MikeMyers Posted December 23, 2009 Share #1 Posted December 23, 2009 Advertisement (gone after registration) Thanks to Ken Rockwell, I was just reading this article about the best resolution from film and digital: M9, part 8B It got me to thinking - if I went on a trip and wanted to take the best possible landscape type photo I could, would I get better results from: a) a Leica M8.2, or a Leica M2 or M3, scanning the images with a good (but affordable) scanner The article talks about the M9, but it has the same sensor pretty much as the M8 (except for being bigger, of course). If I used the same lenses on each camera, used a tripod, and was as careful as possible, and sent the film out to a processing lab that had a good reputation, and for the negative scanning I used something "good" (but not $50,000 good), would I notice the difference? I've still got my film cameras. I plan to buy a film scanner in the near future. I can develop a whole lot of film for the amount of money it would cost to exchange my M8.2 for a M9, so I'm considering shooting some film again, but I wasn't expecting the film images to be "better" than the digital ones. (I should add that I'm referring to color images, either negative or slides, not b&w.) Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted December 23, 2009 Posted December 23, 2009 Hi MikeMyers, Take a look here Leica film or digital?. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
bill Posted December 23, 2009 Share #2 Posted December 23, 2009 I'll get my tin hat and some popcorn... Regards, Bill Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeMyers Posted December 23, 2009 Author Share #3 Posted December 23, 2009 I'll get my tin hat and some popcorn... Regards, Bill Bill, I'll gladly share the popcorn with you. I'm not trying to stir up a debate. It's more like having an M8 got me back to the kind of enjoyment I got with my old Leica cameras, and I'd like to clean off 30 years worth of dust and start using them again in addition to my M8. I figure that if I get the 12mm CV lens, it will do some of the things I now enjoy doing with ultra-wide angle lenses on my Nikons. Since most of my images are intended for the internet, the largest "size" they're going to be is the size of the typical computer display screen, 1200 pixels or so. I'm not expecting to see any difference between the M8 images and the M3 scanned images. In my case, I'm trying to sort all this out before spending several hundred dollars on a film scanner. I guess what I'm saying is unless there is a huge difference in quality, there would be minimal quality difference between the two, for my purposes, with images reduced to a suitable size and quality for the internet. Of course, if one of those images comes out especially nice, I would want to be able to send it out to a suitable processing lab to have a large print made from it. I've already sold all my darkroom gear, so that's the only option. Were I to do that, I'm wondering how much difference I'd likely see between the two formats... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sailronin Posted December 23, 2009 Share #4 Posted December 23, 2009 I read a lot of Ken Rockwell, really got the M8 because of his stuff with the M9! I forget what he said about cost of film but around here it comes out to almost $10 per roll (processed and scanned) so it adds up pretty fast. From my Nikon D700 and M8 I shot 4000+ exposures this year, that's about $1,100. Now if it were film I wouldn't have shot so much but still..... Depends how much you want to shoot Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
stunsworth Posted December 23, 2009 Share #5 Posted December 23, 2009 Without a shadow of a doubt you'll get "better" results with an M8 or M8.2 than with scanned film. This is based on my use of an M8 and a Nikon Coolscan V. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wparsonsgisnet Posted December 23, 2009 Share #6 Posted December 23, 2009 I agree with Steve. I was regularly disappointed with digital prints from my scanned negatives. I'll go out on a limb and declare that the M8/M9 produces as good an image as I ever achieved with film. I have Ilfochrome prints from Kodachrome II film that are stunning. I think the quality of the M8 and M9 images is just as good. Same lenses, of course. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
haroldp Posted December 23, 2009 Share #7 Posted December 23, 2009 Advertisement (gone after registration) Erwin's (and vicariously KR's) results were based on ISO 25 black and white film, which has much higher resolution than ANY color (3 layer emulsion) film. Even so, EP had to print and scan the digital to get a marginal advantage to this film. If your primary purpose is etching semiconductors than you should use film. For any practical purpose, you will like the M8 or 9 better. KR is not intended to be taken seriously, even by himself. EP surrounds his prose in the language of science, It is a shame because he obviously knows better. Regards ... H Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
