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M8 Detail,Dynamic Range and Color


Guest guy_mancuso

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I honestly don't expect that any digital camera will ever give me what my M's give me with a roll of Portra, Velvia or Tri-X. I like the grain and texture, simply stated.

 

Well said Dan.

 

I think there's a whole culture of shooting film (like "comfort food") that many of us find very appealing to this day. Loading it, advancing it in-camera, the trip to the store to drop it off, chatting up the salesgirl...

 

:)

 

Time to hie on back to the Film Forum!

 

:D

 

Thanks.

 

Allan

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I noted the same argument in part 4 of the M8 review in this case against scanned 5x4. My problem with this is 'what scan". On your site it says 100% crops, OK the M8 has a fixed output, the 5x4 can be scanned at nearly any resolution. There are lmits of course to available information to be captured. So the samples on your site, was the 5x4 scanned to match the output of the M8, or was the 5x4 scanned at high dpi on a quality scanner and the M8 upsized? Sure native pixel for native pixel the differences would be small, but you would not shoot 5x4 to do A4 or slightly bigger prints as the target. i think those additional paragraphs on the M8 somewhat misleading, I'm sure some would make the mental jump and think the M8 output is as good as or nearly as good as 5x4. To some degree this could be the case in small print, but A3 and up I think it would be obvious that the output from a M8 is not upto 5x4, neither should anyone expect it to be.

Maybe the same applies to MF if you are comparing scans that match the M8's native output and not M8 output to the best scanned MF. I'm not looking to pick holes , but what exactly are we comparing?

 

Kevin.

 

Kevin,

 

That's David Adamson's piece, not mine. He's on the forum so you should ask him about it. It's probably a discussion worth it's own thread or add the questions into the 30 x 40 thread.

 

Sean

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I find the grain of the M8 very film like, here is a crop shot at 2500 iso handheld low light, this is the only DSLR that I have seen that gives a random reticulated grain pattern.

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The scan on Sean's site is from 4x5 negative scanned to output a 30 x 40 print at 180 dpi resolution, this file was not selected for this article but was an actual job in house that matched the textural details in the M8 file.

The M8 file is a file processed through C1 then upsized in Alien skin Blow up to the same 180 dpi output to create a print file of 27 x 40.

What I was trying to show was what I have been saying all along that it you can create 30x40 prints with the the M8 that have the quality of medium format film prints of the same size.

Obviously as you scan at a higher resolution for a larger output things will change, I will have to try a 40 x 60 and see how created grain in the case of the M8 compares to the visual cues of real grain in the case of the 4x5.

Our generation is programmed to accept grain ( we do not see this in real life) and we do not object to it as prints get larger,however, we do object to smearing and bit mapping. Perhaps in the future digital natives will think grain is a strange antique artifact! Just a thought for discussion.

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Sorry I have included the full shot from which trhe crop was taken BTW I found this grain very hard to reproduce in the raw DNG file, This file was jpeg fine , low contrast, medium high sharpness. So out of the camera in jpeg this is how the file looked

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I find the same thing, David. Though someone made fun of me for saying so here, the M8 files do have a film-like look. The tonality of the picture I've attached reminds me very much of film; if you click on the picture it'll take you to a larger version over on flickr which shows the same reticulation you're talking about.

 

306843723_ce198f0e68.jpg

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I find the same thing, David. Though someone made fun of me for saying so here, the M8 files do have a film-like look. The tonality of the picture I've attached reminds me very much of film; if you click on the picture it'll take you to a larger version over on flickr which shows the same reticulation you're talking about.

 

306843723_ce198f0e68.jpg

 

Bill, David,

 

This is interesting; I usually don't shoot JPEG (haven't even tried it on the M8) and in the high ISO shots the noise is usually removed by the RAW converter...I add "grain" back in PS either with a median gray layer filled with "film grain" or with the Alien Skin stuff...

 

It'll be interesting to shut off the noise reduction in C1 and see what happens...thanks!

