MFDB vs 35mm DSLR quick samples

[tho_mas]

The other issue that occurs to me is that many of these so-called advantages of the MFDB are actually expensive and elaborate procedures to overcome the disadvantages compared with 35mm.

looking at your samples one of the "so-called" advantages of MFDB come to mind: clean blacks and a high differentiation in dark tonal values without noise.
You really should try it ...

[Ray]

looking at your samples one of the "so-called" advantages of MFDB come to mind: clean blacks and a high differentiation in dark tonal values without noise.
You really should try it ...

Compared with the Nikon D3X? Have you looked at DXO Mark? The 5D is very old technology.

[tho_mas]

Have you looked at DXO Mark?

no. Why would I?
Have you ever seen an actual MFDB capture?

[Ray]

no. Why would I?
Have you ever seen an actual MFDB capture?

Of course I have.  There have been lots of botched 35mm v MFDB comaprisons on this site.

[pcunite]

Of course I have.  There have been lots of botched 35mm v MFDB comaprisons on this site.

There is almost zero chance that someone is going to post on the board after having spent what MFD costs and say "35mm is actually not that bad, I could use this" because they have convinced themselves and the public that MFD is required for their current task. And MFD is indeed the proper choice for still life studio applications and printing art gallery large prints.

I laugh out loud when the HasselBlad H4D-40 was advertised as having better image quality and tonality over its predecessor. Then what in the world was the quality of its predecessor?!

This relentless pursuit of image quality at the expense of usability is digging their own grave. What is sad is that the large hunk of plastic grayness that is the H4D won't even be desirable as a collectors item because it is just so ugly.

Think of MFD manufactures (if you can call them that) as a bunch of AutoCAD guys who spec out a camera and then order parts from siliconforless.com and then assemble them in their basement. Their innovation comes when one of their parts suppliers (the real lab coat guys) make something new. The rest of the time the AutoCAD guys are playing solitaire. They can't make the camera we want because they don't make the parts.

[Ray]

No, they're right there in the foreground, you'd be hard pressed to miss them.

The result is you've got deep, deep shadows in a scene with no direct sunlight. Most un-natural.

Ah1 I think I see what you are referring to. There are narrow bands of flash shadows which are totally black because the fill flash was obstructed. Is that what you are refering to?

[Rob C]

[quote name='Frank Doorhof' date='Feb 19 2010, 08:47 AM' post='348023']

"And yes on print you won't see a difference."


"In a magazine print you won't see a difference, that is true."





Frank, don't you think this sort of make the whole thing pointless then?

Seems to me that it is probably much like the old days when you often selected the Nikon or the Hass because of the shape of the final print that you had to come up with, both formats being otherwise perfectly capable of producing work for most normal purposes. With digital, I suspect that the improved performance from 35mm digi allows even greater sized images to remain perfectly acceptable from the smaller system for even more purposes.

But of course, there will be requirements where the choice is different and for those who face those choices, go for it if you can afford it. But for the rest, why bother if MF value, as you indicated, ends at the monitor?

Rob C

[TMARK]

I've had double page spreads with the D200 in mags that look about as good as Aptus 22 files.  The look is different, of course, and there was more post on the Nikon file, but the MFD advantages are mostly lost in a typical magazine print.  Big Epson/HP prints, on the other hand, really show the difference.  In my printed portfolio (which no one wants to see, they like the web) the MFD images do look better, sort of, next to 1ds2/5D/1ds3/D2x/D200 images at 11x14.  The film images, on the other hand, look different than the digital, but on par or better than the MFD files.  In any case, yeah, I think for commercial work all thse extra pixels are wasted.  The web press is the great equalizer.

Fine art/big prints, different story.  I can't really speak to that, but big prints from a MFD, even older P20 files, look really good.

 

Frank, don't you think this sort of make the whole thing pointless then?

Seems to me that it is probably much like the old days when you often selected the Nikon or the Hass because of the shape of the final print that you had to come up with, both formats being otherwise perfectly capable of producing work for most normal purposes. With digital, I suspect that the improved performance from 35mm digi allows even greater sized images to remain perfectly acceptable from the smaller system for even more purposes.

