Velvia 50 35 mm.. 120..4x5 in against D 700 and Hasselblad H3 31

Heres the comparison one on top of other and the size of the clips...



Plus you use negative which shows grain on my Imacon too and is sharper..

rayman 2 said:

i had Phase one back pictures on my computer some time ago and they were good too I guess they are in the same league... well i made that comparison on 1600 iso because there is still some believe that MF backs and cameras arent good at 1600 iso but its no longer true. The bigger the pixels the easier it is to get
good results on high iso......

Click to expand...

In order to level the field you need to turn off that NR...

...The moment you scanned the film, it ceased to be a film vs digital comparison. It was a scanner vs digital comparison.

Also you should have turned off NR and used similar lenses at equivalent focal length (I know, impossible).

Anyway, big surprise, 20k camera performs better than $100 camera from yard sale... Erm.

I just got 2 sheets of 4x5 in Kodak Portra 160 VC back and as you see it the grain is much more noticeable but what it shows is that the Velvia pictures did not have a DOF problem. At this magnification we are at the limits of the film and it shows pretty big grain compaired to the Velvia. This is not an Imacon problem !
I am having it drumscanned to show that.
Apart from the grain it has about the same resolution and shows pretty much
the same detail you would find in the Velvia.

Yes negative film isnt made for being scanned but I still want to see how it does...

I now do not believe any stories about the big resolution bonus of film its just not there.
Today I´m shooting this setup with The D3X !
i´m realy looking foreward to it !

great, now let's see a comparison between a D3X & the hassie

Dave:

As an interested reader the points that you are making would be better appreciated if the tone in which they are presented was more in keeping with the civility of the thread. No reason to sound huffy and angry - it detracts from the message, and makes if harder for others to listen to the informational content of the message.

Your comments would cetainly be received, appreciated and evaluated more thoughtfully that way. I'll go back and try to pick out the content from the noise on a second reading, and the more relevance your message, the more the pity with the delivery.

Howard Nusbaum said:

Dave:

As an interested reader the points that you are making would be better appreciated if the tone in which they are presented was more in keeping with the civility of the thread. No reason to sound huffy and angry - it detracts from the message, and makes if harder for others to listen to the informational content of the message.

Your comments would cetainly be received, appreciated and evaluated more thoughtfully that way. I'll go back and try to pick out the content from the noise on a second reading, and the more relevance your message, the more the pity with the delivery.

Click to expand...

Here's the problem Howard....I've grown tired of poor quality testing being hailed as proof of this or that.

As I mentioned in another post, the Imacon series of scanners has a maximum rez of 2040ppi. As you can even see from my flatbed scan at 2400ppi, color neg film has no virtually no grain, and at a 100% crop on screen, is completely sharp.

This leads us to question why a humble flatbed scan at approx the same rez as an Imacon shows 4x5 to be sharp and grain free....while his scan is mushy and grainy. As was pointed out (not just by me, but by others here and at photo.net), either he is doing something wrong, or the scanner operator is.

Yes, there was excuse making on his part....like his crop was 10x smaller (impossible as both scan are about the same size....so 100% crops are going to be the same), but whether the 4x5 wasn't focused correctly, film flatness caused a problem, etc....my scan shows what 4x5 is truly like at that size and crop ratio....and it isn't soft, grainy mush!

Dave:

Not disputing any of that at all. In fact I have done some high res scans in the past of color slides taken 30 years prior (Kodachrome - which I know is not anything the same) at extremely high resolution in order to extract a date from a small portion of a slide showing an individual tearing off an invoice from a printer in the background to establish a time line for a patent legal case and there was enough resolution to manage that task.

I found the way the message was delivered to be counter-productive though. Clearly this OP put a lot of effort into the project and did so with the best of intent. Had your technical observations been offered in a more supportive way, I am confident that the value of your message would have been more productively recieved by both the OP and as importantly by us readers. Surely you agree that the OP had no malicious intent and strived to do the best job that he could - and if the scanning company let him down he certainly had no hidden motive behind his efforts. You obviously are trying to be helpful including the offer to reprocess the scans for him to aid in the test. Everyone here seems to have the best of intentions, it is just unfortunate that the discussion could not have been kept totally on a high plane given everyone in the end was trying to support a whothwhile objective.

Best regards,

Howard

The Davinator said:

As I mentioned in another post, the Imacon series of scanners has a maximum rez of 2040ppi. As you can even see from my flatbed scan at 2400ppi, color neg film has no virtually no grain, and at a 100% crop on screen, is completely sharp.

Click to expand...

where on earth did you get the information that this was a 100 % crop ?????
How many times must I say that this is much bigger !

You dont get grain from scanning wrong you get it from extreme high magnification ratios.Plus I get mush because there is absolutly no contrast in that scene and this is on purpose basicaly because in normal or contrasty light everysthing looks OK !We heve winter here I couldnt even use the d3x today because we had snow-rain.......
But you will see what the drum scan will look like...

