe by marketing machine and ill representative media, and these forums...  

Best regards,
Anders

[fredjeang]

Of course, and few seem intelligent to compare correctly, which includes articles and postings here on Lu-La. What few seem to realize is that also here on Lu-La it is driven by gear and latest gear, thus no matter what Michael says or claims, Lu-La is acting as a marketing machine to sell people on new gear and latest megapixels, and to make them spend $$$$$$$ that they could have spent on more useful things such as house. I too have shot film alongside with digital because contrary to all raving in internet last five to ten years, digital has not measured up. The interesting now is that pixel detail of latest 80MP backs (Leaf & Phase One) are about equal to 4x5, but even more interesting is that their rendering is to the levels of film. Thus that the renderings are significant improved to prior digital backs. Having the Leaf 80MP back has made me prematurely give up on film, not because film is not an excellent media (which indeed it is), but because this level of digital back brings me to same sensation of film in rendering and colors. Actually it brings me further because I can do more to the raw file. Am I raving? It is my third back, go figure why I shot film meanwhile before...

A dslr being end of medium format is plain nonsense and only marketing from Nikon. Early digital backs were around 6MP... so what? They are different tools. I suppose LG and Nokia will start claiming end of dslrs??? The sample images of D800E does not look better than even the 20MP ZD did (not even with a Mamiya D lens!). The D800E look very dslr, only with more pixels... yet people keep dreaming, led to believe by marketing machine and ill representative media, and these forums...  

Best regards,
Anders

Anders,

Lu-La been driven by gear, this is not new. It is a gearwhore and engineer's paradise. Just have a look on how many women are active here...Lu-La is a male forum, for male's high-end toys, in a male way (mine-is-bigger-than-yours-and-you-re-wrong -I-m-right) you can replace "mine" by "my gear" and it gives: my-gear-is-bigger-than-yours-and-you-re-bad-I-m-good. Is it different elsewhere? IMO, it's just about the same.
In Getdpi there are more women, and you could think that the forum is more "healphy" or equilibrate. But in fact, it is also tremendously orientated on latest gear, sensor size, buttons and mortgages to pay the bills etc.... Just have a look at the Dante advert entering in the MF section and you know pretty much where you walked. The difference is that it has a "romantic" touch in a few sections that makes it, IMO, more bearable to women. But it's very close, everywhere you look in internet.

Marketing is everywhere. Lu-La is not responsible to the Nikon marketing claiming that this D4 is a multimedia bomb. If people really beleive that they will do cinema with it without serious hassles and issues, they'll have big surprise later on. Marketing is absolutly eveywhere in internet, so as brand addictions.

[fredjeang]

I really like Blahnik, as a deisner-craftman.

Sure ! There will always be women who bought the male stuff, like there where men who played with barbie dolls when they were kids...
No sex is guaranteed to be safe.

Now, why so little women in Lu-La? Is it because of our picture's profile?

[David Eichler]

When I look at the resolution that is possible with the best small format equipment at the native resolution, it is hard for me to imagine needing more detail for the vast majority of applications (obviously, really big prints that would be subject to close inspection would be another matter). However, sheer detail is not the only consideration. The more one enlarges the image, the more that subtle tones are lost, and this will be the case regardless of whether the medium is digital or film. However, I don't know that much about scanning. Does current scanning technology even this out a bit between digital and film, with regard to subtle tonal differences?

[markymarkrb]

While I agree that film holds more information because it is analog and not digital and therefore it is perceived to be smoother if processed under an enlarger directly onto paper.  The part that doesn't make sense to me is that nobody uses an analog scanner and then an analog printer.  Somewhere, that image is going to be digitized so wouldn't it be better to have it digitized from the very start?  I don't know if that is correct or not but if someone could expand on this for me, it would be greatly appreciated. 
Don't laugh but I still have my parent's laserdisc player from 1984, which is analog video and digital audio.  Theoretically, the analog video could be better than digital depending on the quality of the disc made but this is almost never the case.  I think film could possibly be the same way where in theory and in test labs it outperforms under perfect conditions, but in the real world, those conditions are hard to get right and I know they are having used my medium format panoramic camera. That being said, I just sold my Fuji GX617 and hello to Phase One!  I am stoked!

