[MysteryOnion]

John, I think skill is the point of measure and you will always be in business.

goddo31, "strange" is normal for me... I think I have been imposing on you and all the rest... I been needing to reset my confidence in the medium I've started with and still am in love with. The better times photographing seems to be when I'm further from Boston or touristy areas, with a few exceptions.

[tuco]

Steve,
My Epson 4870 claim native resolution is 4800x9600dpi, but it feels more like 3200x3200.

Well, don't believe everything you read from the marketing department. That model doesn't show up on tests at Film Scanner Info but I recall reading somewhere it tested to about 1700dpi.

They like to advertise interpolated resolutions vs the actual optical path it is capable of. And sometimes it's the stepper motor resolution in one direction they give when there are two resolution numbers listed or what the CCD sensor can do but, again, the optical path and high pass filter are not up to that level. So if you scan higher than 2400dpi for most flatbed scanners or scan in interpolated resolutions, you will not increase the resulting image pixel resolution only the file size.

[MysteryOnion]

That is an interesting fact I've been told before and I judge it by, "when I see the grain". For over a year I've scanned to only 2400dpi as told there was no point to go higher as it is just the same thing only bigger file, but recently I tried someones advise about the inaccurate holders. So it I find it can do better than 2400dpi and with no interpolating...improved the 2400 to better when set to 4800 and I think it pokes into 3200. Yes, a difference from 2400 to 4800 when shimming the holders and really a waste of time with slides, but not lots since I still am not getting grain... yes I know it is not a drum scanner. The dratted holders are the limiting factor it seems...but you know... doesn't matter... I still would rather get my wet darkroom back in order again and start printing again. Then I can see real grain rather than interpreting it digitally as noise.

Another thought and to acknowledge what you are saying tuco,
I got my max crappy scan of below 1700ppi based on the leaving it on 2400dpi and finally got a little better when I shimmed the holder to squeeze it up to probably the 1700 actual. My remark above is a conservative estimate of potential resolution. I've always doubted that some claim a camera loaded with say TMax100 or Ektar100 and armed with a good lens is not able to come close to the resolution of an average 12 to 16 megapix camera. ...I know I'll get hate mail again, but I do believe this is marketing as you so properly pointed out about max scanning res.

[stevebrot]

Steve,
My Epson 4870 claim native resolution is 4800x9600dpi, but it feels more like 3200x3200.

Much less than that...The best the V700/V750 can do is ~2400 dpi regardless of manufacturer claim. The lower models manage about 1500-1800 dpi. (See tuco's filmscanner.info link above)

Sorry...








Steve

(I own the V700, but do most of my 35mm scans on a Nikon 5000 ED)

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Last edited by stevebrot; 09-28-2011 at 03:28 PM.

[MysteryOnion]

Steve, thanks... got all that anyway and still hate my film holders even when shimmed. The 2400 setting on my scanner might be better marked as 800 and the 4800 should be more like 1650...

[Nesster]

...sad really, considering what's locked up in 120 film, and that there is little economic incentive to improve film scanning

[MysteryOnion]

Nesster... it is so true... this discussion forked to scanning and I will say that I hate scanning and honestly get lots of conflicting views on "optical res.", "actual", "perceived res."... etc. I tried finding the article written about the shimming of the holder and DIY your own for greater accuracy. The mention of "...test results are flawed as they use OEM holders..." was the section I really remember. High end scanners are not in my budget as I am preferring to just put the wet side of the darkroom back in order soon. I've tried to scan some of my negatives and have filled two of my 250G drives as well as bunches of DVD-R just at 2400dpi.

On the original "Utterings..."
This past Sunday I happen to ask at a Walgreens if they still had some sale going on with the film... I was asking nicely. The manager got very angry and turn and away and said from the back of his head, "you people are in the past" and as he disappeared to the back he pointed at a lone line of film on the shelf that were not on sale.

[Vertex Ninja]

Oddly, when I take my Rollei out for a walk people can't help but stop me and talk fondly about it and film. While at the state fair, I even had a little kid come over to see what I was looking at on the ground and when I showed him that I was actually just crouched looking into the waste level finder, he flipped. After showing him what the screen looked like, he went yelling out loud to his parents how cool my camera was. On the same trip, I had a guy shooting a digital SLR come take a picture of me taking a picture. His wife said to mine, "I'm so embarrassed, he's stalking your husband, loves his camera". I was then stopped by at least 10-15 other people over the next few hours. I've never had that happen with any other camera. Maybe it get's such positive comments because there is no mistaking it's age and the nostalgia, IDK.

