36 Megapixels vs 6×7 Velvia

Not quite what I said - it was for colour film, and using my scanner. Both those are important caveats for general consumption of my results. For me, a Sony a7r beats my 6x7 colour scans; but I'll still take 6x7 black and white scans from FP4 over the a7r if I want to make a decent print. A better scanner would change the result, I'm sure.

My basic estimated calculations on resolution etc. would put a full frame digi camera ahead of 35mm, but still trailing larger film. Lenses, alas. don't have infinite resolution, and nor do digital sensors. You inevitably reach a point when details drop between the floorboards of the sensor, and film will still carry on - albeit less visually sharp.

Regardless of the theory, for me, with my print sizes, my equipment and my abilities, I'll still take black and white film over digital in roll film and above. If I could afford a big digital back, I might change my opinion, although film would still trump it for ease of use.
 
From the article 6x7 still beats 35mm digi into a crooked hat certainly with slide film and a big scanner.

But as Steven mentions one might get better colour results from their high res digi cam than a v500.
 
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I should have added that my colour film was 160 ISO colour negative film; and that makes a difference. Colour negative because it's easier to scan than slide (for me, in case anyone objects).

One point I didn't make earlier is that when you use an enlarger, you use an enlarging lens; and even if everything else in your set up is perfect, the lens won't be, and there will be a quality loss at that stage. This works against film and for digital, since there is no further optical device between capture and print.
 
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Well another discussion we have never talked about in digi ver film is:- is a printer an equalizer for the best digi and film shots...how many guys with expensive digi cameras are getting prints not from the best labs.
 
how my digital photos are getting printed?
thats partly why i like film, i get prints with film and with digi im like mehh
 
pingu666 said:
how my digital photos are getting printed?
thats partly why i like film, i get prints with film and with digi im like mehh
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Well we all know a good quality digi has surpassed a 35mm camera for colour negs but was a printer now (or ever) the weakest link. Well ignoring crops so:- say a shot from a A7 and the same shot with a 35mm film camera but scanned with a decent scanner...then would you see the difference in your Joe public printer @ A4 or even 10X12 by a lab, if you can see the different then up the size to 6X4.5 etc
My point could be quite amusing if an expensive digi camera gives the same result as my £15 35mm film camera if producing A4 prints with a home printer.
 
excalibur2 said:
Well we all know a good quality digi has surpassed a 35mm camera for colour negs but was a printer now (or ever) the weakest link.
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We all know this? In just what way specifically has digital surpassed 35mm film?

Unfortunately, I'm guessing that most of the references to digital being 'better' than film in this thread are primarily regarding sharpness, which is a shame because good photographs are about much more than sharpness.

I still haven't encountered a digital camera that matches any film camera I've ever owned with regard to colour, latitude, dynamic range, or highlight detail/rendering.

Both film and digital are great and I think it's important to remember that the limiting factor in almost all cases is the human factor!
 
Well I suppose there could be debates about highlights and shadows, but I'm open minded in this digi ver film debates and it doesn't matter much to me as I doubt I'll ever get a first class digi camera for silly prices. But what ever a person's stance is to what is better....does a printer equalize the differences\advantages.
In the old days I used to do cibachrome prints from 35mm slide film and I would like to see a 35mm 36mp digi equal or beat those 8X10 prints for quality.
 
I was responding to Brian but we must have posted at the same time Rj.

but anyway..


skysh4rk said:
I still haven't encountered a digital camera that matches any film camera I've ever owned with regard to colour, latitude, dynamic range, or highlight detail/rendering.
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Surely that must go for scans too, and if it does then comparing a v12 Ferrari with the Flying Scotsman seems a shade pointless.

These threads always seem to skew off in to odd places, if we accept that a scan is never going to be the equal of the film frame it tries to replicate, how do we quantify that to fashion an acceptable comparison.

You just can't


You could guestimate a real World scenario where what comes out of the scanner is what you have to work with, but then that's hardly film anymore, all references to film to be struck from the debate, its a scan v digital, film is not accurately represented.
 
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excalibur2 said:
Well I suppose there could be debates about highlights and shadows, but I'm open minded in this digi ver film debates and it doesn't matter much to me as I doubt I'll ever get a first class digi camera for silly prices. But what ever a person's stance is to what is better....does a printer equalize the differences\advantages.
In the old days I used to do cibachrome prints from 35mm slide film and I would like to see a 35mm 36mp digi equal or beat those 8X10 prints for quality.
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Start a new thread on the topic and I'll happily join in as a user of a 36mp digital camera, a former producer of Cibachrome prints, and one who regards tonal range as very important as a basic technical requirement. But in this thread, it's off topic and I'm not being drawn. As to scanners, the same scanner can give an atrocious result or an excellent one depending on the settings used. I suspect that many follow the example of a lot of magazines and judge quality by that which is obtained out of the box by an unskilled operator - certainly many printer reviews start by saying that the reviewers have made no attempts to optimise the output. The same applies with as much force, I think, to darkroom printing. I wouldn't hold a candle to the darkroom greats, but I do know what can be achieved by those with skill, patience and determination.