[BernardLanguillier]

maybe thats why vinyl albums are making the comeback they are  with high end turntables, because the analog sound captures the total sound that the digital sound doesn't.

You may not know this... but most of today's vinyls are mastered from a digital file... although a high res one (24 bits and at least 96 Khz).

In my view, digital done well in playback leaves turntables pretty far behind and I am not speaking about measurements, I am speaking about what I hear in my system vs what I have heard listening to the best turntables in the world.

There is for sure something likeable about turntable sound, but it belongs to the realm of preference.

Now...  I do in fact not believe that high end audio is a suitable metaphore for imaging... I don't believe that all things digital belong to one group and relate the same way to another group called analog. Things are just more complex.

It was always my opinion that 4x5 was in fact still far ahead of 39mp backs resolutionwise... and sure enough now that the IQ180 is available we are saying that they are about at the same level in terms of detail as 4x5. Does it make them equivalent in terms of suitability to shoot landscape? Probably not, anyone having used a 4x5 camera in the field knows that a back is far more convenient and is ahead in other image quality metrics, which probably makes the back the better overall solution for landscape work... more of the same below.

Looking at 8x10... yes, I am sure that some 8x10 images will look better than most IQ180 images... now does that account for the fact that many more potential great images will just not have been captured by the 8x10 photographer because.. the camera took too long to set up, wind blurred the result, the photographer had not more film by the time the light got right...?

digital at the consumer level was looked on by nikon, canon and others as a cash cow that they could milk every couple of years. every type of camera has its place. the dslr for sports and wildlife, the medium format for fashion, product, etc and in my opinion for the very best in landscape the 8x10. there is no such thing as the camera that can do everything. that is like saying that one tool can do every job to fix a car.

I don't believe that anyone disputes the fact that the IQ180 has currently the highest single frame image quality. Does it make it the most suitable camera for landscape work is IMHO a totally different question. Anyone having used a MFDB camera in the field knows that a DSLR is far more convenient and that live view alone will make the DSLR image quality superior in absolute terms in many cases simply because you get perfect focus all the time, whatever the light condition. This is even more true for the leaf backs that do not even have the poor man's live view attempts of the recent Phaseone backs.

But the fundamental question would be... why do you even care if a D800E can deliver 50, 80, 90 or 120% of the image quality of your IQ180 for a given application? There will always be newer and better at lower prices (although this last part doesn't seem true in the MFDB world). As long as the camera you own delivers the results you need things are good, are they not? 

Cheers,
Bernard

[torger]

Bernard, I think you are a bit too rational

If it is only about result, 35mm digital is today almost 100% of the time the best choice. The MFDB performance seems to be greatly exaggerated by the fans, when I see head-to-head comparison with DSLRs it is usually Canon sensors (much worse than Sony Exmor in latest Nikons) coupled with poor shooting technique (underexposing) and little experience with post-processing DSLR files.

Some kind of like to work with some types of equipment though, might like the look of lenses. Those that shoot film often like the film process. And a view camera has some charm. Everyone wants to get a good result competitive with the different systems out there, but when it is within the "good enough" range there's many other factors that come into play.

[hjulenissen]

maybe thats because digital never captures the total scene in its entirety that film does. maybe thats why vinyl albums are making the comeback they are  with high end turntables, because the analog sound captures the total sound that the digital sound doesn't.

There are several reasons why people may want to use vinyl. In my opinion, audible limitations in digital formats is not one of them. Not a single scientific blindtest disputes this belief as far as I know.

-h

[DanielStone]

On another note, film CAN be cheaper in the long run, IMO, than digital.

I've assembled my kit for 4x5 and 8x10(two setups, different lenses in each kit, etc...) for under $5k. I shoot slide film most of the time, and use a lab to process the film. I'm probably at less than $2k/yr for my own work. Not a lot of money, but not chump change Costco developing either...

So, that said, I've invested in a drum scanner. Having the control of Photoshop, it's a tool, not something for me to clone in different parts, etc...

watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef1ammJiPE0

Dean Collins(RIP) refers to the 3 methods of control. Pre-production, production, and post. I've taken this to heart, and have focused on learning to "see" better, and focusing less on the gear and tech, and just making photographs. Guess what? My photographs have become stronger, and the composition better. Using film has also aided in me becoming more "choosy" with which photographs I make. Guess what? I don't have a$$loads of hard drives full of drum scans to store, and I know that the photographs I choose to scan are the best of those I've shot.

now, this is just my opinion, but others I've referred this video to have mentioned that taking this type of thinking, its aided their vision and end results.

