Scanned film or budget DSLR?

[clachnacuddin]

I've dabbled a bit in using digital SLR cameras but I still have my film SLR as well as a number of fixed lens RFs, now I'm thinking of investing in a dedicated film scanner. Question is, what will give the best all round quality (all other things being equal) a film scanner such as the Plustek 7400 or a budget DSLR/compact system camera such as the Olympus E-PL1? Anybody got any experience they would like to share?

[Roger Hicks]

DSLR -- but put a decent lens on the front, not a kit zoom. I am constantly amazed at what an old D70 can do with good lenses, especially ZF. I have quite a good scanner (Konica Minolta II) and a few digital cameras from 6 to 18 megapixels, as well as LOTS of film cameras. Compared with 35mm, somewhere around 10-12 megapixels the contest begins to tip towards digi in terms of sharpness, etc., but of course there's still the question of 'look', which is why I still shoot B+W film (and wet print it).

Cheers,

R.

[Snowbuzz]

As Roger said: DSLR. >sigh<.

[clachnacuddin]

Thanks for the info, actually I was quite surprised that DSLR comes out on top! So now my thoughts turn to Olympus/Panasonic 4/3 or retain my Minolta lenses and get a Sony DSLR.......

[Michiel Fokkema]

It's more about the look you want to achieve.
Film vs. digital is for me the same choice as oilpant vs. waterpaint would be if I was a painter.
I like the look of film.
Cheers,
Michiel Fokkema

[mdruziak]

I suppose it all depends on how you define "quality". Also there is nothing to say you can't shoot both film and digital.

[Roger Hicks]

It's more about the look you want to achieve.
Film vs. digital is for me the same choice as oilpaint vs. waterpaint would be if I was a painter.
I like the look of film.
Cheers,
Michiel Fokkema

Dear Michiel,

Absolutely!

Cheers,

R.

[cosmonaut]

Unless you get a high end scanner you will be disappointed with soft images, dust and lower dynamic range than the film itself. I say DSLR.

[Bobbo]

Thanks for the info, actually I was quite surprised that DSLR comes out on top! So now my thoughts turn to Olympus/Panasonic 4/3 or retain my Minolta lenses and get a Sony DSLR.......

How many Minolta lenses do you have? What are they? If you have a couple of good lenses, I'd say stick with Sony. I went from Canon to Nikon once, selling off some very nice stuff (I miss my 200/2.8 L). Wasn't a fun experience, as you lose a lot of money when you do that.

[Jockos]

This thread is worthless without pictures.

Canon 9000F:
http://cdn03.dayviews.com/98/_u1/_u4/_u6/_u1/_u7/u146179/f/b/d293b4b5e3c5e5591d7f7592cd4ac6869ec0a581498b904dd7 daae5e3ea4836c.jpg

Nikon V ED:
http://cdn03.dayviews.com/99/_u1/_u4/_u6/_u1/_u7/u146179/f/b/d3bf1caa657d007406a2178848d75dda2559108b8a8840290c e5fefa5513263f.jpg

Nikon V ED:
http://cdn03.dayviews.com/95/_u1/_u4/_u6/_u1/_u7/u146179/f/b/5e4c4448547d85318d397a4728477f73765cb07fc359792898 0b46d5071cacb6.jpg

I'm sure you can find a DSLR image or two on the web ;)

[Jockos]

Nikon V ED no post processing:
http://cdn03.dayviews.com/99/_u1/_u4/_u6/_u1/_u7/u146179/f/b/49a3d79e1543dc1c47372bafb14ec443f3251f73957f4d5cb1 5d5637ab216476.jpg

Same with some Lightroom love:
http://cdn01.dayviews.com/99/_u3/_u1/_u9/_u8/_u7/_u5/u3198756/f/b/0b41d2b6f8344e326be1a740bc3ebb7506e75f345dd51876ae dde3f3a68bf60e.jpg

[Roger Hicks]

This thread is worthless without pictures.


Pictures on the web don't really add all that much unless they are shot only for the web -- and even then, a good-quality calibrated monitor would be needed to judge much. I've just been looking at L'URSS by Albin Michel, published in Zurich in 1971. Lots of double-page spreads, 60x33 cm, call it 24 x 13 inches, shot with Leicas and Leicaflexes, often on Kodachrome, drum scanned.

Any advice is only going to be a broad generalization, but even a reasonably good scanner such as my Konica Minolta or your Nikon ain't going to equal the drum-scan results in that book. The M9, on the other hand, would probably equal or top the technical quality.

This is somewhat beside the point in any case, as the OP made it clear that he was not talking about either top-end digital cameras or top-end scanners, so we've all given the best advice we can. With a DSLR, as I said in an earlier post, a good lens can transform an apparently indifferent camera. Your suggestion that the thread was 'worthless' until you showed us some of your pictures seems to me to be something of an overstatement.