earleygallery Posted December 23, 2009 Share #8 Posted December 23, 2009 Film. Sorry but for some subjects its just better and one of those is Landscape. Digital skies look wrong. Just MHO of course. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
farnz Posted December 23, 2009 Share #9 Posted December 23, 2009 ... if I went on a trip and wanted to take the best possible landscape type photo I could, ... Mike, Then you wouldn't use a Leica camera at all, you would use a 10 x 8 large format film camera or a digital medium format camera. If you actually meant "if I went on a trip and wanted to take the best possible landscape type photo I could with a Leica camera" then it would depend on the film stock you used. As far as I know, Fuji Velvia 50 has the finest grain of any commercially available film today, which will therefore offer you the best resolving power. The grain is c.1 micron so it is smaller than the M8, M8.2, or M9's pixels at 9 microns and will therefore out-resolve a sensor providing that the grains are packed together. But as soon as you scan the film all bets are off because the scanner will have it's own sensor which may or may not out-resolve a digital M's sensor. Pass the popcorn would you please, Bill? Would you like some fizzy-pop to wash down your popcorn? Pete. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
tobey bilek Posted December 23, 2009 Share #10 Posted December 23, 2009 I put Leica lenses on a Nikon D200 and did the same shots with a Leica R6 and for them competitive. I tried a M8 againt the D200 for daylight pics and the M8 was superior a little. Now there is a full frame M9 and improved Portra 160. My full frame Nikon is better than improved film and I would bet the M9 is better than the D700. It really comes down to how you want to work. Well scanned film is very good. Notice I said well scanned, film scanner and technique. Flat beds are not even in the race. The next problem is gettin good film processing. The drug store or costco is not even in that race either. Sometimes I get film that requires a ton of touch up work, spotting. This never happens with digital. With digi, leave all the filters at home. No need to worry film speed or filters or indoor/outdoor film. It is all in the camera all the time. Digi is direct entry into digital workflow which is 1000% more versatile than darkroom. I am quite advanced in either. If you got the bucks, the S2 will blow your socks off and Leica will love you. M9 is nice, but I don`t like paint finishes, even Leica. No camera has everything, so pay your money and take your choice. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Knomad Posted December 23, 2009 Share #11 Posted December 23, 2009 I'm no longer convinced that one is better than the other. They're just different. They don't look the same. Not too long ago I posted images from an M8 and an M6 on a private forum, big blowups from each. It was not an attempt to evaluate resolution or anything else, it was simply in response to someone who asked if I could show them the difference. Both images were shot under less than ideal light conditions, both were handheld, the film shots were on Neopan 1600 developed in Rodinal so plenty of acutance and grain but almost certainly not optimal resolution. The M8 image was clearly sharper, no surprise given the film image I chose to show. But the film image, for all it's well-defined grain, had an organic feel to it (for lack of a better word) that is just not the same as digital. Is that good or bad? That depends on the preferences of the viewer, and on the subject matter and the feeling and mood one is trying to convey. The conclusion I've come to is that for now I'm mostly going to shoot with my M8, because of the combination of quality and ease of use; but that for certain subjects and when I'm not in any hurry, I'll continue to shoot film with an older M body. At the same time that I did the above-mentioned comparison I was choosing material for a book project (with several other photographers) and I ended up sending both film and digital images. The editor chose to use both, and I think sequenced them to good effect. Although he's an experienced commercial photographer, I don't think he was looking at the images as film or digital, I think rather he was using individual images to construct a particular mood, to build a visual flow through the section. I found it interesting that he mixed film and digital, B&W and color, to do that. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeMyers Posted December 24, 2009 Author Share #12 Posted December 24, 2009 Mike, Then you wouldn't use a Leica camera at all, you would use a 10 x 8 large format film camera or a digital medium format camera. If you actually meant "if I went on a trip and wanted to take the best possible landscape type photo I could with a Leica camera" then it would depend on the film stock you used. As far as I know, Fuji Velvia 50 has the finest grain of any commercially available film today, which will therefore offer you the best resolving power. The grain is c.1 micron so it is smaller than the M8, M8.2, or M9's pixels at 9 microns and will therefore out-resolve a sensor providing that the grains are packed together. But as soon as you scan the film all bets are off because the scanner will have it's own sensor which may or may not out-resolve a digital M's sensor. Pass the popcorn would you please, Bill? Would you like some fizzy-pop to wash down your popcorn? Pete. Farnz seems closest to the wavelength my brain is on. The cost of film based on my plans would be only the purchase price and developing. I assume the only way I'll get good scans is to do it myself. I don't know yet whether my scanner will "out-scan" the M8, as I haven't decided on which scanner to get. I do know it will be under $1000. I figure the only way to decide is to try it myself. Whether or not to take Ken Rockwell seriously is up to each person to decide. He might not be, for someone who thinks they know more than Ken, but as far as I'm concerned, his technical articles are a goldmine of good information, worded in a way that makes for humorous reading. He probably has the best single source of general information on how to get better photos than any other site I know of. It's his "style" that people seem to object to, which matters not to me. On to Pete's reply... Yes, I did mean "...with a Leica camera". I have no doubt I "could" do better with an 8x10 or 4x5, but for traveling, for me, that would not be practical. I've never used "Fuji Velvia 50", but I guess there's no reason I couldn't. If that's what people use nowadays, why not? Back when I shot film, it was almost all Ektachrome or "standard" Kodak color print film, whatever they called it back then. Again, back then, the film was far less a limiting factor than my ability to use it properly. As to the scanner I will end up with, all I've decided is that the price should be relatively "low", meaning under $1000 for sure, and it will be a manual scanner. Ideally the scanner will be portable, so I can take it with me when I travel, but I haven't thought this through fully. One last thing - I clarified my question and added the way I'll be using my images, which is mostly "on the internet". I could rephrase my question better, by asking it twice instead, as: a) would I notice any difference between the film-scanned/digital images in a two-foot wide print? would I notice any difference between the film-scanned/digital images when posted on the internet in a "usable" size, meaning 1024 pixels wide maximum? I figure the only time I'm going to miss the film cameras is when I try to use that 12mm CV lens on my M8 and realize how much more image it "could" capture if I put it on an M9 or my M3/4. The M9 might be a solution, but for the few times I do this, it's a very expensive solution. Buying a scanner is likely to cost me $300 or so, and film processing for my needs would cost minimal $$. I used to be very pleased with my film Leica images, and I'm thinking I'll be at least equally happy if I go with the "digital darkroom" rather than what I did years ago. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
farnz Posted December 24, 2009 Share #13 Posted December 24, 2009 ... I've never used "Fuji Velvia 50", but I guess there's no reason I couldn't. If that's what people use nowadays, why not? Back when I shot film, it was almost all Ektachrome or "standard" Kodak color print film, whatever they called it back then. Again, back then, the film was far less a limiting factor than my ability to use it properly. .... If you haven't used it before you need to be aware that Velvia has a very particular look that doesn't appeal to everyone. It's very contrasty, has the punchiest colours and richest blacks of any commercially available emulsion and if you want to saturate its colours then you'll need to pull it by 1/3 or 1/2 a stop (ie shoot Velvia 50 at ISO 40) and have it processed normally. It's been the film of choice for landscape photographers pretty much since it hit the streets and I wouldn't consider using any other emulsion for a landscape. Oh, btw: a) it entirely depends on the film stock, the scanner and the scanner operator ; and probably not because any difference will be masked by jpeg compression. Pete. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
cidereye Posted December 24, 2009 Share #14 Posted December 24, 2009 Mike, Velvia (IMO) is an awful film to scan properly unless you have a top class scanner - i.e. A Pro Drum Scanner. I went back last night trying to re-scan some shots I took earlier in the year on Velvia 100 and tried to get them as good as I could on an Epson V700. The shots taken with my R8 + 50mm Cron mostly look fantastic overall and shots I am probably more pleased with than any in the last year or so. But yet again I've given up as they look awful once scanned. Now they are off to a Pro lab to be scanned on a drum scanner at high cost. OK for Mr Rockwell who has his cheap place in the USA but I've never found anywhere in the UK near those prices for high res scans. I now use Kodak Ektar, simple, takes minutes and the resulting files look fine. If you want to scan negs at home buy film that was made to be scanned in the first place and so much of Kodak's current line-up is. Horses for courses and all of that makes the end result so much sweeter. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