Digital is the future, but there is no reason why film should die. I will never understand the mentality of when something new comes along the old is considered junk. Read any digital message board and you will likely find at least one person that comes along and says film just needs to die, digital is so much better... or something along those lines. Why? Do they need to justify a purchase by bad mouthing the alternative? I don't get it. Thankfully, the internet is not real life and I've never had anyone give me sh!t to my face. It's unfortunate that others have had bad experiences, but thankfully we can just ignore the haters and keep doing what makes us happy... at least for awhile longer.

[séamuis]

there will always be that type of attitude when a new ‘medium’ takes over an older well established one, and most of the people spreading such hatred will have never even used the older medium. you can easily compare what is happening with film to what has happened to vinyl records, yet they are still around, still manufactured new and are still a viable way of selling music of new and modern bands/artists. of course you can argue that its not really the best alternative for vinyl because now its very limited, more expensive than it should be and usually isn’t made to the same quality standards as times past. but its here still. that will be film. so I just tend to ignore such people, most of which (practically all) are just young people showing their adolescent ignorance and flare for spreading it at every viable, and often not viable oppurtunity.

as for MysteryOnion, it seems that he either has a pension for attracting every ignorant and hate filled person out there or seemingly the entire city of boston hates film.

[MysteryOnion]

Vertex Ninja,

Read any digital message board and you will likely find at least one person that comes along and says film just needs to die

I think in very modern and high-tech city that you will find those random individuals that blindly, aggressively think that they are cutting edge and have the "best thing out there".


séamuis,
A true point about vinyl... and how people just go for the new thing and think they know it all just by listening to the advertising.



I should point out that I've clarified that it's an unusual 'percentage' that is encountered... as I've said before that a good number of student are very nice about film and a random small percentage of them are negative. The people from mid-twenties and up are where I encounter some greater numbers of weirdness. If it were the entire of Boston, I would move to the West coast.

Just to stop my "cup half empty" crap for a moment... A fella came to my defense back last year... two tourist types stood in front of me and my shot with huge lensed Canons and were looking at my Pentax 6x7 and saying "that must be a waste of energy" A interesting professor type stepped up and simply said to the two "then you know nothing gentlemen and you should mind you own business... go study photography..." Wow, they backed down and left.

[Digitalis]

I think in very modern and high-tech city that you will find those random individuals that blindly, aggressively think that they are cutting edge and have the "best thing out there"

I had a student that embodied that description he wasn't impressed with film at all - and he had to use it for his classes. so what I did was I pitted his canon 1ds MKIII against an ebony 4X5 view camera with images from both cameras being printed at 36X24* - the 4X5 won, and I was using a nikkor lens too as I recall...talk about adding insult to injury.

* with cropping on the 4X5 negative.

[séamuis]

I had a student that embodied that description he wasn't impressed with film at all - and he had to use it for his classes. so what I did was I pitted his canon 1ds MKIII against an ebony 4X5 view camera with images from both cameras being printed at 36X24* - the 4X5 won, and I was using a nikkor lens too as I recall...talk about adding insult to injury.

* with cropping on the 4X5 negative.

thats a wonderful bit of ‘real world in your face’ experience, an I applaud you for teaching him a brilliant example, but I think sadly that most people who take this attitude don’t do so because they believe or ‘know’ what they use (being modern and therefore ‘better’) is actually better, but really I think they more likely take tis attitude because they simply are ignorant of everything but marketing dribble and social status that comes with having the latest and greatest. that coupled with the typical ‘need to justify their money spent’ problem that often accompanies such attitudes. suffice to say, I don’t think any real world examples of just how good this ‘antiquated’ equipment can be, will do anything to stem such attitudes. long story short, its about the equipment and way people think of them for owning it than it is actually using it that is behind most attitudes of this nature. meaning, they don’t care wether its good or not compared to older technology, mainly film.

[tuco]

thats a wonderful bit of ‘real world in your face’ experience, an I applaud you for teaching him a brilliant example...