Cheers,

R.

[hatidua]

All depends on your end goal. For me, If I can't drum scan, shoot it digital. And, no, an Imacon doesn't count as a drum scan.

[ajuk]

I had never intended to test this, but I had a hi res scan made of an Ektar negative, I'd been using my Pentax K100d and kit lens as a light meter. The Ektar scans look a lot better than the DSLR RAW images before you even get in close, but when I compared the hi-res scan to the film, the film had significantly more resolution.

[clachnacuddin]

Some very interesting replies, the question I have to ask myself is how much quality am I looking for? Really being honest I think a film scanner will be good enough although I accept it won't be the best. But looking at some of those scans earlier just how much dust, scratches etc will I need to remove before getting an acceptable image? The other issue keeping me in film is my Minolta 24mm, I'd miss that wide angle if I went with the DSLR option.

[HHPhoto]

I've dabbled a bit in using digital SLR cameras but I still have my film SLR as well as a number of fixed lens RFs, now I'm thinking of investing in a dedicated film scanner. Question is, what will give the best all round quality (all other things being equal) a film scanner such as the Plustek 7400 or a budget DSLR/compact system camera such as the Olympus E-PL1? Anybody got any experience they would like to share?

Well, there is no easy answer.
I am an engineer and have tested this intensively over the years.

Most films, combined with very good lenses, deliver much more resolution than a 12 MP DSLR.
Chip resolution is limited by the Nyquist frequency, that is a physical limit, it is impossible to get more.
With an 12 MP APS-C sensor you get real 65-70 lp/mm resolution (that is bit lower than the Nyquist frequency because of the low pass filter which reduces resolution a bit further).

Film resolution is not limited by the Nyquist frequency.
At medium contrast yo can get about 130 lp/mm with Delta 100, or about 120 lp/mm with Provia 100F, and about 80 lp/mm with Ektar 100.
And more than 200 lp/mm with high resolution BW films.
With higher contrast the resolution of film will be even higher.
At Carl Zeiss they tested that and got 170 lp/mm with Vlevia 50 and 140 lp/mm with Ektachrome 100, and about 200 lp/mm with T-Max 100.
And 400 lp/mm with Agfa HDP / Adox CMS 20 / Spur Orthopan UR (tests were published in the camera lens news 17, 19, 20, 24, 30).

With optical printing in the wet darkroom with excellent enlarging lenses it is possible to transfer almost all of this resolution onto paper. The loss in resolution is very small, about 5%.

Same with slide projection with quality projecting lenses, minimal losses in detail, comparable to optical printing.
Also the same viewing slides with excellent slides loupes on a lighttable. No visible quality loss.

With these two options you get by far the best quality, the best detail, resolution, sharpness and finest grain out of your film.

The problems begin with scanning: Then you will loose significant detail.
A Nikon Coolscan 5000 scanner with nominal 4000 dpi (real it achieves 3600 dpi) is able to resolve about 70 lp/mm.
The Reflecta you mentioned is significantly worse.
4000 dpi scanner are not able at all to resolve all the information which is recorded on film.
Optical printing and slide projection are far superior in this respect.

If you like film, it's aesthetic and all the other advantages, use it and get the best from it by projection and optical printing.
By the way, projection is not only extremely impressive by it's unsurpassed brillance with color, but also with BW slides. It's breathtaking, BW slides have a unique tonality.
You can't get that with BW prints.

Cheers, Jan

[Roger Hicks]

Well, there is no easy answer.
I am an engineer and have tested this intensively over the years.

Most films, combined with very good lenses, deliver much more resolution than a 12 MP DSLR.
Chip resolution is limited by the Nyquist frequency, that is a physical limit, it is impossible to get more.
With an 12 MP APS-C sensor you get real 65-70 lp/mm resolution (that is bit lower than the Nyquist frequency because of the low pass filter which reduces resolution a bit further).

Film resolution is not limited by the Nyquist frequency.
At medium contrast yo can get about 130 lp/mm with Delta 100, or about 120 lp/mm with Provia 100F, and about 80 lp/mm with Ektar 100.
And more than 200 lp/mm with high resolution BW films.
With higher contrast the resolution of film will be even higher.
At Carl Zeiss they tested that and got 170 lp/mm with Vlevia 50 and 140 lp/mm with Ektachrome 100, and about 200 lp/mm with T-Max 100.
And 400 lp/mm with Agfa HDP / Adox CMS 20 / Spur Orthopan UR (tests were published in the camera lens news 17, 19, 20, 24, 30).

With optical printing in the wet darkroom with excellent enlarging lenses it is possible to transfer almost all of this resolution onto paper. The loss in resolution is very small, about 5%.

