M9 vs. Scanned film (various ISOs)

[marcusperkins]

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I used a 500 C/M with a 50, 80 and 180, Ilford 400 and 3200. The editor *loved* the look and said it was refreshing to see film again.

 

I shoot a lot of film, but the idea of a 500 C/M with 3200 loaded sounds fantastic. The perfect mix of grain and clarity, kind of like 35mm Tri-x on steroids.

 

Ilford don't make 3200 in 220 format. Is there a technical reason for this (less backing so more susceptible to light leaks?), or they just don't do it?

[tgray]

Ilford doesn't do 220 anymore. I think the machine they had for the backing broke and it's not worth fixing or something like that. This question pops up periodically on APUG.

 

Ahh, just found the thread. It would cost about 300,000 pounds to refurbish. Also, the backing paper use has a high minimum order, and based on Ilford's projections, would last them in the neighborhood of 8 years. And building a new machine and pricing 220 in a manner to recover the costs would drive the price of a roll of 220 to 3.5 times a roll of 120.

[adan]

nugat: not to beat a dead horse - but in a medium where one sees each frame for 1/24th of a second, and shutter speeds, regardless of subject motion, hover around 1/48th second, image quality is hardly a consideration.

 

Which is why studios go to the expense of hiring "stills" photographers to actually capture promotional images worth publishing. A single movie frame by itself is usually pretty crappy - until strung together with a million other frames by a genius

 

http://www.chrisgavin.com/blog/uploaded_images/chrisgavin_tktestimage_001_001_01303-706681.jpg

 

It's just a different medium with different priorities.

[nugat]

You think the horse is dead. Why in the multibilion dollar industry not many people share your opinion and waste millions (cost of stock) on celluloid instead to save and invest in cheap digital medium? I know, they don't read Leica Forum.

PS Stills photogs are the cinematographer's poor cousins who work for print medium-different output size (10x magnification and not like the 1000x in cinema), cropping (portraits?), work shots etc. Nobody bothers to save pennies and search for frames from the rushes or later stages of post. In independent productions however one often is forced to.

[mat_mcdermott]

I'd disagree that image quality isn't much of a concern. It's true that no one frame gets seen for very long, but the film world is as obsessed with image quality as anyone else, if not more so.

 

Admittedly it's been a few years since I was in the thick of it, and even then I mostly did documentaries and productions where HD & SD video was the mode of choice, but at the time more than anything else it was limitations in sensor size that people complained about re: video that gave the edge to film. Endless depth of field, poor dynamic range. The technology is changing that, sure.

 

Film is amazingly conservative sometimes, due to its high cost of production. Risks are only taken when financially justified or by people that can afford not to care -- by not having a big budget to start and not answer to as many accountants or have so much money they can afford to take them or convince others to take them.

[KM-25]

Isn't what you say insulting to people who still smoke, ride horse drawn carts and like the Beegees? It was a flippant remark, and actually only a quote from what someone else said.

 

 

 

Now you are doing the same thing the other way around, only intentionally and a great deal more directly - even using bad language to drive your point home: Insulting people who use digital.

 

In my post I made it quite clear that film 'has it's charms' - which seems to me to be fairly even handed - you, on the other hand simply insult people who use digital, which, for those of us who use digital proudly and hold it in high regard . . . I never intended to insult anyone who uses film, in fact, I don't think I've criticised it at any point - you chose to be insulted. However you are directly insulting people who use digital.

 

Now I'm mad:mad:

 

Alright, no more making people mad, this is photography, not politics. I have a cold I am trying to shake, maybe that is why I am sensitive?

 

And I had a dream last night that I was in a Border's Book store and looking at an M9, plugging my lenses onto it, for what that is worth..

[adan]

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English language idiom - "to beat a dead horse" means to go over and over a subject without getting any more results. "Dead" does not refer to film per se. Flogging a dead horse - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

As I said, motion pictures flash pictures on the screen for 1/24th second - who cares about detailed image quality in that application (film OR digital)? Irrelevant.