-Dan

[Martin Kristiansen]

Film is great. I really loved it. Worked in the professional photo finishing industry from age 19. Started printing and processing in 1995 at age 14. Even worked in photo finishing in Florida for a while before returning to South Africa.

I dont get the constant need for comparisons. Digital is digital. It is wonderful. Film is film. It WAS wonderful. Mentally when shooting I feel no different when setting up my Cambo to shoot digital than I did when setting up to shoot film on my Linhof Super Technica back in 1980.

Sure don't miss the occasional crashed racks on the E6 dip and dunck processors though.

As to focus I manage on the Cambo with a Aptus12 just fine. Nice big dark cloth like in the old days. Black on one side white on the other as Ansel Adams recommended. get myself comfortable under there and take my time if needed. Check focus after at 100% on the LCD. Hardly ever miss when I am in the groove.

Make lovely big prints 2m by 1.5m. Film? What's to miss really? I am having a blast.

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi Anders,

In my view you are going over the edge.

To begin with, LuLa has a very low profile about the D800/D800E, they certainly are not doing marketing for that product.

For me, LuLa is about sharing experience, some of the authors on LuLa have a lot of experience with high end stuff, like Michael and Mark Dubovoy. Michael also writes a lot about other stuff line 4/3 and Sony NEX-7 that he happens to use. Nothing of that is about marketing.

Now, Michael has published a test of comparing the IQ 180 with 8x10" film that has been contradicted by a test by Tim Parkin that Michaels also made reference to. So even if the IQ180 vs 10x8" test may have been faulty it led to another test showing the advantage of 8x10, when properly used. In my view both tests had a value. The first test indicated that the authors got superior results with IQ180 compared to their film based workflow, the second indicated that 8x10" can achieve superior results with another work flow.


Best regards
Erik

Of course, and few seem intelligent to compare correctly, which includes articles and postings here on Lu-La. What few seem to realize is that also here on Lu-La it is driven by gear and latest gear, thus no matter what Michael says or claims, Lu-La is acting as a marketing machine to sell people on new gear and latest megapixels, and to make them spend $$$$$$$ that they could have spent on more useful things such as house. I too have shot film alongside with digital because contrary to all raving in internet last five to ten years, digital has not measured up. The interesting now is that pixel detail of latest 80MP backs (Leaf & Phase One) are about equal to 4x5, but even more interesting is that their rendering is to the levels of film. Thus that the renderings are significant improved to prior digital backs. Having the Leaf 80MP back has made me prematurely give up on film, not because film is not an excellent media (which indeed it is), but because this level of digital back brings me to same sensation of film in rendering and colors. Actually it brings me further because I can do more to the raw file. Am I raving? It is my third back, go figure why I shot film meanwhile before...

A dslr being end of medium format is plain nonsense and only marketing from Nikon. Early digital backs were around 6MP... so what? They are different tools. I suppose LG and Nokia will start claiming end of dslrs??? The sample images of D800E does not look better than even the 20MP ZD did (not even with a Mamiya D lens!). The D800E look very dslr, only with more pixels... yet people keep dreaming, led to believe by marketing machine and ill representative media, and these forums...  

Best regards,
Anders

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

I'm not the least impressed by modern scanning technology. On the other hand you can now buy a drum scanner that used to cost above 100000 USD for perhaps 5k, because the technology is dead. So if you are lucky to have a high end scanner and a lot of time you can achieve great results, at least with negative film.

The only decent scanners today are Hasselblad, and they come in around 20k USD.

Best regards
Erik

When I look at the resolution that is possible with the best small format equipment at the native resolution, it is hard for me to imagine needing more detail for the vast majority of applications (obviously, really big prints that would be subject to close inspection would be another matter). However, sheer detail is not the only consideration. The more one enlarges the image, the more that subtle tones are lost, and this will be the case regardless of whether the medium is digital or film. However, I don't know that much about scanning. Does current scanning technology even this out a bit between digital and film, with regard to subtle tonal differences?

[theguywitha645d]

It is hard arguing against sentimentality and personal belief.