But of course, there will be requirements where the choice is different and for those who face those choices, go for it if you can afford it. But for the rest, why bother if MF value, as you indicated, ends at the monitor?

Rob C

[Ray]

looking at your samples one of the "so-called" advantages of MFDB come to mind: clean blacks and a high differentiation in dark tonal values without noise.
You really should try it ...

First, I should have mentioned that I lightened the shadows in the crops deliberately so the noise would be more apparent. There's no difficulty in making a noisy shadow black, even with a P&S.

The 5D is rather old technology. If I were to choose a camera based on its ability to differentiate dark tonal values without noise, it would be the Nikon D3X which appears to be even marginally better than the P65+ in that respect.

The main advantages of the MFDB, compared with the best that 35mm currently has to offer, would appear to me to be higher resolution and faster flash sync. Multiple strobe hits duing a single, long exposure also sound useful.

For me personally, the significantly additional cost of MFDB combined with the significantly extra weight (taking lenses into consideration), offset by a significant lack of flexibility with regard to performance at high ISO and its much slower frame rates, do not make the MFDB package attractive to me, in my circumstances and for my purposes.

I still have, sitting on my shelves, an old Mamiya RB67 with Sekor C 65mm, 90mm, 150mm and 360mm lenses. I used to scan the film on a Nikon Coolscan 8000 ED before I bought my first DSLR, the Canon D60. Even though 6mp cannot be compared with scanned 6x7 film in terms of detail and resolution, the sheer convenience and flexibility of the Canon DSLR system was worth far more to me. I've never used the Mamiya since.

[Frank Doorhof]

@Rob,
My remark is I think the whole basis for this discussion.

When you are shown an internet version or a cover of a magazine you can't 100% sure tell which camera is used, especially in this time of photoshop.
Although in some cases you can.

HOWEVER....
There is much more.

Think about how to get the shot, how the image holds it's own in postprocessing, how the image is on a large print for a gallery etc.
Billboards are low quality, but gallery or fineart prints are a different story.

Let's go back to the cover.
You can't tell by the cover if you needed a MF or DSLR, however if you would have started at the very beginning of the process with a MF or a DSLR and would have take the whole workflow the same way you will see a difference in the cover.
The tonality of the MF will be different, as will the perceived sharpness, DOF and dynamic range be.

I'm just back from Belgium were I taught a workshop in a Castle were we mixed a lot of ambiant with strobes.
Because I'm shooting straight to a laptop on location people can see what's going on.
The think almost everyone notices during all this kind of sessions is that even on the laptop it's clearly shown that the MF camera holds the shadows and highlights much better than the DSLRs.
For example were in my shots the feet are still barely visible from the shadows and the highlights on the wall from the ambiant light are close to clipping but still show detail, the same setup on the DSLRs (a mix of Canon and Nikon) was different in these areas.

The remark I made was that in the FINAL product both will look great on a cover, and you will deliver a good product.
However when knowing the whole process you will see there is a difference.
You can make the DSLR shot look the same by just opening up the shadows a bit with a filler at let's say 3.5 stops under the mainlight but that's the point, with the MF camera I don't need to.

So I did not meant is as there is no difference on print, but I meant both are delivering awesome options and people in these kind of comparisons are often comparing one finished result to another but not from exact the same setup with exact the same workflow.

@Ray,
What strikes me as odd is that you do respond to people on topics that DSLRs wins like high-iso, better displays etc.
But you TOTALLY ignore the facts like higher sync speeds, waste level finders, changing backs, cameras etc.
In other words you have your mind set and are stuck in a one way street and ignoring all the answers you ask for, except the ones you can turn the other way.

When I think about it I will do a side by side shoot with the 5DMKII and the Leaf AptusII 7 when we're on location again, but it can take a while, we have a lot of demos etc. coming up so little time to play.

[Frank Doorhof]

Almost forgot.
Somewhere it was mentioned (I believe by Ray) that he loved the fact that Nikon had it's base ISO at 200 and MF at 50.
This is also such a point that takes the discussion into an area of turning the facts to your own favor and not thinking about the other side of the story.

I HATE a base ISO of 200, and I love 50 or even 25.
Simply because I use a lot of strobes on location and with a base ISO of 200 I have to bring so much power that it's simply not possible to do what I want, also not for the camera.

