How much better will digital get?

[Ray]

The point was you get what you pay for.  Seldom more, maybe less if you aren't careful.

That translates to my logical mind, you don't get what you pay for. On very rare occasions you get a million times what you pay for. More frequently you get double what you paid for and if you're unlucky you get less than what you paid for.

Perhaps most of the time you get what you paid for, but then there's China. When I buy a product made in China, I often get the feeling I'm getting more than I paid for.

The statements, 'you get what you pay for', or 'there's no free lunch', are definitely more imprecise than the 1/100th" rule.

[Sfleming]

Well, we know that lenses as good as a Zeiss can be made.  

So given enough market demand one of the manufactures is going to revise their manufacturing process to crank out a flow of them.  

Demand is inextricably linked to price. If there's little demand for $5000 zeiss lenses it's precisely because they cost $5000.

Reduce the price to $1000 and you're in business and Canon is worried.

How do you get the price down to $1000? You set up a state-of-the-art lens manufacturing process in China.

Dead simple really. We benefit from the low prices. China benefits from the acquisition of state-of-the-art technology.

Same principle applies to $30,000 Phase 1 backs. Will it ever happen? Probably, although sometimes there's a political obstacle to exporting the latest technology if it has a military use.

You sure?

Folks who will pay $30k for a digital back shouldn't have a problem with $5k lenses.

[BobMcCarthy]

I've been in contact with the folks at Betterlight and have been exchanging emails with Mike Collette. The conversation was regarding the future of the scanning back. He has recently released a higher speed scanning back for his customers. I want to get as many high quality pixels for a personal project and I find the cost of 22 mpxl backs to beyond justification for this project. To keep the load light I want to use a medium format view camera (6x7 or 6x9) and I wanted to know if it was in their future. As it turns out the current scanning back is smaller than 4x5 and with some design and production adjustments can work in a small format view camera. Its something there investigating for the future.

OK you got me heavy breathing. Light weight, 48 (or more) megapixels, no bayer filter. Operating on of the new mini-laptops and setting the exposure with a custom profile on each subject (or shot). Thats my personal idea of high resolution "digital".


I'm ready!

Bob

[Ben Rubinstein]

when I was the manager of a photo lab my boss, who used to own a chain in LA before he emigrated, knew most of the top Hollywood photogs of the time. He was extremely derisive of modern 'wanabee' wedding photographers. He said that a real photographer would be able to take a top class photo with a disposable camera, because they understood the light!
I can't say that he was that wrong....

[BJL]

If the military had a 25Mpixel digital back 40ish years ago, how much better can/has digital get/gotten?

The biggest I have heard of is a bit more than 50MP, in a very large sensor from Fairchild I think; whether for purely military or also non-classified satellite imagery I do not know.

At some point, lenses become the limiting factor of course, but depth of field is not much of an issue in high altittude work so very large apertures with tiny amounts of diffraction can be used. Thus this is surely the ideal case for really big pixel counts. Still, maybe mosaicing of multiple images is more efficient beyond some point.

[BJL]

I would say that the R pixel in Fuji's system is such a pixel. It's smaller than the resolving capabilities of the Nikon lenses and is therefore of limited usefulness.

... In any high DR situation, most of the light which would normally result in a blown highlight, is not being captured by the R pixels. It's falling everywhere else, much of it presumably overspill on the S pixels, and is essentially being wasted.

I do not see this as a problem. The small R pixels are meant to detect only a small fraction of the light available, so as not to fill their wells until several stops beyond the level where the S pixels are full. Even if they only detect 1/20th as many photons as the S pixels, they are only needed when the S pixels are blown out, which is at about 40,000 photons counted, so the R pixels would then be detecting at least 40,000/20 = 2000 photons, plenty to have a nice low S/N ratio (about the same as the S pixels detect at mid-tones at ISO 200.)

[Sfleming]

Bob,

I did go out and start a second career in my retirement JUST to finance  my photography.  I spent 20k this year alone.  I love shooting film.  Gotta get my own scanner though.  I wouldn't pay 30k for a DB if I had  ten times my present capital because I'm not a pro and could never justify the expense.  

I'm not  miserable.  I just think digital is obscenely overpriced.

[Jo Irps]

Thanks.  I just  emailed Mr. Fuerbringer.  We'll see what happenes.  I found this site on Plaubels:

http://medfmt.8k.com/mf/veriwide.html

Know any other  good ones?

Yes I could see just  from my limited  study that  tha later  f/5.6 47mm SA  would be preferable.  So the camera was never originally made  with  this  lens?  As to your Horseman back?  What  is  the advantage to this?  220 over 120?

Check out this website, that's where I've got the idea of my second camera.
http://www.bigcamera.com/

The Veriwide was made in two versions, but with the same 8/47 lens, first by Plaubel and than the Brooks version, which you also find at medfmt.8k,com, but that back had some isues.
As to Horseman backs, the advantage is they are interchangable with any other size, or Graflex backs, even 6x12 is a possibility.

[Bobtrips]

Technology marches on. Money has to be made. People have to upgrade. Salesmen and advertising agencies will continue to promote the superior product.