Same with slide projection with quality projecting lenses, minimal losses in detail, comparable to optical printing.
Also the same viewing slides with excellent slides loupes on a lighttable. No visible quality loss.

With these two options you get by far the best quality, the best detail, resolution, sharpness and finest grain out of your film.

The problems begin with scanning: Then you will loose significant detail.
A Nikon Coolscan 5000 scanner with nominal 4000 dpi (real it achieves 3600 dpi) is able to resolve about 70 lp/mm.
The Reflecta you mentioned is significantly worse.
4000 dpi scanner are not able at all to resolve all the information which is recorded on film.
Optical printing and slide projection are far superior in this respect.

If you like film, it's aesthetic and all the other advantages, use it and get the best from it by projection and optical printing.
By the way, projection is not only extremely impressive by it's unsurpassed brillance with color, but also with BW slides. It's breathtaking, BW slides have a unique tonality.
You can't get that with BW prints.

Cheers, Jan
Dear Jan,

Most manufacturers who are honest enough (and rash enough) to make comparisons are of the opinion that a perfect 35mm transparency (fine grain sharp film, top flight lens at optimum aperture, perfect focus, tripod) is roughly equivalent to 18-21 megapixels, after allowing for random and raster arrays.

Zeiss and others have found that the limiting factors for resolution with most cameras are film flatness and film location, which limit reliable resolution to 100 or at most 120 lp/mm.

I'm surprised at your 5% figure for enlarging losses: I'd have thought it was higher, but no doubt you have researched it more carefully than I. I have however found drum scans to be all but perfect, with less loss than the best wet prints. A good amateur scanner like my old Konica Minolta II is acceptable for many purposes, but it ain't a drum scan.Or, as you point out, a wet print.

Cheers,

R.

[HHPhoto]

Dear Roger,

Dear Jan,

Most manufacturers who are honest enough (and rash enough) to make comparisons are of the opinion that a perfect 35mm transparency (fine grain sharp film, top flight lens at optimum aperture, perfect focus, tripod) is roughly equivalent to 18-21 megapixels, after allowing for random and raster arrays.

I refer to scintific tests as an engineer, not to marketing fairy tales.
Most of what DSLR manufacturers said concerning comparisons of film vs. digital and resolution has been marketing driven. The expensive DSLRs had to be sold.
And all of them talked about comparisons between scanned film and digital. And that is not a film vs. digital comparison, but a digital vs. digital comparison.

If you scan film, even with best drum scanners, you loose significantly resolution. Much more than with an optical imaging chain.
Therefore all these stupid scanned film vs. digital comparisons lead to wrong conclusions concerning the resolution power of film.

By the way, if you talk to the designers "behind the curtain", they admit that film has higher resolving power at medium and higher object contrast. I had these confirmation both by Leica and Zeiss designers at Photokina.
Quote from the Leica man: "Of course we know of the power of film and the superior resolution of our lenses with film. And in an ideal world we would shoot film.
But currently the market prefers digital. That is the reason why we concentrate on digital. Not because it is better".


Zeiss and others have found that the limiting factors for resolution with most cameras are film flatness and film location, which limit reliable resolution to 100 or at most 120 lp/mm.

Sorry, but that is complete nonsense. And I have never found a publication of Zeiss or others proofing that.
I have hundreds of shots with more than 120 lp/mm and even more than 200 lp/mm resolution.
Film flatness is definitely not a factor of resolution limitation at these values.

By the way, my test results are confirmed by other scientific tests made and published by Zeiss (camera lens news17, 19, 20, 24, 30), Franic, Seeger, Seemann, Ventzke, Antara, Image Engineering Wüller.

Even if film resolution would be limited at about 100 lp/mm (what is not the case):
To achieve 100 lp/mm with a digital FF sensor you would need at least 35 MP (in reality even 10 - 15% more because of the resolution loss of the lowpass filter).
You can easily do the math for calculating for the Nyquist frequency.

Cheers, Jan

[ajuk]

Here I compare a 6MP DSLR to a high res Ektar scan, not a drum scan.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v495/ajuk/Stuff/compare.jpg

Of course when it comes to look the film scan looked amazing while I wouldn't know where to start at getting the RAW file to look as good, I'll post them later as no time now.

[jmc56]

Comparisons don't mean crap. It's what makes you happy.

I love film, grew up knowing nothing but film. IN bed with it.

But I shoot primarily DSLR (Canon 5D Mk II), S95,Fuji x100 and Leica M9 P dpending on what and the day of the week).

High end digital does most things film does and some the it doesn't. You can do bracketing and HDR without thought digitally. Film tends to have more range. Digital, after years of complaint, has greater grasp of low light than can be believed. Etc. I find that both work about equally depending on the situation..