I've shot several times in California in the blistering sun and with a MF camera dropped down to ISO25 I could use a strobe on full power and have a wonderful setup with still a good DOF, from the top of my head the settings were ISO25 f16 1/125.
Please try to calculate that back to your precious Nikon

I will do that for you.
It's ISO200 f64, I don't know what lenses you are using but they must be different from mine
Talk about diffraction at f64 by the way......

[AndreasSchmidt]

Nice discussion... Just my 2 Cent: I rented a Sinar Hy6 with 75LV back for a weekend. Weather was bad, so only studio session - but the result simply are stunning. I cannot get such files (tonality and sharpness) from my Sony A900 (with excellent glas, i.e. Minolta 1,4/85 and Zeiss 135, not a really bad combination...). That's a fact for me, end of discussion  
On the other side: Sinar would not work for me (don't have MAC, switching would be OK but - because of hard- and software - much too expensive), so Leaf AFI. An AFI-II 7 with basic set of lenses is not below 20k€ - that's simply too much (I'm not professional, so I don't have to compare investment to additional income, but I have to compare with bank account...). AFI 7 could be in range, but I do much shots in portrait mode, and taking off and remounting the back might be OK in the studio, but is not the best idea on location. So unless winning in Lotto, I will have to stay with my A900... And maybe rent a Hy6 for very special days?

Andreas

[Frank Doorhof]

Nice discussion... Just my 2 Cent: I rented a Sinar Hy6 with 75LV back for a weekend. Weather was bad, so only studio session - but the result simply are stunning. I cannot get such files (tonality and sharpness) from my Sony A900 (with excellent glas, i.e. Minolta 1,4/85 and Zeiss 135, not a really bad combination...). That's a fact for me, end of discussion  
On the other side: Sinar would not work for me (don't have MAC, switching would be OK but - because of hard- and software - much too expensive), so Leaf AFI. An AFI-II 7 with basic set of lenses is not below 20k€ - that's simply too much (I'm not professional, so I don't have to compare investment to additional income, but I have to compare with bank account...). AFI 7 could be in range, but I do much shots in portrait mode, and taking off and remounting the back might be OK in the studio, but is not the best idea on location. So unless winning in Lotto, I will have to stay with my A900... And maybe rent a Hy6 for very special days?

Andreas

Try www.keh.com and buy a AFD/III (or 2) mamiya with some glass.
Mount an Aptus22 to it from ebay and you would be in business for less than 10K.

[Guy Mancuso]

Just a fact on ISO range any landscape shooter out there is going to want a base ISO of 50. You cannot shoot water with ISO 200 and slow the shutter down enough to get that velvet look many do with water . Can't be done without a ND filter. Even ISO 100 just 1 stop difference can be a shot that requires a 4 second shot done to 2 seconds and you won't get the same look. Sure have fun with those ND filters in the field when you half sitting in the water trying to work and you need to open your bag. It's just not fun screwing around with that stuff. Also with strobe work in the studio you can open up more for a certain look with a lower base ISO. Some strobes can't get down in power enough to shoot ISO 200

[bigalbest]

Here is a quick example of the range and adjustment potential of medium format digital.

First, a shot with a wide range of shadow to highlight with heavy shadow areas:

[attachment=20388:dark_shadow.jpg]

Next, a quick adjustment in Photoshop using the shadow/highlight adjustment:

[attachment=20390:rainy_da..._mondays.jpg]

Now a 100% crop of the adjusted file to show a lack of heavy noise even with the shadows lightened heavily.
 
[attachment=20389:shadow_detail.jpg]

This simply cannot be done with 35mm digital.

[Ray]

Almost forgot.
Somewhere it was mentioned (I believe by Ray) that he loved the fact that Nikon had it's base ISO at 200 and MF at 50.
This is also such a point that takes the discussion into an area of turning the facts to your own favor and not thinking about the other side of the story.

I HATE a base ISO of 200, and I love 50 or even 25.
Simply because I use a lot of strobes on location and with a base ISO of 200 I have to bring so much power that it's simply not possible to do what I want, also not for the camera.