The number of megs will most likely continue to increase and prices will likely continue to fall.  But the number of megs, just like the clock speed of computers may well become less of an issue within the near future.  People are going to start hitting their "personal enough" levels and won't be tempted to upgrade just to get more pixels that they won't/will seldom use.

We may have already hit that level with the middle of the road shooter, those people who rarely print larger than 8x12.  It's going to take a lot more pixels than the current 20D-type camera to get them to part with another $1500.  

The pressure is likely to be applied to manufacturers to produce cameras with more dynamic range, less noise, better viewfinders and cameras that are smaller and lighter.

[didger]

Yes, Howard, you're belaboring the obvious, the very obvious.  However, what's not so obvious is that if diffraction and DOF considerations are exactly proportionately the same for large and small formats, then you should lose most of what that big sensor or film size gains you.  To get really good DOF with an 8x10 camera, you may need to shoot at f64.  Even at f16 the super sharp Canon 2.5 macro lens loses so much due to diffraction that a 1ds picture is the same as a 1dsMKII picture.  So, if everything is proportional, then f64 with an 8x10 would mean extreme resolution loss due to diffraction.  Same consideration for DOF.  A little blurriness to to marginal DOF adequacy would mean extreme blurriness of almost everything except the exact place where the lens focuses perfectly in a very large print from a very large format camera unless you're viewing from such a large distance that you might as well have made that same size print from a smaller sensor image.  

I hope that Kevin or BJL can explain this paradox.  The fact is indeed that you can make larger sharper prints from larger format cameras in spite of presumably more severe DOF losses and diffraction losses.  I haven't noticed any less DOF or obvious diffraction degradation in large format prints.  Why not?  Bumble bees fly and large format cameras work, so I tend to not trust the math that conflicts with the reality.

[BJL]

Well your math regarding sensor size/format and its effect on DOF is wrong; larger formats do have innately less DOF when all else is equal. See this post for the proof.

I am editing this response since I misunderstood the source of Jonathan's misunderstanding. The problem is that he understood me to be comparing at the "same aperture ratio" when I thought that I had been very careful to say that I was comparing different formats when using the same APERTURE DIAMETER, which involves changing the aperture ratio in the same proportion as the focal length is changed. How much bold face and capitalization do I have to use to keep these things straight?


References: Norm Koren gives some useful defintions, formulas and other information about DOF in his page on DOF and diffraction, part of his nice technical essay on Understanding Image Sharpness and MTF

[Ben Rubinstein]

In my opinion, yes indeed.  Sometimes when reading this forum, I get the idea that even attempting to take a decent photograph without a Canon 1ds, a Zeiss prime lens at f/8, a carbon fiber tripod, etc. is bizzaar.

To my chagrin, my most sold picture, and the one that everyone raves about was taken at the very beginning of my entry into photography, on a Canon A1 with a Vivitar 28-200 on Fuji 200 print film at f22 on a crappy tripod. It drives me mad when I sell so many of this print when pictures taken with a Mamiya 645 with the sharpest lenses, Velvia 100F and a solid tripod just sit there. I think it says something though.

There are many who keep harping on about how the 1Ds II shows up most lenses, etc. I think that if you were to immediately size the print at the beginning of the workflow, and then click on 'print size' and work from there you would be pretty happy! Looking at 100% will of course show up any problems, but then who the heck prints that big?

Someone has already mentioned that there are modern films, especially B&W which outresolve most if not all of the the lenses out there, why did we not care then but we nitpick endlessly now? As Micheal has been saying a lot recently, 'it's in the print!', who cares how it looks at maximum magnification.

[howard smith]

"... engineering of bumble bees and that MF will give me much better results ... ."

It is true that bumble bees can fly only because they don't know they can't.  Then again, depending on the job, a bumble bee can't even come close to matching a humming bird.  Right tool for the job.  Define the job, then select a tool.  Or, select a tool and do what it will do.  Both work.  INUO and YMMV.

[didger]

help development

If you can tell me what it is we're trying to "develop", I can perhaps be more helpful.  

We're all just speculating about the future and we still can't prove any of it until the future arrives.  "Credibility"?  This means the same as "believability" and we can each believe exactly what we want.  I think the constitution guarantees that.  Your technical speculations have credibility?  For who? On what basis?

I stand by all my predictions and you'll just have to be a little patient about discrediting me.

[bob mccarthy]

It's hard for me to believe that lens manufacturing is state of the art.  There's no way that there should be significant variation between similar lenses if current technology were fully applied.

I would say it the better manufactures are absolutely state of the art. Its the cost compromises one must make that determines final lens capability.

Who's going to buy a $20,000 wide zoom? The differences between the companies are made up of how they manage these compromises and how they market them. Unit volume has much to do with the cost to manufacture. I don't think there will ever be a "significant" and "cost effective" improvement in lens capability over today. It's somewhat of a mature industry. The future is in electronics and image processing within the framework of the older technology.

 My sense it's stalled or even possibly going the other way with more and more restrictions on metals, etc that can be used in glass production.