The real problem for me is that between the camera an damage, the world has moved to digital, original digital. Whether it's a wedding or a baseball game, digital is faster, gets to the screen quicker, etc. So you'll shoot film, scan it an then you'll get to the point you can offload a digital image takes in only a few seconds instead of minutes or hours.

There's nothing wrong with film images. I've got thousands upon thousands of very old b&w and color images, most of them very high quality, but they take endless editing for dust spots, scratches, etc. Some are high resolution and others are from pushed film that is coming close to falling apart. How do you get from preliminary images to selections. YOu will spend more time with film scans than with straight out of the came.

Either way is find, but the reasons most pros go to digital is both more than adequate quality but also maximizing the work day. Even if someone else did your post production, it will go faster digitally.

If you don't care about money, it depends on how much time you have to deveote to a dying art, i.e. lab work.

We're at the point where

[Roger Hicks]

I refer to scintific tests as an engineer, not to marketing fairy tales. . . . Sorry, but that is complete nonsense.. . .

Dear Jan,

Yes, well, OK, believe what you like 'as an engineer', and feel free to dismiss the opinions of lens designers and film manufacturers, but I can't help feeling that your high horse is a little too high.

Note the careful qualifications in what I wrote, about ". . . honest enough (and rash enough) to make comparisons are of the opinion . . . roughly equivalent to 18-21 megapixels", and note what I said about film flatness (chiefly relevant with 120) and film location. Note also that I said in most cameras at that. No-one disputes that it is possible to get 200 lp/mm on the film -- but with most cameras, you'll need 'focus bracketing' (tweaking the focus to and from and choosing the sharpest image) to see it.

Unlike you, I am not claiming eternal verities, merely broad working assumptions, but honestly, you are the only person I have encountered who is quite so dismissive (and indeed, rather rudely dismissive) of the generalizations I reported. And as a matter of interest, why would film manufacturers have a stake in promoting what you dismiss as 'fairy tales'?

Cheers,

R.

[mdarnton]

The original post is unclear to me. Do you mean scanner or DSLR for scanning film, or do you mean which one to buy now?

If it's about scanning, I recommend the DSLR. I've gone through a bunch of consumer-level scanners, and not found happiness, and am now scanning film with my Nikon D300 and 60/2.8 Nikon micro in a copy setup, getting better results, and much quicker. If you can pay more than I paid for the camera and lens for a GOOD scanner, then get the scanner, it will probably do a marginally better job. A newer camera with higher resolution than my 12Mp Nikon would do proportionally better.

The B&W stuff currently at the top of my flickr page was "scanned" with the camera:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mdarnton/

[hyunkseo]

It depends on your point of view and current status of inventory. If you have the time to use film... aka developing, scanning, etc by all means use it. However keep in mind when you're developing, and/or scanning errors can occur; like dust, scratches, accidents on developing... as well as time for developing it yourself or getting it developed in a lab. Scanning at a high resolution also takes time as well if you take a lot of photos. For a DSLR, all you really do is copy the files and set it up the way you want in your photo manipulation / organization software.

I have two lenses for my Nikon D70s which I use all the time. Since I needed a film camera for school, all I did was get an Nikon N80. I used the same lenses and the SB-E Speed Flash.

If I was starting out fresh, I'd get a DSLR unless I was a professional photographer or I had access to developing chemicals or a lab that is really near me, I'd get both :)

But yea..

1. DSLR
or
2. DSLR and SLR.

[Speedfreak]

The whole point of film is using manual cameras and achieving that certain "look" of 35mm. If your main concern is technical image quality than forget about it. A high res DSLR and a decent lens wins anytime.

I still prefer film for a lot of reasons but resolution it is not.

[janosh]

Given that DSLRs are mediocre tools for many kinds of images and situations, just as were SLRs, maybe it's worth considering a top-tier digicam, and maybe even one with a built in zoom (for dust control reasons).

IMO we're between formats right now. Something better is on the way. Fuji's almost there.

I mostly shoot a Pentax K20D with Limited primes. I have no question that it rivals medium format in terms of detail resolution, in some situations, and doesn't rival well-processed/scanned 35mm B&W in others (when I use a Nikon V). If I was a color photographer I wouldn't think for a minute about film ...except for my cache of now-out-of-date Fuji NPZ.

[Fotch]

Film is better. On a trip to Washington state two years ago, I took pictures with my Nikon F3 and Nikon D70s. I scanned with both a Epson V700 and Nikon Coolscan V.

The film just had more depth. The color look more realistic. The film camera responded instantly and some of the wildlife shots I would not missed shooting digital.

On the other hand, most business use, pictures of item for sale or for reporting an event, I use the digital. Of course, I take hundreds more photos than I would film. Not that it matters, its just like smoking and have a cough I guess. No offense intended for those who smoke.

I use film more like I would of used a Polaroid, however, with better quality. Also, the convenience of web ready.

JMHO