[wkraus]

As others have said, yes - it will help... but only if you need it. If all you're going to do is create smaller prints, or view the digitised images on a PC monitor, then the extra image capture time, card / disk space and processing considerations are of debatable benefit. At the moment, I'm choosing to digitise 35mm and 120 negatives with my old 16MP K-5 (with its physical AA filter). The captured negatives are lower in resolution and not as detailed or sharp as they would be if I used my K-3II in pixel-shift mode - but, all I'm doing with my converted negatives is viewing them on HD screens at normal working distances. For that, the K-5 is ample. If I was creating large prints, it'd be a different matter...

Of course you’re right with this argument. One thing I’d like to add to what was said before: at the high magnification rates needed, mirror and shutter-induced vibrations are also critical, depending on how you mount your camera. The mirror-up self timer function makes a lot of sense, and additionally the electronic shutter if the option is there.

My copy stand is giant and massive, but still it is fun to watch its vibrations in liveview at 10x magnification.

[BigMackCam]

Of course you’re right with this argument. One thing I’d like to add to what was said before: at the high magnification rates needed, mirror and shutter-induced vibrations are also critical, depending on how you mount your camera. The mirror-up self timer function makes a lot of sense, and additionally the electronic shutter if the option is there.

My copy stand is giant and massive, but still it is fun to watch its vibrations in liveview at 10x magnification.

I use Live View, timer and IR remote, with the camera mounted on a sturdy (but not the sturdiest) copy stand... but I've still wondered whether vibration is an issue. Due to my light source and the ISO + aperture combination I'm shooting at, my exposure times are typically in excess of two seconds, which should help to mitigate any effects from shake... but I wonder whether a much longer shutter speed - say, 8 seconds - might be a useful improvement. I may try lowering the intensity of my light panel when shooting, just to see if I can detect any difference using the longer shutter speed...

[wkraus]

I use Live View, timer and IR remote, with the camera mounted on a sturdy (but not the sturdiest) copy stand... but I've still wondered whether vibration is an issue. Due to my light source and the ISO + aperture combination I'm shooting at, my exposure times are typically in excess of two seconds, which should help to mitigate any effects from shake... but I wonder whether a much longer shutter speed - say, 8 seconds - might be a useful improvement. I may try lowering the intensity of my light panel when shooting, just to see if I can detect any difference using the longer shutter speed...

I can’t really tell from a distance but I would assume that an exposure of 2 seconds, combined with the precautions you are taking, should be uncritical. I doubt you will see much of a difference with an 8 seconds exposure. And a single exposure is less critical than Pixelshift because even the tiniest difference between subframes will produce artifacts.

[wkraus]

You can expand as far as you want, but my experience was that with even the best film material I used (old Ektar 25 and 125, Gold and Superia generation 100, and the new Ektar 100) about 12 Mp at best can be extracted. I tried in my best images on unharmed filmstrips to get more out of it using 4:1 macro shots with extension tubes on aperture F8/F11 (sharpest aperture, some DOF through the film layers). But there was nothing in there. So my best filmstrips ended up in jpeg's of 4500x3000, the others in 3000x2000. That is very sufficient. Maybe the best slides and B&W go a bit further, but take in account that the SLR's and lenses that days also had their limitations in sharpness and focusing accuracy. The calibration between film flatness, mirror, frosted glass and AF sensors never was spot on, and at least you had to use the best lenses stopped down a bit to achieve the best sharpness anyway.

You are surely right about the real-life limitations of most analog photos. But you are wrong about lens and film performance. It is not too difficult to find 1970s lenses that outperform the 36 megapixel sensor of the K-1 at medium apertures. The theoretical resolution limit of the K-1 and K-1 II is about 100 line pairs per millimetre using pixelshift (a bit lower without). As Henning Serger who runs a professional test lab has argued over at Photrio, most low ISO films (ISO 100 and less) resolve significantly more than that. But you need a lot of care during shooting to really make use of that resolution.

[Henrico]

You are surely right about the real-life limitations of most analog photos. But you are wrong about lens and film performance. It is not too difficult to find 1970s lenses that outperform the 36 megapixel sensor of the K-1 at medium apertures. The theoretical resolution limit of the K-1 and K-1 II is about 100 line pairs per millimetre using pixelshift (a bit lower without). As Henning Serger who runs a professional test lab has argued over at Photrio, most low ISO films (ISO 100 and less) resolve significantly more than that. But you need a lot of care during shooting to really make use of that resolution.

You are absolutely right about that, I own and use several old K/M/A-glass myself that outperform my 36 MP K1ii. I am really happy with that But getting the best results in my ME-super time with the M1.4/50 I had to use a very low ASA film, aperture about F5.6 and so relative low shutter speeds. My ME-super lacked something as IBIS, suffered some mirror / shutter shake and often at wider apertures with thin DOF shots that were 100% in focus in my split screen (my eyes were splendid that days ) were a bit out of focus on the developed film. So most shots were great on my 4x6 prints, but by nowadays digital standards and 4K screens not as good as they could.

Using these lenses on my K1 is a grace, best of both worlds, but even now I get the best results with narrow DOF shots using live view and magnification. The optical viewfinder and focus conformation are not accurate enough for my K1.2/50 wide open en tele-lenses. For that the tolerances come very close.

[BigMackCam]

Do you have examples to show how your results compare to "lab quality" scan?