I've shot several times in California in the blistering sun and with a MF camera dropped down to ISO25 I could use a strobe on full power and have a wonderful setup with still a good DOF, from the top of my head the settings were ISO25 f16 1/125.
Please try to calculate that back to your precious Nikon

I will do that for you.
It's ISO200 f64, I don't know what lenses you are using but they must be different from mine
Talk about diffraction at f64 by the way......

Frank,
My D700 has a base ISO of 200, but I think most 35mm DSLRs have a base ISO of 100. The Nikon D3X which rivals the dynamic range of most DBs has a base ISO of 100 and a Lo-1 mode of ISO 50.

That sure must have been bright sunlight if you were using 1/125th at F16 and ISO 25. The 'sunny 16' rule implies a shutter speed of 1/25th at ISO 25.

But let's suppose that you were using 1/125th at ISO 25. With D3X you could drop to ISO 50 in Lo-1 mode and use a 250th sec exposure at F16 which can still sync with a TTL flash unit. Alternatively, if you wanted slightly better resolution than F16 provides with its small degree of diffraction, you could stop down to F11, still retain the same DoF as your MFDB at F16, and use an ND filter to keep the exposure at 1/250th.

Another issue which you seem to have overlooked is that a less powerful flash can sometimes be sufficient with a higher ISO sensitivity.

[Jack Flesher]

For me personally, the significantly additional cost of MFDB combined with the significantly extra weight (taking lenses into consideration), offset by a significant lack of flexibility with regard to performance at high ISO and its much slower frame rates, do not make the MFDB package attractive to me, in my circumstances and for my purposes.

With all sincerity,  I for one am happy that Ray in has finally arrived at the decision that MF is not necessary for his style of photography, at least for him personally.  Congrats Ray!

[Ray]

Just a fact on ISO range any landscape shooter out there is going to want a base ISO of 50. You cannot shoot water with ISO 200 and slow the shutter down enough to get that velvet look many do with water . Can't be done without a ND filter. Even ISO 100 just 1 stop difference can be a shot that requires a 4 second shot done to 2 seconds and you won't get the same look. Sure have fun with those ND filters in the field when you half sitting in the water trying to work and you need to open your bag. It's just not fun screwing around with that stuff. Also with strobe work in the studio you can open up more for a certain look with a lower base ISO. Some strobes can't get down in power enough to shoot ISO 200

I've never had any problem fitting an ND filter to any of my lenses. It's not as though waterfalls catch you by surprise. "Look! There's a waterfall. Must shoot it quickly before it disappears".  

[Ray]

Here is a quick example of the range and adjustment potential of medium format digital.

First, a shot with a wide range of shadow to highlight with heavy shadow areas:

[attachment=20388:dark_shadow.jpg]

Next, a quick adjustment in Photoshop using the shadow/highlight adjustment:

[attachment=20390:rainy_da..._mondays.jpg]

Now a 100% crop of the adjusted file to show a lack of heavy noise even with the shadows lightened heavily.
 
[attachment=20389:shadow_detail.jpg]

This simply cannot be done with 35mm digital.

That depends on which 35mm digital camera you have. Apparently the Nikon D3X boasts a higher dynamic range than the P65+ (about 2/3rds of a stop higher on equal size prints). That means that the shadows, in your examples above, would likely be marginally cleaner if you'd used a D3X.

However, just to demonstrate how unbiased I am, I'd agree that the P65+ has a marginally better tonal range and color sensitivity than the D3X, according to DXO Mark's test results.

http://www.dxomark.com/index.php/eng/Image...d2)/Phase%20One

[bigalbest]

That depends on which 35mm digital camera you have. Apparently the Nikon D3X boasts a higher dynamic range than the P65+ (about 2/3rds of a stop higher on equal size prints). That means that the shadows, in your examples above, would likely be marginally cleaner if you'd used a D3X.

However, just to demonstrate how unbiased I am, I'd agree that the P65+ has a marginally better tonal range and color sensitivity than the D3X, according to DXO Mark's test results.

http://www.dxomark.com/index.php/eng/Image...d2)/Phase%20One

I have shown an example of real world use. Show me an example where a d3x can do this and I will believe you.