You can combine different scans from the same negative, which can help, but the basic limitation in the darkroom is the printing paper. No printing paper can match the dynamic range of film, so if you want the full film experience, you'll need to use slides as the base for comparison. Just don't project them, though, as the projection system will degrade the quality. Bluntly, no print or projected image will ever do justice to the film either.
 
joxby said:
Printers aren't the weak link, the scan is.
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even a drum scan? so what is the next weakest link as I always thought a print can never show the full range of colours, tones or whatever...so it would equalize the results in the digi ver film results.
 
StephenM said:
Start a new thread on the topic and I'll happily join in as a user of a 36mp digital camera, a former producer of Cibachrome prints, and one who regards tonal range as very important as a basic technical requirement. But in this thread, it's off topic and I'm not being drawn. As to scanners, the same scanner can give an atrocious result or an excellent one depending on the settings used. I suspect that many follow the example of a lot of magazines and judge quality by that which is obtained out of the box by an unskilled operator - certainly many printer reviews start by saying that the reviewers have made no attempts to optimise the output. The same applies with as much force, I think, to darkroom printing. I wouldn't hold a candle to the darkroom greats, but I do know what can be achieved by those with skill, patience and determination.

You can combine different scans from the same negative, which can help, but the basic limitation in the darkroom is the printing paper. No printing paper can match the dynamic range of film, so if you want the full film experience, you'll need to use slides as the base for comparison. Just don't project them, though, as the projection system will degrade the quality. Bluntly, no print or projected image will ever do justice to the film either.
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...and we haven't got onto the subject on how do you see what is actually on film :D
 
excalibur2 said:
...and we haven't got onto the subject on how do you see what is actually on film :D
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You don't have to see it. It's there whether you see it or not. Trust me...

Your search seems to be for a comparison of digital prints versus film prints, and from a comment above, pretty small prints at that (A4/10x8). There are differences in the prints, yes; but there are differences between film types and camera sizes. I prefer to view digital as another film type rather than sui generis.
 
StephenM said:
You don't have to see it. It's there whether you see it or not. Trust me...

Your search seems to be for a comparison of digital prints versus film prints, and from a comment above, pretty small prints at that (A4/10x8). There are differences in the prints, yes; but there are differences between film types and camera sizes. I prefer to view digital as another film type rather than sui generis.
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Well it all shows that digi ver film is not that simple and usually pointless but can be interesting (well for me).
 
Digital is a fair bit easier to optimise getting the best prints, and accepts sharpening in post better than film too

As for prints, I had some done at boots, then went to gwc and he redid them on there new fancy pants machine, the large ones where a good deal better quality at gwc, so printer is a factor...

I do prefer film, specially instant film for people pictures, 99% chance of them going "oh I look awful" to seeing it develop and being "oh I look good in this" and being happy

And that's done with a Fuji 210, on camera inbuilt flash, f14 2 step focus lens and badly aimed by me!
 
As I've said, film vs digital debates are a waste of time, but even so, it's not fair to compare an old and abandoned tech like film, with almost unexistant advances or developments since the appearence of digital, against a new tech which is evolving every year. How many companies are activelly involved in Research and Development of electronic sensors and how many in film?. But also... how many years took to get the film and chemicals quality that we have today and how old the electronic sensors are?.
 
ariel7515 said:
it's not fair to compare an old and abandoned tech like film
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It hasn't been completely abandoned. Ilford have stated that this years sales are the highest they have been for many years and Ferrania have started production of colour film again.

It's not mainstream any more but it is sustainable at its current level.


Steve.
 
On numbers, I expect that there may be more, but I can only think of 3 companies that produce sensors, and rather more that produce film. I'd expect that the film companies do carry out R&D. Rather as there are more companies producing large format cameras than DSLRs. Possibly the digital companies employ more staff, but the last time I looked at the history of science, most major breakthroughs came as the result of one or two people having a novel thought than large teams, which are better at incremental improvements.

On the other hand (and I'm not saying that film is perfect) carried to its logical conclusion a perfect product that by definition cannot be improved and therefore has no need of R&D would be judged obsolete and abandoned if compared with a very, very imperfect one that is having R&D money lavished upon it.

I'm not convinced that the debates are a waste of time; many people come to photography thinking that digital is the only game in town, and seeing the advantages of film over digital may conclude that film is worth exploring.
 