 

Learn a little something about the subject before posting: Digital cinematography - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Ever heard of any of the following? All have directed motion pictures using digital equipment:

 

Robert Altman, Jean-Jacques Annaud, Danny Boyle – Slumdog Millionaire (Best Picture 2008 + 7 other Oscars), James Cameron, Francis Ford Coppola, Mel Gibson – Apocalypto, Anthony Hopkins, Peter Jackson, Spike Lee, Frank Miller, Joe Dante, George Lucas, Peter Segal, Guy Ritchie, Sidney Lumet, David Lynch, Michael Mann, Michael Moore, Oliver Stone, Robert Rodriguez, Tony Scott, Ridley Scott, Bruce Willis, Steven Soderbergh, Sylvester Stallone, Martin Scorsese.

 

I don't know - maybe those guys aren't part of the billion-dollar industry....

 

Another famous saying from English: "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool - than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."

[jonoslack]

Alright, no more making people mad, this is photography, not politics. I have a cold I am trying to shake, maybe that is why I am sensitive?

 

And I had a dream last night that I was in a Border's Book store and looking at an M9, plugging my lenses onto it, for what that is worth..

 

Okay - I was feeling cold and grumpy this morning, so let's make peace (and pictures).

At least we agree that there's no shortcut to a good picture, whether you make it with oil or pencil or film or digital. It's about skill and effort and talent (and sometimes luck!).

 

. . . . . and Borders stock the M9 eh!

[KM-25]

. . . . . and Borders stock the M9 eh!

 

Like I said, it was a dream, I do plan on getting one though...

 

Life is a journey, not a destination. I find as I get older, the journey - or - how I spend my time, matters more and more to me. I also find it is not hard to "O/D" on digital, it is everywhere and the hype machine rams it fully down our throats in the sole name of profits, not because it is cool.

 

As I made my way down the snowmobile tracks the other day during my assignment, a group of teens and 20 somethings were building a kicker out of snow to huck off of. From about 70 feet above me, I hear this kid yell a distant "Dude, is that a Blaaaad?" I replied yes. He made his way down the waist deep snow and introduced him self. We got to talking for a bit and he told me of a project some of his classmates were doing called "Drowning in Digital" that were case studies in how one behaves differently in the instant, want it all now world of digital compared to the pre-digital days. He was fascinated and admired the idea that I was toting the gear into the back country.

 

I don't much care for hype, I like substance, and that is what film gives me right from the start, so it is already off on solid footing with my emotional being. I agree with this writer, more and more people I run into are starting to re-think having every little thing in their lives being centered around the digital machine:

 

NOW Magazine // News // Down on digital

 

I need to do one thing I don't want to do today and a few things I do. I have to get my website re-design to the web folks, the deadline is approaching. But I also have to go out and shoot at least a 1/2 a roll of Kodachrome today as I now have 356 days to do so.

 

It's all about a balanced diet...

 

Cheers,

 

KM

[nugat]

English language idiom - "to beat a dead horse" means to go over and over a subject without getting any more results. "Dead" does not refer to film per se. Flogging a dead horse - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

As I said, motion pictures flash pictures on the screen for 1/24th second - who cares about detailed image quality in that application (film OR digital)? Irrelevant.

 

Learn a little something about the subject before posting: Digital cinematography - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Ever heard of any of the following? All have directed motion pictures using digital equipment:

 

Robert Altman, Jean-Jacques Annaud, Danny Boyle – Slumdog Millionaire (Best Picture 2008 + 7 other Oscars), James Cameron, Francis Ford Coppola, Mel Gibson – Apocalypto, Anthony Hopkins, Peter Jackson, Spike Lee, Frank Miller, Joe Dante, George Lucas, Peter Segal, Guy Ritchie, Sidney Lumet, David Lynch, Michael Mann, Michael Moore, Oliver Stone, Robert Rodriguez, Tony Scott, Ridley Scott, Bruce Willis, Steven Soderbergh, Sylvester Stallone, Martin Scorsese.

 

I don't know - maybe those guys aren't part of the billion-dollar industry....

 

Another famous saying from English: "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool - than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."

 

The idiosyncrasy of your manners equals the mastery of the English idiom and wikipedia. Now relax...ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

[nugat]

I was really intent on pleasing my critic and learning something from wikipedia despite its poor reliability track. In the first paragraph of the "Digial Cinematography" entry we get the usual wikifallacy though...

 

"Digital cinematography's acceptance was cemented when Slumdog Millionaire became the first movie shot mainly in digital to be awarded the Academy Award for Best Cinematography.[1]"

 

 

Meanwhile...

