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Photo Forum / Digital Photography / DSLR Cameras / January 2005Film to digital
Is there anything to be said for shooting with a 35mm film camera and letting whoever does the processing put the images on a CD for you? I realize your digital camera eliminates this step, but what are the pros and cons, and when would this method be preferred, if at all? Thanks. Sheldon sheldon@sopris.net > Is there anything to be said for shooting with a 35mm film camera and > letting whoever does the processing put the images on a CD for you? Most store made CD's are of fairly poor resolution v. what is possible with most home film scanners. > I realize your digital camera eliminates this step, but what are the pros > and cons, and when would this method be preferred, if at all? A good digital camera is better in almost all cases than the CD's that are provided by most film developers. The exception is of course service bureau's that provide drum scans... which are quite expensive. I'll be getting some MF film scans done soon on Fuji Frontier ... I'll report the results, but from what others have said I expect to be disappointed. Cheers, Alan  Signature-- r.p.e.35mm user resource: http://www.aliasimages.com/rpe35mmur.htm -- r.p.d.slr-systems: http://www.aliasimages.com/rpdslrsysur.htm -- [SI] gallery & rulz: http://www.pbase.com/shootin -- e-meil: there's no such thing as a FreeLunch. >> Is there anything to be said for shooting with a 35mm film camera and >> letting whoever does the processing put the images on a CD for you? [quoted text clipped - 17 lines] > Cheers, > Alan That said, if I was going to scan my own film, better to use negatives or slides (ISO being equal)? Thanks, Sheldon That said, if I was going to scan my own film, better to use negatives or > slides (ISO being equal)? Not sure I understand that. You do scan negatives and slides. The process is pretty much the same (You have to tell the scan software it is a negative or a slide, but other than that...) "ISO being equal"? If you mean, "is digital ISO the same as film ISO?" then yes (for the most part, there are some subtle differences). Cheers, Alan Signature-- r.p.e.35mm user resource: http://www.aliasimages.com/rpe35mmur.htm -- r.p.d.slr-systems: http://www.aliasimages.com/rpdslrsysur.htm -- [SI] gallery & rulz: http://www.pbase.com/shootin -- e-meil: there's no such thing as a FreeLunch. Let me rephrase the question, and this is probably the wrong group. If you are going to substitute shooting 35mm for digital, and scan the results to digital yourself, is it better to use negative film or slide film? Sheldon > That said, if I was going to scan my own film, better to use negatives or >> slides (ISO being equal)? [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > Cheers, > Alan > Let me rephrase the question, and this is probably the wrong group. If > you are going to substitute shooting 35mm for digital, and scan the > results to digital yourself, is it better to use negative film or slide > film? I'd say slide. First off you have an original to go by and second you don't have to deal with all the various "color masks" that while they all look orange, need different adjustments to get decent color balance. I haven't done a bunch of this but have scanned some 4X5 negatives and chromes and the chromes were much easier to deal with. SignatureStacey > Let me rephrase the question, and this is probably the wrong group. If you > are going to substitute shooting 35mm for digital, and scan the results to > digital yourself, is it better to use negative film or slide film? Generally it is easier (and faster) to scan slide film. Good slide films like Velvia (both), Provia, Sensia, E100VS, E100G, Elitechrome 100 and others scan well. Usually the color is bang on if the exposure was correct. Sensia 100: http://www.pbase.com/shootin/image/38733609 http://www.pbase.com/shootin/image/38208166 Velvia (50): http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=1231406&size=lg E100S: http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=662531&size=lg Some slide films, like E100S, scan with an unusual grain aliasing effect that is not very pleasant. OTOH, this does not show very much (or at all) in prints. If you are not experienced at shooting slide film, however, the extra latitude of negative color film will be more forgiving to you. Some negative film scans very nicely. Oddly enough, the great el-cheapo Kodak Max 400 scans very well in my experience. Negative films sometimes scan with odd color rendition and it can be a challenge to correct. For color, Kodak Portra 160NC scans great. (expose the film at 100, not 160, develop normally). This isn't the place for this... learn more at news:comp.periphs.scanners Cheers, Alan. Signature-- r.p.e.35mm user resource: http://www.aliasimages.com/rpe35mmur.htm -- r.p.d.slr-systems: http://www.aliasimages.com/rpdslrsysur.htm -- [SI] gallery & rulz: http://www.pbase.com/shootin -- e-meil: there's no such thing as a FreeLunch. >Let me rephrase the question, and this is probably the wrong group. If you >are going to substitute shooting 35mm for digital, and scan the results to >digital yourself, is it better to use negative film or slide film? That depends on the scanner (and, to some extent, to the film). Each approach has drawbacks. With negative film, you have the problem of the orange mask, and the fact that different films have rather different colour profiles. Reversal film is very simple from a colour standpoint, but can be a problem on low-end scanners which can't handle the range of densities. With an 8-bit scanner I'd suggest staying with negative film, and see if you can get a film profile for your scanner (or use a third party software solution such as Ed Hamrick's VueScan package). With a 10-bit (or, preferably, 12-bit) scanner, you should be OK with slide films. On an ISO-for-ISO comparison I found that a good high-resolution slide film (in my case Fuji Provia 100F) produced better scans than I was able to get from negative film (Kodak Supra 100). I also preferred the artifacts from dye clouds to film grain. > With negative film, you have the problem of the orange mask, and the > fact that different films have rather different colour profiles. > Reversal film is very simple from a colour standpoint, but can be a > problem on low-end scanners which can't handle the range of > densities. There's a trick I'd like to recommend: over-expose slightly. This lifts shadow detail out of the toe of the density curve of the film. Only a slight adjustment is required. I usually expose ISO 100 film at ISO 80, and this gives good results on a Coolscan 8000. Andrew. >> With