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ariel7515 said:
As I've said, film vs digital debates are a waste of time, but even so, it's not fair to compare an old and abandoned tech like film, with almost unexistant advances or developments since the appearence of digital, against a new tech which is evolving every year. How many companies are activelly involved in Research and Development of electronic sensors and how many in film?. But also... how many years took to get the film and chemicals quality that we have today and how old the electronic sensors are?.
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Well even digi ver film debate is better than the forum drying up for posts in the "off" season.........always guaranteed to liven up any forum, and you can always learn something from the waffle esp for newbies or lurkers and who knows might draw in more members from google :D
 
ariel7515 said:
As I've said, film vs digital debates are a waste of time, but even so, it's not fair to compare an old and abandoned tech like film, with almost unexistant advances or developments since the appearence of digital, against a new tech which is evolving every year. How many companies are activelly involved in Research and Development of electronic sensors and how many in film?. But also... how many years took to get the film and chemicals quality that we have today and how old the electronic sensors are?.
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Old and abandoned tech?

Unexistant [sic] advances?

Your claims are quite simply not supported by any facts. This is a borderline troll post for F & C.
 
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Ok guys, I'm on the film lovers side, I understand what you both are saying (Steve and Stephen), maybe I'm wrong, but I'm still thinking that it is not a fair comparison, for either of both sides.

Stephen, you are right about one of the ways to see this kind of debates, I didn't thought about that. (y)
 
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a lot less money is being put into film R and d vs digital, and we seem to have Kodak sitting on good emulsions that they could be selling as still film stock, but limiting it to movie stuff
 
Steve Smith said:
Quite true, but film is at a stage where it doesn't really need much R & D now.


Steve.
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I don't think it's possible to say that. There's always the possibility of a new discovery that could take things in a new direction. I dare say that when dry plates came along, people were thinking it was near the end of the line; even ortho film was presumably so named because it was thought to be the end of the line as far as colour sensitivity went. Then panchromatic film came along. The obvious places for improvement are greater sensitivity and resolving power. Film has peaked in speed at the point where many digital photographers think that low ISOs kick in :).

On the processing side, there are an extremely large number of unresolved questions about the most basic part of film technology and processing that could still be addressed.

Perhaps you're correct though; these aren't "needs" so much as interesting questions that, if answered, could advance film in new ways that we haven't thought of. Rather like "650 kilobytes of RAM is as much as anyone will ever need" (Microsoft) or "6 computers are enough for the whole world" (IBM). Sensible given the state of p[lay at the time; but advances in unexpected directions changed the landscape. Which is one reason why pure research is worthwhile and should be funded.
 
It didn't say it wasn't possible, just that there wasn't so much need.

EDIT: Which you mentioned at the end of your post!


Steve.
 
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It's a moot point. No-one probably "needed" panchromatic roll film when the dry plate process supplanted wet plate; but I'd bet a whole lot of people really need it now! Being able to do something has a habit of becoming essential.

The greatest pity to my mind is that so few people are now adequately researching (say) developers. Using vitamin C was a fairly recent development (no pun intended) and not much before Kodak closed up shop. It makes me wonder what other novel developing agents could have been found, and whether D76/ID11 could be surpassed for all round performance. My developer of choice was old - really old - even when I was born. Processing can make or break a film, so we could perhaps get a little more from existing films that way.

Looking to the darkroom, what about the differences between (say) silver and platinum and palladium prints. Are there unexplored alternatives there?

One question that frequently crosses my mind is longevity. Many people happily say that conventional prints are superior to digital ones in terms of longevity; after all, conventional prints have survived for over a hundred years. At which point I begin to think "yes, that's all very well, but those old prints weren't using modern materials. How will they survive?". There's ample scope for research and development in this area. I's better stop and back away - I have an enquiring mind and a lot of questions that have been thrown up by reading over the years.
 
Steve Smith said:
If you specialise in portraits of black cats in coal cellars at night.


Steve.
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or for use it in situations where there was an outrage in the "sad rant" thread for using\or thinking about using flash :D
 
pingu666 said:
a lot less money is being put into film R and d vs digital, and we seem to have Kodak sitting on good emulsions that they could be selling as still film stock, but limiting it to movie stuff
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I'm not sure why everyone is saying that there hasn't been any research or development in film stocks; where do we think the Kodak Ektar and Kodak Portra emulsions came from?

Both Ektar and the Portras utilise the Vision technology that was developed for the Kodak cinema stocks. In fact, to my knowledge, the Portra line has been updated numerous time in the past ten years.
 
pingu666 said:
a lot less money is being put into film R and d vs digital, and we seem to have Kodak sitting on good emulsions that they could be selling as still film stock, but limiting it to movie stuff
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Steve Smith said:
Quite true, but film is at a stage where it doesn't really need much R & D now.