QUOTE

"Slumdog Millionaire shot on Fujicolor colour negative film

Posted: 9 Mar 2009

Fujifilm helps Slumdog to Oscar success - Fujicolor colour negative film used on major blockbuster film.

Slumdog Millionaire LogoPress Release:

Major parts of the blockbuster Slumdog Millionaire were shot on Fujicolor colour negative film. The Danny Boyle directed film won an amazing eight Oscars at the recent Academy Awards.

In addition to the main award of Best Picture the movie also scooped first place in the following categories: Best Director, Cinematography, Film Editing, Best Adapted Screenplay, Sound Mixing, Best Original Score and Best Original Song.

To capture the exotic locations - ranging from the bustle of Mumbai's sprawling slums, to the fiercely lit TV studio, the crew worked with a wide range of equipment and technologies. According to producer Christian Colson: "Wherever we could, we shot real locations and we shot what was scripted, and what was scripted was often pretty complex and took us to a fabulous range of different places. The film's a fairy tale, and like all the best fairy tales, it's got light and shade."

Boyle elected to take a small crew of just 10 people to India to shoot the film, relying predominantly on local Bollywood staff. A key member of the travelling crew was Danish based British cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, whom Boyle previously worked with on Millions and 28 Days Later.

Mantle, who won the Oscar for Best Cinematography for his work on the film, takes up the story of shooting Slumdog: ""I worked mainly on Fujicolor colour negative ETERNA 500T and Reala 500D as well as a great deal of daytime exteriors on Super F-64D. I also shot a bit of ETERNA 250D when getting caught in the early morning or the fading light of late day. All these stocks performed very well.

"I also pushed a great deal of both of the 500 stocks one stop. When I push film stocks like this it is not necessarily to find grain, in fact, it is quite the opposite. The artistic reason for pushing the film was to try and attain as much of the local ambience of Mumbai as possible. I also like the effect on colours when the contrast curve of the neg is pushed a little. It somehow fitted my vision of the visceral buzz of the street and the people there. I apply diffusion generally to my lenses, varying from Soft Fxs and black ProMists to the occasional older fashioned fog filters."

END OF QUOTE

 

The truth is (not to beat the dead horse, as I wrote about it in this forum couple of times1) that Slumdog used Silicon Imaging camera in several scenes, especially the paradocumentary ones in the slums of Mumbai.

Ha! Even Canon 5Dm2 was used in front of Taj Mahal, when the crew was chased away by security.

 

So maybe the left leg of the Oscar goes for the digital.... Ok, everything from the waist down....

 

1) In post #121 above:

"In fact on many flicks they mix, eg. cinematography Oscar winner Slumdog Millionaire had sequences shot on Silicon Imaging camera (the slums paradocumentary bits). But the medium of choice was film."

 

It is really hard to have a reasonable discussion when others don't read your posts but hurry to answer them...

[chrism]

Another famous saying from English: "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool - than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."

 

And from the classical world: "I will begin to speak, when I have that to say which had not better be unsaid."

 

- Cato the Younger

 

Chris

[lieberdavid]

Hi Everyone,

 

At least two people in this thread have said words to the effect that hardly anyone now doubts that digital outresolves film. Well, I am one who doubts. In comparison after comparison of digital vs scanned film, the upshot is usually that the digital image shows more detail, and so the conclusion is made that digital outresolves film. What should be concluded is that in these cases digital outresolved particular scanners.

 

At least in this thread the originator was honest and wrote "M9 vs. Scanned film" as opposed to "M9 vs. Film". One contributor pointed out that to compare digital with film you need to make an A1 size print from your digital image and compare it to a completely chemical made A1 size print from film with no scanning involved. Or compare a slide projected onto a large sized screen with a digital image projected onto a screen of the same size.

 

Such comparisons, and I have so far not heard of any that have been done, I suspect would show how far digital has to go before it will equal film quality much less surpass it.

 

Why do I think this? Because published film data indicates, at least for low ISO speed films, resolution equivalent to about 50 - 60 MB in a digital image. The M9 comes no where near that and neither does the S2.

 

Cheers!

David

[erl]

David, and other posters, you are all partly correct, according me anyway.

