Digital BW, The Print

I should have added IMHO but maybe I should have added "in their
humble opinion" They use the digital backs and cameras. And yes
their comparing is very unscientific: they compare the one step
digital result on their monitor and in print with the
analogue>digital workflow result on the monitor and in print. It
could well be different if a one step analogue result like a
slide with a loupe on it is compared to the monitor. But that is
not what we want, we want the print and more and more in a
digital workflow. So what is so good in the film/lens combination
is already partly lost in the translation to digital: another
lens, another CMYK>RGB translation, another matrix to address the
data to. In that translation loss it will be hard to find what
was caused by the translation itself or what was never there as a
result of flaws in the process. It is nice to quote the lpm
possible in film but easy to forget how often the film isn't
plane enough for those numbers. The chance that the sensor is
plane, the focus correct, the lighting right and the processing
without flaws is much higher in digital. If only because that
laptop can show the fault right away. Then it also becomes much
easier to check which lens performs better. Could be that the old
lenses only need a good CLA to be at the front again, maybe it is
just that but at least they see that difference within two takes.
Chris Perez did tests on all kinds of lenses, old and new and we
have seen differences not always represented by their price or
age. The difference with digital is that the setup to compare
lenses takes less time, is less complicated and the result can be
judged on a monitor from an armchair meaning it get's done.

There are other observations too, landscape photography isn't a
fort of digital so far (scanning backs maybe excluded), the out
of focus parts not as nice as in analogue (probably as a result
of the interpolation etc routines). The last can also be a
temporary thing, we compare the new with what we are used to and
the taste for that can change.

IMHO, I hope that all the lenses you have collected and kept will
show to be the best performers around and worth the time you have
waited to use them on digital cameras. I'm sure that in the end
you will stretch their capability more on digital bodies than
they ever were on analogue bodies. Despite the better lpm of
film.

Ernst


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Truman Prevatt" <tprevatt@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2003 3:35 PM
Subject: Re: [Digital BW] Techies -vs- Artists


> Peter,
>
> You are absolutely correct. All the "I did this with film and
digital
> and compared them and found.........." suffer the same
fundamental flaw.
> There is no ground truth in the test. If you must test film
against
> digital, you must test each against a calibrated standard using
> calibrated instrumentation. The test must be performed using
good test
> procedures and the results must be repeatable to have any
meaning at
> all. I've not seen this.
>
> We know from the arithmetic the maximum lines/mm a digital
sensor is
> capable and we know from the bench test the limits on good
lenses and
> the good lenses are better than the best current crop of
digital sensors.
>
> How it appears to the eye is a different story and if someone
prefers
> the "digital look" over the film look that a matter of personal
> perception and not an issue of technical specifications. In a
lot of
> respects the Tmax films are probably technically superior to
good old
> TriX ( needs to be proved to me however) but I sure prefer good
old TriX.
>
>
>
> Peter Nelson wrote:
>
> >--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Ernst
Dinkla"
> ><E.Dinkla@c...> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >>The people that are using digital Canon D1's, Sinar backs on
> >>Sinars and Hasselblads write that few of their old lenses can
> >>cope with the quality of the sensors.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Some of us got into photography from the technical side such
as
> >science and engineering. (I started off doing astrophotography
and
> >eventually graduated to other subjects such as studio nudes)
Other
> >photographers started off as art majors.
> >
> >You can tell which are which by who can do the math.
> >
> >Fine grain film can resolve 80 lp/mm (or better - Panatomic-X
could
> >easily do over 100 lp/mm).   So do the math.   It takes (a
MINIMUM
> >of) two pixels to resolve a line-pair.  So a 36x36mm sensor
such as
> >the type used in MF photography would need to have 160
elements/mm to
> >resolve 80 lp/mm.  That would be over 33 MP.    Sinar's best
is 22 MP
> >and it's 36x49mm, which means it's even lower-res than what I
used in
> >the above example.
> >
> >So get over it: digital sensors are NOT as sharp as film.
Actually
> >digital sensors are even worse than the above math suggests
because
> >of the need for bayesian reconstruction.   The color
resolution is
> >even lower than the luminance resolution.
> >
> >The reason why art major MF photographers say that their
digital
> >backs are so good that they exceed the capabilities of their
lenses
> >is psychological:  they need to justify the astronomical
amounts of
> >MONEY those backs cost.   If it cost that much money its
resolution
> >must be incredibly, phenomenally, supercalifragilistically
> >stupendous!