Steve.
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I think it should be remembered that Kodak itself has actually spun off its still imaging business to Kodak Alaris - who sell the still imaging products, chemicals etc - whilst retaining the motion film part for itself. Whilst Kodak still manufactures the film at Rochester USA for Kodak Alaris, but Alaris itself does not appear to actually have any access to Kodak's motion R&D (which is understandable as their a separate company entirely who effectively subcontract their film manufacturing to Kodak), and they have previously indicated that their not pursuing any new R&D into still film.

They were doing a Linkedin Q&A about this time last year where you could ask the Alaris CEO about what they were up to, and I asked "Is research and development into new/improved emulsions continuing, or is Kodak Alaris sticking to the emulsions it already has?", but the public reply that I got was "Our current product portfolio delivers the very best films available in the world today. In fact, these are the best films that the company has ever produced. No improvements are necessary" which is somewhat worrying as previously Kodak seemed to be the only company actively improving its colour films.

The strange thing is that looking back on their Linkedin page where the questions were posted, my question appears to have mysteriously vanished, but if you look where they finally posted the responses it's still there (see http://infooverdrive.com/2014/05/19/answering-your-questions-from-linkedin/). I do remember that when the answers finally appeared after 2 months (despite them saying 48 hours!) quite a few people on APUG seized on my question and their answer as to whether "the truth" had accidentally slipped out. Whether or not that's the case I don't think we'll ever know.
 
Hmm, I read a very similar story recently about how Kodak were so certain that their products were the best in world and needed no further improvement, and so cut R&D, leaving the field open for Fuji to patent new technology that put the Kodak product out to pasture.
 
StephenM said:
Hmm, I read a very similar story recently about how Kodak were so certain that their products were the best in world and needed no further improvement, and so cut R&D, leaving the field open for Fuji to patent new technology that put the Kodak product out to pasture.
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I don't think that could be for real as Fuji have already pulled out of the motion film market (last year), effectively leaving Kodak as the sole supplier to the world of motion film, and it's motion film technology these days which influences future still films as the technology trickles down. Fuji could close it's still film division tomorrow and be none the worst off as they have so many other business divisions that would absorb any potentially lost profits.

Like I said above though, with Kodak themselves no longer actually owning the still film and paper business then I doubt that anything will cross over from the motion to still products any longer unless they have a technology sharing agreement, which seems unlikely as then Alaris would have to bankroll an entire R&D division as well unless they've also subcontracted R&D to the "proper" Kodak as well.
 
I didn't specify the product, and it wasn't film. It was Fuji's Crystal Archive paper that put paid to Kodak's supremacy in the field. My point was that Kodak was being consistent in resting on its laurels until it sank without trace.
 
Kodak probably said same about mf sensors, then Sony came in and ate their lunch
 
s162216 said:
Like I said above though, with Kodak themselves no longer actually owning the still film and paper business then I doubt that anything will cross over from the motion to still products any longer unless they have a technology sharing agreement, which seems unlikely as then Alaris would have to bankroll an entire R&D division as well unless they've also subcontracted R&D to the "proper" Kodak as well.
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There is a US startup CineStillFilm that has a few converted kodak motion films available, and there's also a Lomography version, I think (Cine200). If they can do it, maybe Kodak Alaris could too... of course, they'd have to want to and not assume that everything's perfect!
 
Just going back on topic for a moment - sorry.

Prompted by an earlier post, I recalculated the resolving power of a 36 megapixel sensor. Taking the pixel size of a photo from a Sony a7r, and assuming that the sensor size was 36mmx24mm (this won't be true - not even film frames are necessarily the "stated" size), and assuming that the pixels had no space between them, then there were 204 pixels per mm in both directions. Before tearing into this, note that the assumptions are actually not quite true; but it gives a reasonable starting point.

Now on to the second half of the original comparison. Film resolution is normally quoted with caveats as to subject contrast. The resolution of Velvia 50 (according to Fuji's data) is 80-160 lines per mm depending on the contrast. Set this against the 204 lines per mm of the sensor, the digital wins. In 35mm size. Go up to 6x7, and we have rather more lines resolved (the sensor will be 204x36 in the long side (7344), the film (say) 120 x 69.5 (Mamiya RZ67, Mamiya's figure) in the long side (8340).

I'm fully aware that this is less than the whole story, and there's the massive practical problem of exploiting the film fully. And that there are massive assumptions as to what the lenses can resolve, how it impacts on the overall performance of the system, the effects of the Nyquist limit etc. But it is something to ponder.
 
Whatever the facts and figures are, 36MP digital or 6x7cm Velvia will be more than enough for 99% of uses.


Steve.
 
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