 

What I believe is that many of us are insisting that white is better than black, or vice versa, etc. The fact is that most of us, in real life situations need a shade of grey. To clarify, the need for absolute resolution rarely IMHO is required, and usually not as the prime need. Likewise, speed and convenience are only sometimes the driving force in selecting the "best" equipment. Balancing a choice between these and other factors is far more critical than "which is better, film or digital." The which is better approach addresses the smallest part of the equation. Facing up to "am I competent" would be addressing a far more influential part of any task in hand. Get that right and the rest will probably fall into place naturally.

[spersky]

OMG, What is the deal with the film vs digital drama.

 

Wow, Amazing how much drama occurs when digital is shown to be better than film. If you like film go ahead and shoot film, and more power to you.

 

However, If you are interested in facts. I have not seen anything from 35mm film even come close the the current capability of Digital imaging especially when enlarging is involved.

 

Regards.

[playingolf]

While they have not as yet added data from the M9, I find DXOMark a really interesting site as you can compare most any camera including MF for a number of factors. In this link I am comparing th eM8 to the Nikon D700:

 

Compare cameras

 

 

They also rank all cameras in the database in this one, Nikon D700 is #5, M8 #59:

 

DxOMark Sensor

 

A lot of very interesting data on the measurement methods, etc.

[georg]

Film doesn't have a certain digital resolution or file size. Only MTF or absolute resolution limit can be measured and is often recalculated as file size or megapixels.

But film has to be scanned at very high resolution to correctly reproduce detail which isn't arranged in lines & rows on pixels. To avoid "grain alaising", reproduce fine detail on film and enhance scanner-MTF it's necessary to oversample: scan at 6000ppi and downsample after initial filtering to 4000ppi, which gives you a much better reproduction of the original film than scanning it with 4000ppi in the first place.

 

In Cinematography, the world is quite different. About 90% of all bigger movie-productions are made on film, which is still superior to any digital imaging system. "Slumdog Millionare" (and even Avatar) lacked technical quality, the digital images were of poor quality.

 

@playingolf

DXOMark tests RAW-files. That's a nice idea, but it also makes it dependent from their own processing and profiling. Cameras that manipulate/filter RAWs cannot be even compared to unfiltered RAWs. Therefore, even cameras with the very same sensor get different results.

[adan]

there are no facts when it comes to assessing photographic imagery ... only opinions.

 

Opinions aren't much different from farts - warm moist exhalations, sometimes noxious, that any human body can produce from one end or the other. There are 7,000,000,000 of them in the world.

 

Even "expert opinion" ranks as POOR relative to other forms of evidence: http://cys.bvsalud.org/lildbi/docsonline/5/9/195-52.pdf i.e. you use it ONLY if there is nothing better to work with.

 

On the internet, the safest assumption is that all opinions come from 14-year-olds with more bandwidth than brains, until proven otherwise. And, absolutely, feel free to take that attitude towards any opinions I might offer as well. But here's a little challenge: Go back and read my posts starting this thread, and find any place where I expressed an opinion. You won't find any. I let the images speak for themselves.

 

Facts and evidence are another matter. One seeing is worth ten thousand tellings, as the original version of the proverb goes.

 

I've presented evidence - side-by-side samples of image detail. If someone disagrees with my technique, that's fair game, and they may rebut it with their own evidence (images, not talk). I haven't seen any yet, since the Imacon samples aren't a direct comparison against an M9 image, although they are suggestive, as the scientists would say.

 

Same goes for 6000ppi oversamples, or A1 enlarger prints, or drum scans. Show - don't tell.

[pgk]

there are no facts when it comes to assessing photographic imagery ... only opinions.

I suspect that you should substitute 'entrenched views' for opinions:D for the most part.

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[t024484]

Hi Everyone,

 

At least in this thread the originator was honest and wrote "M9 vs. Scanned film" as opposed to "M9 vs. Film". One contributor pointed out that to compare digital with film you need to make an A1 size print from your digital image and compare it to a completely chemical made A1 size print from film with no scanning involved. Or compare a slide projected onto a large sized screen with a digital image projected onto a screen of the same size.

 

Such comparisons, and I have so far not heard of any that have been done, I suspect would show how far digital has to go before it will equal film quality much less surpass it.

 

 

Cheers!

David

 

David,

 

Erwin Puts did exactly what you suggest, he printed images from both media, and scanned these printed results.

 

M9, part 8B

 

The better digital gets, the easier it will be to to simulate analog, and the better those simulation programs will become.

 

Hans