 

(And I agree the tonality of those shots, and the noise, looks a lot like film!)

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Jamie, yes,I always shoot raw,however, sometimes I like to shoot in B&W, so with the M8 the only way to get the preview in monochrome is to shoot raw plus jpeg fine.

As a quicky I opened the jpeg file and saw this great grain structure - then opened the dng file and through various procedured tried to duplicate the look, I finally was able to do it - different but close, however to be able to shoot these B&W's in jpeg plus have the full raw color file is great.

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The scan on Sean's site is from 4x5 negative scanned to output a 30 x 40 print at 180 dpi resolution, this file was not selected for this article but was an actual job in house that matched the textural details in the M8 file.

The M8 file is a file processed through C1 then upsized in Alien skin Blow up to the same 180 dpi output to create a print file of 27 x 40.

What I was trying to show was what I have been saying all along that it you can create 30x40 prints with the the M8 that have the quality of medium format film prints of the same size.

Obviously as you scan at a higher resolution for a larger output things will change, I will have to try a 40 x 60 and see how created grain in the case of the M8 compares to the visual cues of real grain in the case of the 4x5.

Our generation is programmed to accept grain ( we do not see this in real life) and we do not object to it as prints get larger,however, we do object to smearing and bit mapping. Perhaps in the future digital natives will think grain is a strange antique artifact! Just a thought for discussion.

I don't have experiance of large printing so I will bow to your knoweldge on this, is scanning for 180 dpi output the best criteria for large prints. If scanned for 360dpi output would we see a difference. I'm not into viewing distances, from experiance I find viewing distances are more related to the length of the clients arms or width of the room or corridor they are hung in, rather than any mathematical formula.

Cheers,

 

Kevin.

PS Sorry for going off post.

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Like David, I shoot DNG + JPEG fine; I hadn't bothered until now to look at the difference between the out-of-camera JPEG (which you see here) and the C1-processed DNG, but I just took a look, and there's a BIG difference. The tonality of the TIFF file converted to monochrome is VERY different from that of the JPEG produced by the camera. Very interesting....

 

By the way, Jamie, I'm "Bob" :-)

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The difference in 180 to 360 if printed with the Epson 9800 is minimal, I can see it , most people cannnot.

So it is very job dependent on whether I choose 180 or 360 and a lot to do with file structure and output size.

Simply stated 360 will outresolve 180 in a print but only in the finest detail one could imagine and then viewed from a few inches away.

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>sometimes I like to shoot in B&W, so with the M8 the only way to get the preview in monochrome is to shoot raw plus jpeg fine.

 

I like this mode too. My main complaint is that the camera should still show the full three channel color histograms.

 

Uwe

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Guest guy_mancuso
>sometimes I like to shoot in B&W, so with the M8 the only way to get the preview in monochrome is to shoot raw plus jpeg fine.

 

I like this mode too. My main complaint is that the camera should still show the full three channel color histograms.

 

Uwe

 

 

Maybe i am missing something here . i can get a three channel histo in the LCD preview.

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David, since you've used dithering when enlarging for large prints, and you consider grain an optional control, what is your opinion of the "banding" control that uses dithering in Capture One? It's only a checkbox, not a slider. Also, does the 8-bit representation that M8 uses give you trouble in areas of smooth tonality?

 

scott

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Guest guy_mancuso

Just working on some of these images i shot last week and i do have to say they have some serious punch to them. Look at that purple

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>It'll be interesting to shut off the noise reduction in C1 and see what happens...thanks!

 

I would do that. E.g. the NR in LightZone is working with far less damage to the image details.

 

Uwe

 

Uwe--I will do that. Does LightZone support the M8 yet?!! I couldn't get it to work yet...

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Scott, I am now a convert to Raw developer, I find it much more powerful than C1, try out there free download, very impressive array of sharpening tools, it was through these tools I was able to duplicate the grain structure found in the jpeg files.

Guy, anytime- maybe I should offer a special LUF 30x40 believe it or not deal!

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