If you're still interested to see the results from Negative Lab Pro, I posted a short article last night with an example using one of my old colour negatives:

Recreating a (bad!?) 35mm lab-scan with Negative Lab Pro and Lightroom - PentaxForums.com

[titrisol]

I just upgraded from the K5-iis to the K3-iii and all the new features are mind boggling
Pixelshift is one of them, thanks for the info

With the K5-iis , a Pentax Bellows, and SMC-50mm Macro Takumar I'm able to do 11x14 prints which look good
However some BW negatives are tricky, and pixel shift might help dealing with grain.
i'll give it a shot

As others have said, yes - it will help... but only if you need it. If all you're going to do is create smaller prints, or view the digitised images on a PC monitor, then the extra image capture time, card / disk space and processing considerations are of debatable benefit. At the moment, I'm choosing to digitise 35mm and 120 negatives with my old 16MP K-5 (with its physical AA filter). The captured negatives are lower in resolution and not as detailed or sharp as they would be if I used my K-3II in pixel-shift mode - but, all I'm doing with my converted negatives is viewing them on HD screens at normal working distances. For that, the K-5 is ample. If I was creating large prints, it'd be a different matter...

[BigMackCam]

With the K5-iis , a Pentax Bellows, and SMC-50mm Macro Takumar I'm able to do 11x14 prints which look good
However some BW negatives are tricky, and pixel shift might help dealing with grain.
i'll give it a shot

What is the issue you're having with grain - is it too strong? If so, are you sharpening your images, and if "yes" to that, are you masking such that only edges are sharpened (i.e. ensuring the grain is not sharpened too)?

[LesDMess]

If you're still interested to see the results from Negative Lab Pro, I posted a short article last night with an example using one of my old colour negatives:

Recreating a (bad!?) 35mm lab-scan with Negative Lab Pro and Lightroom - PentaxForums.com

I think this can be a good addition to your previous thread on DSLR scanning as color negative conversion is probably the single most complex operation that NLP appears to address well.

[titrisol]

What is the issue you're having with grain - is it too strong? If so, are you sharpening your images, and if "yes" to that, are you masking such that only edges are sharpened (i.e. ensuring the grain is not sharpened too)?

Grain looks unnatural in scanned pictures compared to prints (Fomapan 400)
My guess is that pixel shift will bypass that


Superpan 200 as well
Super Solinette Test Roll

[BigMackCam]

Grain looks unnatural in scanned pictures compared to prints (Fomapan 400)
My guess is that pixel shift will bypass that


Superpan 200 as well
Super Solinette Test Roll

Hmmm... That looks awfully heavy given the film speeds. How - and how much - are you sharpening those? It looks like there's a fair bit going on there... Are you masking it to ensure only outlines are sharpened? Also, I'd avoid any sharpening at export except for images destined for print, as this is global (I'm sure you know that already).

This was one of my Fompan 200 shots. It's 120 film, admittedly, so the grain will look smaller - but still, it's way less prominent:

[titrisol]

Those are not sharpened, shoot with K5IIs (natural)> converted to grayscale> invert> levels adjusted> and cropped only

Crop of the original file attached

[BigMackCam]

Those are not sharpened, shoot with K5IIs (natural)> converted to grayscale> invert> levels adjusted> and cropped only

Strange. I wonder if it has something to do with the tone curve and levels. If you have a raw file you don't mind sharing with me on my Google drive, I'd be happy to run it through Negative Lab Pro and provide you with the result - just as an experiment. I find it does a much better job than I'm able to achieve using the method you've mentioned. If that would be of any interest or help, feel free to PM me...

EDIT: I just looked at the EXIF data from your original. Is there a reason why you're shooting at ISO 800? That will add digital sensor noise (both colour and luminance) to the raw file, for sure (that may also be why I perceive it to be sharpened - noise will do that). On my K-5 digitising rig, I shoot only at base ISO. Because of the light level from my Kaiser panel, that requires a 2 - 2.5s shutter time, but it's worth it to use base ISO

[wkraus]

Grain looks unnatural in scanned pictures compared to prints (Fomapan 400)
My guess is that pixel shift will bypass that

You shouldn’t expect a radical difference, but it is certainly there. I’m not a specialist in sampling theory (perhaps someone more expert can jump in), but I assume the main reason is aliasing on grain “edges”. Aliasing is frequency-dependent so the effect varies with grain size and image resolution. In general, you can expect that coarse grain will appear coarser without Pixelshift while fine grain will be more detailed. All of this assumes that there is no anti-aliasing involved. An AA filter or its simulation à la Pentax will help against (some) aliasing but also take away some of the real resolution, that is, fine detail. I haven’t tested the AA effect but I have compared Pixelshift and non-Pixelshift. With the 36 Megapixels of the K-1 and the very high resolution lens I’m using Ilford FP4 Plus definitely falls in the category of coarse grain. With a grainy film like Fomapan 400 the difference will be even more pronounced.

Happy New Year everyone!

[titrisol]

Strange. I wonder if it has something to do with the tone curve and levels. If you have a raw file you don't mind sharing with me on my Google drive, I'd be happy to run it through Negative Lab Pro and provide you with the result - just as an experiment. I find it does a much better job than I'm able to achieve using the method you've mentioned. If that would be of any interest or help, feel free to PM me...

EDIT: I just looked at the EXIF data from your original. Is there a reason why you're shooting at ISO 800? That will add digital sensor noise (both colour and luminance) to the raw file, for sure (that may also be why I perceive it to be sharpened - noise will do that). On my K-5 digitising rig, I shoot only at base ISO. Because of the light level from my Kaiser panel, that requires a 2 - 2.5s shutter time, but it's worth it to use base ISO

Good point, I'll try again at 100
I have lost the DNG files as I only kept the jpgs