giordano Posted December 24, 2009 Share #15 Posted December 24, 2009 Mike, if you're thinking of travelling with a scanner - take the M8 instead. Scanners are designed for the office or lab, not airline baggage systems. Like you I don't print many of my photographs, most just stay on the website. For my purposes the M8 (and D700) are every bit good as film+scan, usually better, and a lot less trouble. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
batmobile Posted December 24, 2009 Share #16 Posted December 24, 2009 I dont know and I dont mind. All I know is that I like the results I get with film and that I dont feel the need to compare them with anything. At this stage I think preference and workflow issues/demands are about the only factors that, well, factor. Either will produce great results. But what do you like? If technical considerations were the be all and end all, 35mm would hardly get a look in. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
caparobertsan Posted December 24, 2009 Share #17 Posted December 24, 2009 FILM! OR USE your M8.2! Film and digital are totally different! things! I saw some people in Japan hand printing from colour negative and result wee so good. I was totally convinced that Digital can never replace film. I think film does capture more than just images. I know I use M8 too and I love images from this camera a lot. But When I get good result from film, wow effect is greater than digital. I LOVE FILM! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeMyers Posted December 24, 2009 Author Share #18 Posted December 24, 2009 If you want to scan negs at home buy film that was made to be scanned in the first place and so much of Kodak's current line-up is. Horses for courses and all of that makes the end result so much sweeter. So many things to consider. The truth is, I don't know what "I like", as I haven't yet tried to scan any images. First step would be to buy a suitable (adequate) scanner I guess. One thing in all the above responses stuck out - I never even considered it before. I never even considered the possibility that some films are made to be scanned (and probably the opposite too, other films are not so easy to scan, and maybe don't scan as well). I'm lost here. As I see things (until now) film is film. It's got grain, which makes up the image. What might anyone do to make film better for the purpose of scanning it later? Rightly or wrongly, I've always assumed that if I got a scanner that was good enough to capture grain that makes up an image, everything else would take care of itself. Apparently I'm missing something, but I have no idea what it might be. As I've seen things until now, a scanner is the same as the digital sensor in a camera, and it will deal with whatever you throw at it. I guess if the brightness range exceeds what the camera can handle, that would be a similar situation for the scanner. Is that what we're talking about here? Me very confusabobbled... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jsrockit Posted December 24, 2009 Share #19 Posted December 24, 2009 I just got back into photography after about 10 years... I used an M6 back then and had access to B&W and color darkrooms. 10 years later, I no longer had access to any darkroom, but I thought that an M2 and scanning negatives would be a good solution. I didn't want to buy my own scanner because the good ones are a lot of cash and the low-end aren't worth bothering with. So, I went to what was supposedly a pro lab in NYC to have my stuff scanned. Some of the images were scanned well, some weren't. It left a bad taste in my mouth, so I went for an M8. Also, over the last 10 years, the one thing I did like about digital cameras was looking at the LCD to see if I got the shot. No preview on the M2 and I felt blind (but liberated temporarily). Anyway, I sold my M2 and got the M8 and love it. The quality is good enough, the price had come down a lot, and I can do the whole priting process in my bedroom. Film is great if you have your own darkroom or have access to one...or access to a good scanner. Outside of that, digital is the way to go. I was also shocked at how much film processing prices jumped in 10 years. I still use the occasioanl roll of film here and there, but I could never go back to using hundreds of rolls a year. The SD card and computer managment of files is just way more convenient and cost effective. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
theendlesshouse Posted December 24, 2009 Share #20 Posted December 24, 2009 I would say film, specifically Ektar. Whichever would be more productive for you though? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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