negative film, you have the problem of the orange mask, and the >> fact that different films have rather different colour profiles. [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] >Only a slight adjustment is required. I usually expose ISO 100 film >at ISO 80, and this gives good results on a Coolscan 8000. I wouldn't call a Coolscan 8000 a low-end scanner. It's should have no problem handling just about any film you feed into it. (Sure, it's not a Leaf, or an Imacon. But it's a nice unit). I'm also not sure I'd recommend routinely over-exposing slides; if you're not careful, you can easily end up with blown highlights, and that's going to lose details you'll never be able to recover. (The maxim says you should expose for the highlights when shooting slides, and expose for the shadows when shooting negative film). There again, I know several people who prefer to rate Velvia at 40 (and even one who rates it at 32). It very much depends on your equipment and technique, too; those tricky lighting conditions are exactly the situations where different metering methods (such as the various multi-pattern modes from different camera brands) produce the most variation in suggested exposure. If you're not using the built-in metering, but going with a hand-held meter, you're just going to learn a different set of heuristic adjustments for when (and by how much) you vary from the values it gives you. That Ansel Adams guy knew a thing or two about exposures, as well. Spot metering on a significant part of the image, and assigning that to a particular zone, still works as well today as it ever did. Finally, to drag this back vaguely on-topic (this is, after all, a DSLR newsgroup) digital sensors should be treated pretty much as slide film; don't blow out the highlights. Even shooting RAW (which, depending on camera brand, gives you a stop or so of extra headroom) isn't going to be enough to help in all situations. > digital sensors should be treated pretty much > as slide film; don't blow out the highlights. Excellent advice! With film, I routinely lowered the ISO by 1/3 stop for negative film (overexposing) and increased the ISO by 1/3 stop for slides (underexposing) to get the exposure I desired. The sensors in my Canon Digitals act very much like slide film in this respect. >>> With negative film, you have the problem of the orange mask, and the >>> fact that different films have rather different colour profiles. [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] >>Only a slight adjustment is required. I usually expose ISO 100 film >>at ISO 80, and this gives good results on a Coolscan 8000. > I wouldn't call a Coolscan 8000 a low-end scanner. It's should > have no problem handling just about any film you feed into it. > (Sure, it's not a Leaf, or an Imacon. But it's a nice unit). Ah, okay. I was thinking of desktop=low, drum=high. I guess the Coolscan is in the middle somewhere. But it does have trouble peering into the shadows. > I'm also not sure I'd recommend routinely over-exposing slides; if > you're not careful, you can easily end up with blown highlights, and [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > going to learn a different set of heuristic adjustments for when > (and by how much) you vary from the values it gives you. Fair enough. My film cameras don't have built-in metering, so a handheld meter is what I use, and the difference between ISO 100 and ISO 80 is really pretty small. You'd have to be in a pretty nasty situation for such a small change to blow highlights that weren't blown before. Also, Velvia is evil stuff to scan. I love Astia, which IME seems to have much better properties for scanning. > Finally, to drag this back vaguely on-topic (this is, after all, a > DSLR newsgroup) digital sensors should be treated pretty much as > slide film; don't blow out the highlights. Digital is, IME, more sensitive to blown highlights than transparency film. It doesn't clip "hard" quite as badly... > Even shooting RAW (which, depending on camera brand, gives you a > stop or so of extra headroom) isn't going to be enough to help in > all situations. Indeed. In fact, as far as I can tell the D1x that I use doesn't have much extra headroom in raw: the clip level at ISO 125 is the same, raw or jpg. Andrew. >>> Is there anything to be said for shooting with a 35mm film camera and >>> letting whoever does the processing put the images on a CD for you? [quoted text clipped - 24 lines] > >Sheldon I agree with Alan's statement to the original post. As to your question now, a very general and basic answer, posed on the assumption that you have good software with your scanner to handle either, would be: if the highlights are the most important part of the image, then shoot neg film, but if the shadows are the most important part, then shoot transparency film. Beyond the highlight/shadow consideration, there is probably a little less work with transparency than negative, but otherwise they are equal. Hunt > I'll be getting some MF film scans done soon on Fuji Frontier ... I'll > report the results, but from what others have said I expect to be > disappointed. You will be. I had hoped to use this service and continue shooting 645 using this for "proofs" but the results were awful. This was even a camera store lab which normally does decent prints, the CD wasn't even CLOSE to being useable for anything. Shame as the idea was sound, seems they just put the machine on autopilot if you aren't getting prints and blame it on your computer if they look like crap. SignatureStacey >>I'll be getting some MF film scans done soon on Fuji Frontier ... I'll >>report the results, but from what others have said I expect to be [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > autopilot if you aren't getting prints and blame it on your computer if > they look like crap. Well, at two different places I have a good rapport with the owners/operators, so we'll see how much 'improvement' can be made if they come back like crap. I'm so reluctant to find out that this task has been due for over two months (we've discussed before). Cheers, Alan Signature-- r.p.e.35mm user resource: http://www.aliasimages.com/rpe35mmur.htm -- r.p.d.slr-systems: http://www.aliasimages.com/rpdslrsysur.htm -- [SI] gallery & rulz: http://www.pbase.com/shootin -- e-meil: there's no such thing as a FreeLunch. I've had very good luck with shooting 35mm film and having it scanned in at 300ppi then printing out at up to 20"x30". The color and sharpness are quite good. The scanning is done on a Nikon CoolScan and the film I use is Velvia 100. Chris www.hotchilistudios.com cswift1@swift-mail.com |
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