Hi,

Thanks for a valuable post and all the time you put into doing this. Very helpful and valuable.

I have a favor to ask and I'm wondering if you could shoot some black and white stock with 4x5 for your comparisons. I'm not a BW expert so others might be able to advise you on the best film stock and processing combination.

Thanks again!
--
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Nikon capture shows 400 % for the d700 with 60mm lens and the 4x5 in 150mm lens has a wider angle and would be something like 550% ...I always said 4x5 sample is a little bit at a disadvantage due to not the same field of vue the 150 mm is a larger angle lens.

rayman 2 said:

rayman 2 said:

As I mentioned in another post, the Imacon series of scanners has a maximum rez of 2040ppi. As you can even see from my flatbed scan at 2400ppi, color neg film has no virtually no grain, and at a 100% crop on screen, is completely sharp.

Click to expand...

where on earth did you get the information that this was a 100 % crop ?????
How many times must I say that this is much bigger !

You dont get grain from scanning wrong you get it from extreme high magnification ratios.Plus I get mush because there is absolutly no contrast in that scene and this is on purpose basicaly because in normal or contrasty light everysthing looks OK !We heve winter here I couldnt even use the d3x today because we had snow-rain.......
But you will see what the drum scan will look like...

Click to expand...

Let me give you a little lesson on scanning. You DO get grain from scanning wrong....it's called grain aliasing. That is why drum scanners have adjustable micron settings to avoid grain aliasing. A scan at the Imacons rez for 4x5 of 2040ppi is below the grain threshold of the films you're using. Point being, if the scan is below grain threshold....interpolating the file up will still be fairly clean.

Second, if it IS bigger, then why? The only way it could be bigger is if you interpolated the film scan. And why would you do that....it's already bigger than the digital file. The film scan would require no interpolation as it is a native file about 10,200 pixels wide. The P30 back at a native 6496 needs to be uprezzed to match the film file. The film filze needs no uprezzing as it's already bigger.

As to interpolating, even if I do a 400% uprez on the 4x5 file, it is still FAR sharper and more detailed than the samples you're providing. As well, uprezzing my my scan 400% results in an image more than 13 feet wide at 300dpi...hardly what we need to assess quality.

Show us the 100% crops from each. Then show us the digital file interpolated to match the dimensions of the film scan.

Keep in mind, the onus of proof is on you, as the type of tests and samples with various back are available to be viewed online from Reichman, Atkinson and Cramer.....and the results, like mine, done agree with you. Ask yourself why others are obtaining different results and you'll learn from it.

Dave Luttmann said:

Show us the 100% crops from each. Then show us the digital file interpolated to match the dimensions of the film scan.

Click to expand...

When i look into capture NX 2 this should be the size of 100 % crops
But at this level noone can realy judge the files of these sizes very well.
I am not a friend of 100 % crops for the BIG class...

Rayman, your workflow is confusing me.

In your last post it looks like you've downsized everything to the native resolution of the D700 file.

Dave is asking you to upsize everything to the native resolution of the 4x5 Imacon scan.

In your earlier comparisons it looks like you've upsized the 4x5 Imacon scan by about 200%, and then upsized the other files to match.

Is that right? (If so, it seems a valid way to compare resolution.)

Elliot

(Thanks for performing these tests and posting your results - I'm looking forward to your D3X comparisons...)

elliotn said:

Rayman, your workflow is confusing me.

In your last post it looks like you've downsized everything to the native resolution of the D700 file.

Dave is asking you to upsize everything to the native resolution of the 4x5 Imacon scan.

In your earlier comparisons it looks like you've upsized the 4x5 Imacon scan by about 200%, and then upsized the other files to match.

Click to expand...

My point is, there is no reason to upsample the film scan...it's the largest file. I believe he mentioned uprezzing 550%....which is ludicrous! If you upsample the P30 file to match the dimensions of the film scan, you should have a sharp scan and slightly softer digital file....exactly what we expect.

elliotn said:

Is that right? (If so, it seems a valid way to compare resolution.)

Elliot

• Thanks for performing these tests and posting your results - I'm looking forward to your D3X comparisons...

Click to expand...

hey hey hey what are you guys talking about first you ask me to throw them out at 100 % for the digital Nikon file now that i did that you ask me to upres
the files to what the filmscan amounts up to.........
The filmscan should be sharp and the digital should be unscharp I should
upres until i get to what you would expect ??????
I always scan at the full physical resolution that the Imacon can do.
I get the quality that the film material has.

I do not scan the full size of the negative or slide i just scan a bit more then I need

( which is a crop of the original)That turns out to be something like 250 MB Tiff file.
Thats always the master size I scale all the other files to.
That does not get you blurry digital files.