[Ray]

Then there would be $2000 lenses that were only a tad better than the best $1000 lens.  "I payed twice as much as you did, and I can't see any difference.  What a rip off."

MAybe everyone woulf be happier if they just assumed they would get the worst example, and anything better is a steal.

I see an ethical problem with cherry picking. I'm proposing that the factory should do the cherry picking and make the user pay. My illustration of just 3 grades is a bit crude. How about 6 grades; $2000, $1750, $1500 etc.

The unavoidable fact is, when you buy a seat in the concert hall, there is always going to be just one row difference between one price category and the next. It's a matter of utility. The greatest satisfaction for the greatest number of people within a system that is both efficient and fair.

[John Camp]

This wasn't exactly a "light bulb" moment, but some time ago I bought a Canon Pro1 point-and-shoot with a 7x zoom as a briefcase camera. I didn't think about it much, just let it rattle around in my bag, then just before Christmas I shot a routine, head-on, auto-mode flash-photo of my wife standing in the living room holding up a crib quilt she'd made for our daughter. A couple days ago, I knocked out a 13x19 print on my Epson 2200, having spent about 0.5 minutes on the shot in Photoshop. When my wife got it she remarked not only on the color accuracy (she had scraps of the quilt to compare) but on the fact that you can clearly see the individual quilting stitches. This with a consumer camera. It ain't a great shot, but it occurred to me to wonder exactly what I'm hoping/expecting/demanding to get from better lenses and sensors...Maybe the ability to make loupe-quality 3-foot-by-five-foot shots?

JC

[howard smith]

Quinten,

"The bigger threat to Canon, and Nikon, may instead come from 'new' formats that are 'good enough' for photojournalism, sport and consumer use - possibly 4/3, or maybe something completely different, leaving 35mm size sensors caught between two stools."

Quite possible.  From what I hear from pro PJs, it isn't that the 1ds is so great, it is the instant image of digital that matters.  How many newspapers/magazines need 1ds quality images?  There was a story back when digital was still newish that a PJ for the LA Times was in Calgary for a playoff hockey game between the OPilers and Kings.  The game went into OT.  The local PJ and the LA Times both got the winning goal.  But the Times took the digital image, e-mailed it to LA and it made the morning paper in LA.  The Calgary paper didn't have the time to process the image and make the local paper.  Look at the sales of phone/cameraS.  HArdly 1ds quality, but the total sales $ will likely be much greater than the 1ds and 1dsII combined.  (Pure speculation.)

Canon Nikon wouldn't be the first biggy caught napping.  Kodak took a real shot to the jaw by digital and is trying to catch up.

I have thought for a while that "35mm," "MF", and "LF" are film terms.  Who cares about sensor size when looking at a print?  I would guess that the vast majority of digital camera owners know or even care how big the sensor is.  It's the picture that counts.  How big could a sensor get and still fit inside a cell phone?  I would be surprised if you could easily see a cell phone if it didn't need keys big enough to see and touch and a screen to match.

[Ben Rubinstein]

As for 18x12 prints being just fine with whatever kind of lens, sure, but what if I want to print really sharp looking 30x40 even for a reasonable viewing distance?  I'll need to go beyond anything like present day 35mm lenses (especially ultrawide).

Which is why I'm sure you will be one very happy man when you get that ZD!!  
Canon may be upgrading the sensors, but as everyone is pointing out, the limitation factor is now the lenses. Ergo, medium format will come back in to it's own for the market it was intended for, i.e. bigger prints.
That said, until the med format prices come down, this forum will still be awash with those complaining about canon's WA's not being up to a job they were never intended for. (the lenses that is, when they designed the 16-35L it wasn't with the 1Ds Mark V, LF replacement, in mind!)
Digital really is great, but the apparent advancements have come so da*n fast that cameras have been upgraded yearly while the system that supports the camera is still trying to catch up.
Of course Canon is murking up the waters by trying to put is stopgaps such as the new EFS lenses, running 3 different crops simultaniously and only recently getting their digital ETTL up to scratch.
In the meantime, the technology is still immature, having a top of the line pro body with only 4fps, no anti-dust, still no decent DR in the highlights, etc while running a 1.3x alternate pro body alongside, does not to me look like a technology that has matured and has both feet on the ground.
When the digi wars are over I think that we will all give a sigh of relief and look back at the compromises we made then, and the money we spent on not yet perfect tools because of what they promised.
What camera, with what lens, for what job, we will be using as we sigh, who knows. What I do know is that it will have come of age and be from a fully mature technology, we will trust in it as a tool, one which will last for years of service without complaint.
Of course the Apocolypse may have come by then....   :p

[howard smith]

The aircraft became the US Navy RA5C.  The A3 designation was for the original aircraft and the North American planes.  The Navy limited the speed to mach 2.0, but North American test pilots exceeded at least mach 2.5, likely more.  The aircraft set speed and altitude records (at 91,451 feet in 1960) for planes its size and weight.  It was no match for the SR71 though.

If the military had a 25Mpixel digital back 40ish years ago, how much better can/has digital get/gotten?