Film Vs Digital?

[NealRasmussen]

Anyone have examples of resolution of film Vs digital? I ask because of this old picture taken with a 6x7cm Bronica medium format camera. Sure it's 4X the resolution of 35mm film, but this seems fairly darn good.

This is the wide angle shot


And this is a crop of just the 3/4 full moon in that same image.


Sure a little fuzzy, but wow, that's a lot of magnification, and again, just a tight crop of the wide angle shot, not another picture when zoomed in.

Anyone have some wide angle whole storm shots with the moon in it?

 

[Dan Robinson]

Modern digital is better than film in just about every way, but the extra quality doesn't matter unless you're one of the 0.1% of photographers who manages to make a part-time income or more on it. There's no justification to spend extra money or time on photography these days - the extra quality won't bring any meaningful benefit for the vast majority of us. It's just a way to pad Nikon and Canon's pockets.

 

[Marc R. O'Leary]

Modern digital is better than film in just about every way, but the extra quality doesn't matter unless you're one of the 0.1% of photographers who manages to make a part-time income or more on it. There's no justification to spend extra money or time on photography these days - the extra quality won't bring any meaningful benefit for the vast majority of us. It's just a way to pad Nikon and Canon's pockets.

Unless you're out to shoot for the enjoyment of it and not trying to make money. That's what I do.

 

[Dan Robinson]

Unless you're out to shoot for the enjoyment of it and not trying to make money. That's what I do.

That's the point. If you're just out for the enjoyment of it, you don't need high-end gear or even digital over film.

 

[Greg Campbell]

Fine grained film in 6x7 is 'sorta' comparable to 50~80+ megapickles.
(The two media are not directly comparable. There are issues with resolution vs apparent sharpness, variable color resolution vs luminance resolution, scanning limitations, anti-aliasing filters, and much more.)

http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/scandetail/#digi1camres1
or
https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2014/12/36-megapixels-vs-6x7-velvia/
and even more long haired technical discussion....
http://www.normankoren.com/Tutorials/MTF7.html

As the second article suggests, the devil is in the scanning...
A consumer flatbed will produce web-suitable scans, but will leave most of the data 'on the table.'
To extract all the data, you'll need a decidedly spendy dedicated film scanner. You can purchase, or pay for a good service.
IMO, a reasonable compromise is using a DSLR and true macro (1:1) lens to shoot chunks of the film. You can then stitch the mosaic together into a pretty darned crisp image.

None of these options are terribly convenient, but if you enjoy shooting big cameras, you'll have nothing to be ashamed of should the pixel peepers come knocking.

I've got a Bronica 6x6 and have done some of the macro-DSLR-stitching. I'm not getting all that is visible in a microscope (focus, field tilt and curvature, shutter shake, etc. are all issues at this scale), but am able to make 30+mp images with wonderful detail. My 'main' computer is down with a dead OS, so I can't access them right now. I'll post samples when I get the box back up and running. While functional, this approach IS tedious and time consuming!

 

[NealRasmussen]

Oh thanks Greg. I should have said how I produced the image from film. This was done with my 3200DPI canoScan. It's also only 24 bits as I hope to get soon the new canoScan that can up to 9600DPI and 42bits or such. I'll most likely rescan at around 4500DPI and the deeper bit depth color is greatly desired. The canoScan 8400F was new, about $200, as is the newer replacement the 9000F Mark TWO! is even less at $170 now. Drool, Drool. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/905050-REG/Canon_6218b002aa_CS_9000F_Mark_II_Image.html

The 3200DPI/24bit BMPs are 180MB. The new scanner will be in the 500-700MB per scan range.

Why this insanity? For large prints. Your 20x16". Commercially larger. My 20MP T5 is 4300 pixels wide, so 4300dots/20" = 215DPI on final print. This is ok. Most won't notice any difference if you go finer DPI. Some will. But yes, there is an apples and oranges thing, cause on film prints you can see the 'grain' (actually grain clumps) but seems to have a more pleasing smoothness when viewed at a distance.

Also I find I have to smooth my T5 frames in a 3x3 or 5x5 pixel size because of noise. Don't have to do that on film scans.

Take the moon example at top. That zoomed in shot would be about what it would look to one viewing it closely on a large 20x16 print. Not that big, but that resolution. "Can a DSLR do that well?" was my basic question.

I should have added the caveat of "Film-vs-Digital Quality", as yes, DSLR rules because I would be hard pressed to shoot 300 pictures of the SkyDance bridge to get one fairly nice shot. Ummm 300 * $1.50 = $450. Wow. A camera, or lens! Also you just know that the real nice spark would hit when doing one of the THIRTY film roll changes.