Why because your scanning the grain only in higher resolution but its limited to your grain. You only get a better picture of your grain and not finer grain.
The digital file of the H3 just has more REAL resolution imformation stored
and gets you a picture with more detail. Something that is lost in the grain of
the film......
The most important thing is that i dont downsize the 4x5 film scan !
But I get all the others to the same size....

rayman 2 said:

I always scan at the full physical resolution that the Imacon can do.
I get the quality that the film material has.

Click to expand...

I didn do any upres or downres with this picture.... it comes out of the scanner this way with the highest resolution you can make..... go figure out how big the samples are !

rayman 2 said:

The most important thing is that i dont downsize the 4x5 film scan !

Click to expand...

Sure

rayman 2 said:

But I get all the others to the same size....

Click to expand...

Sure

I only posted to clarify your workflow and to find out whether you had upsized the 4x5 film scan. I presume you have, as a good Imacon scan of Portra 160VC 4x5, viewed at 100%, will show much finer grain than the samples you have posted here. How did you upsize - in Photoshop? And by what percentage?

I have no argument with your overall results. I shoot a D700 for editorial and 4x5 160VC for personal work that gets printed large for exhibitions (Imacon 949 scans for 30"x40" Lightjet prints). If I had the money I would retire the 4x5 for a medium format digital set-up. But I don't, hence my interest in your forthcoming D3X tests.

Elliot

rayman 2 said:

hey hey hey what are you guys talking about first you ask me to throw them out at 100 % for the digital Nikon file now that i did that you ask me to upres
the files to what the filmscan amounts up to.........

Click to expand...

You MUST uprez the digital file to match the size of the film file to compare equivalent size images....DUH!

rayman 2 said:

The filmscan should be sharp and the digital should be unscharp I should
upres until i get to what you would expect ??????

Click to expand...

You don't read well do you?

rayman 2 said:

I always scan at the full physical resolution that the Imacon can do.

Click to expand...

You are already scanning at the max rez of the Imacon....it can't do more than 2040ppi for a 4x5 sheet of film.

rayman 2 said:

I get the quality that the film material has.

Click to expand...

Nope, my samples show that isn't the case. Instead of arguing....ask yourself what you're doing wrong.

rayman 2 said:

I do not scan the full size of the negative or slide i just scan a bit more then I need

( which is a crop of the original)That turns out to be something like 250 MB Tiff file.
Thats always the master size I scale all the other files to.
That does not get you blurry digital files.

Click to expand...

I never said it gets you blurry digital files. Why would a film scan get you a blurry digital file? I said that as the digital file must be uprezzed to achieve the same dimensions as the film file, the film file would still be sharp, and the digital file would be softer because of the interpolation.

rayman 2 said:

Why because your scanning the grain only in higher resolution but its limited to your grain. You only get a better picture of your grain and not finer grain.

Click to expand...

Incorrect. The film will hold detail before grain out to approx 3000ppi in 4x5 format. At 2040 ppi, you don't resolve the grain. That is why I know there is a problem with your neg film scan. My neg film scan has virtually no grain at the same size as your crop. They were both scanned at virtually the same rez....therefore the crops MUST be the same size....pretty easy to understand. So, ask yourself why my scan on a cr@ppy flatbed has almost no grain, and your is horrendously soft and grainy. If I can do it, why can't you?

rayman 2 said:

The digital file of the H3 just has more REAL resolution imformation stored
and gets you a picture with more detail. Something that is lost in the grain of
the film......

Click to expand...

Sorry, but testing amoung the P30 and P45 show that the P45 is almost as good as 4x5 out to 40". As the P45 has more rez than the P30, we know that the P30 cannot resolve more detail.

rayman 2 said:

The most important thing is that i dont downsize the 4x5 film scan !
But I get all the others to the same size....

Click to expand...

I never said you downsized your film....

elliotn said:

rayman 2 said:

The most important thing is that i dont downsize the 4x5 film scan !

Click to expand...

Sure

elliotn said:

But I get all the others to the same size....

Click to expand...

Sure

I only posted to clarify your workflow and to find out whether you had upsized the 4x5 film scan. I presume you have, as a good Imacon scan of Portra 160VC 4x5, viewed at 100%, will show much finer grain than the samples you have posted here. How did you upsize - in Photoshop? And by what percentage?

Click to expand...

That is my point. I've NEVER seen such softness and grain from a 100% crop from ANY film format.

elliotn said:

I have no argument with your overall results. I shoot a D700 for editorial and 4x5 160VC for personal work that gets printed large for exhibitions (Imacon 949 scans for 30"x40" Lightjet prints). If I had the money I would retire the 4x5 for a medium format digital set-up. But I don't, hence my interest in your forthcoming D3X tests.

Elliot

Click to expand...