That was a large print and it took a 4x5 camera. The subject of lp/mm resolution is dependent on a lot of things and is variable but a 6x7 camera would need a lens, film and film flatness sufficient enough to get about 50 lp/mm for a 16x20 wet print for max image quality assuming good human eyes that can resolve 7 lp/mm. Getting above 60 lp/mm on a MF film camera is not too common (eg some films do not have high enough spatial frequency to be crisp **) and it would take that on a 6x7 to get a 36x24 print for max quality whereas a 4x5 needs less. But it's not like falling off a cliff where suddenly your image takes a nose dive when it starts getting printed larger. It is a gradual change.

I think too when these people say their digital is better they are not just referring to the resulting printed image. Other things like high ISO, color, ease and convenience of getting the image and what-not is probably part of their perception.

** Look at the MTF curve of Velvia 50 vs T-Max 100, for example. At 50% response Velvia drops to about 50 cycles/mm (line pairs/mm) whereas 100TMX is almost 100 cycles/mm but this ignores the boost in appeared sharpness Velvia gets from the nature of its response curve (the rise before it starts to drop) and fine grain.

[Vertex Ninja]

...

** Look at the MTF curve of Velvia 50 vs T-Max 100, for example. At 50% response Velvia drops to about 50 cycles/mm (line pairs/mm) whereas 100TMX is almost 100 cycles/mm but this ignores the boost in appeared sharpness Velvia gets from the nature of its response curve (the rise before it starts to drop) and fine grain.

When you think about how small 1mm is, it's insane to think that all that information can be stored in such a tiny space. Be it a sensor or a piece of film, it's crazy! I think it's all the more impressive seeing it on a negative though, because it's right there in front of you. You look at it and see a blob, even with a 10x loupe. You then stick it under a microscope or have a ridiculous scan done, and there it is. Think about all the things that have to be perfect to achieve over 100 LP/mm. I think we are going to hit a wall with digital sensors very soon. Even a perfect lens, which there are none, has limits. Sensor size will be the only logical way to increase resolution, particularly for occasions you need DOF and will be diffraction limited.

Edit:
When I got my Rolleiflex, I wanted to see roughly how good the lens was. So I did this silly shot below. I have only ever shot Pan F this one time, I guessed at development time, I didn't focus bracket, the camera was sitting on my $129 tripod, on a tile floor over a basement in a 1929 home(i.e. a little bouncy), and my scanner can not optically scan at this resolution... oh, and the exposure was about 8 seconds long. So do not take this as any type of quality test. About the only thing it told me was the lens on this 56 year old camera is good enough and that I had just wasted a roll of film.

Anyway, the scan was done at 7620SPI reduced to 5080SPI(100LP/mm) to see how much detail I could get with my setup. I adjusted the contrast and sharpening with reckless abandon towards quality. The 2 crops are 1mm x 1mm and the little speck next to them should be about their real life size(depending on the resolution of your monitor). My conclusion from looking at the negative under a microscope was that the film was limiting the resolution, but that it would have to be in the neighborhood of 90-100LP/mm.



/Edit

Anyway, we've went way off topic.

[Digitalis]

That was a large print and it took a 4x5 camera. The subject of lp/mm resolution is dependent on a lot of things and is variable but a 6x7 camera would need a lens, film and film flatness sufficient enough to get about 50 lp/mm for a 16x20 wet print for max image quality assuming good human eyes that can resolve 7 lp/mm. Getting above 60 lp/mm on a MF film camera is not too common (eg some films do not have high enough spatial frequency to be crisp **) and it would take that on a 6x7 to get a 36x24 print for max quality whereas a 4x5 needs less

I know this is horrendously off topic: but I wouldn't blame the film emulsion - if you are using a higher accutance developer you can get decent results even out of Ilford HP4 with certain developers e.g, rodinal,pyrocat HD et al. Though you have to be really careful on choosing the film and know it's response curve and how you develop the film to get the most out of it. I prefer colder temps over high ones - and staining developers certainly have their benefits especially when printing is concerned. Though for the comparison I used Kodak T-Max 100 developed in Pyrocat-HD* because it's my standard developer for sheet films - mostly because I do platinum/palladium and the denser negatives Pyro produces suit this process perfectly.