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Photo Forum / General Photo Topics / UK Photography / November 2007The good old days of film... NOT
Using a Nikon 5000ED scanner I have scanned in around 5000 transparencies, and hundreds of strip negatives. Each was scanned to a 130MB TIFF, then rotated losslessly if required, then batch converted with Photoshop 7 into Jpeg using the "highest quality setting", yielding a jpeg of 5MB-15MB depending on the detail. Most of the pics were taken with an OM1N, OM2SP, most recently with an OM4TI, using Olympus, Tamron and other lenses. No cheap lenses though like Vivitar... A lot of lenses cost me £300 back in say 1980. Some were stunning. Sharp and good colour. Most were average. Probably what one would expect from a £100 digital camera these days. Many were crap and one would not have accepted that from a cheap digital camera. Kodachrome 25 shots were good. But one can't get a sharp image with 25ASA without a tripod :) Kodachrome 64/100 shots were grainy as hell. Kodachrome 400 one can forget, useless. Lately I have used Fuji Provia 100 which is easily as good as Kodachrome 25. But the old lenses were so often crap. Even a pricey Olympus 135mm fixed lens would have a very visible variation of brightness across the field of view. Few cheap digital cameras are as crappy as that. Now I use the tiny Casio EX600 which beats most of my expensively shot trannies by miles, on sharpness and colour quality. For good stuff I use a Pentax DL DSLR with a £500 Pentax 35-85 zoom (IIRC) which all in all cost about £1000; when I consider I paid £400 just for a well secondhand OM4TI *body*, it makes me wonder why film has lasted as long as it has. And I've been a FAN of film for longer than anybody I know... The pics I get from the DSLR, at the press of a button and with only the very basic attention paid to aperture and thus shutter speed (I use mostly shutter priority, usually wide open to get the fastest speed for a handheld shot) are as good as the best carefully set up shots I ever got with film. The funniest thing is that scanning grainy trannies at ~ 5000dpi generates extra massive jpeg files because the compression has to reproduce the grain detail :) All my old stuff is going on Ebay. The problem is that it looks like everybody else has realised the same thing and I won't get more than £30 for the OM4TI body, which cost me £400 from Jessops about 3 years ago. > Using a Nikon 5000ED scanner I have scanned in around 5000 > transparencies, and hundreds of strip negatives. [quoted text clipped - 51 lines] > £30 for the OM4TI body, which cost me £400 from Jessops about 3 years > ago. too true. All my old pentax stuff is now in the loft sealed waiting for a local museum to discover it in 100 years time............ -- Are you sure you're not judging bad scans or photographs? What you describe doesn't sound like my Olympus or Canon optics. Vignetting on a top-brand 135? Not in my experience. K64 isn't grainy.It was never my favourite, but it wasn't grainy. I thought K400 was only test marketed; were you one of the few? I think you must have had a bad day. Still, let me know when you list your stuff. I love a bargain. > Using a Nikon 5000ED scanner I have scanned in around 5000 > transparencies, and hundreds of strip negatives. [quoted text clipped - 51 lines] > £30 for the OM4TI body, which cost me £400 from Jessops about 3 years > ago. > The funniest thing is that scanning grainy trannies at ~ 5000dpi > generates extra massive jpeg files because the compression has to [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > £30 for the OM4TI body, which cost me £400 from Jessops about 3 years > ago. I am in the process of scanning all my old negs too, although not as high resolution, I just want them for viewing on-screen. I sold my OM-40 last year, and got about £50 with a couple lenses, flash gun, Winder, and all the little accessories. It was replaced with an E500, mainly because I have a few legacy lenses that are pretty reasonable - a Zuiko 50mm F1/4 prime, a Zeiss 70-210 and a Vivitar 75-250 (which is pretty good, despite your own comments about these). I got a OM to 4/3 adapter off eBay for under a tenner. These actually perform fairly well on the DSLR, and at a budget too. It's funny really, I have been looking at the old film images lately too, and feel that it was surpassed digitally back with my Minolta Z1. I didn't ever get into transparencies, but even using Kodak Gold colour film, you can see quite a bit of grain in some images (Although a lot were also the free Bonus Print film, which I believe was Agfa)- it's much, much worse than any of the digital 'noise' I've seen people complaining about. At one time though, the cost of replacing my film kit would have topped £1000.  SignatureAndy Hewitt <http://web.mac.com/andrewhewitt1/> > Using a Nikon 5000ED scanner I have scanned in around 5000 > transparencies, and hundreds of strip negatives. [quoted text clipped - 46 lines] > generates extra massive jpeg files because the compression has to > reproduce the grain detail :) Then why scan at 5000dpi unless your making 20 x 16 inch prints from each slide. You are magnifying the grain, quiet a lot. > All my old stuff is going on Ebay. The problem is that it looks like > everybody else has realised the same thing and I won't get more than > £30 for the OM4TI body, which cost me £400 from Jessops about 3 years > ago. SignatureTrev You can always tell a Yorkshire man, But you can't tell him much. >> Using a Nikon 5000ED scanner I have scanned in around 5000 >> transparencies, and hundreds of strip negatives. [quoted text clipped - 49 lines] >Then why scan at 5000dpi unless your making 20 x 16 inch prints from each >slide. You are magnifying the grain, quiet a lot. The Nikon 5000 scans at 4000 dpi, not 5000. It's an easy mistake to make, given the model name, but you would have thought that someone who owned one and used it to scan an entire collection of photos would have realised that by now. 5000 slides, 5000ED, 5000dpi. Five thousand of everything! >The Nikon 5000 scans at 4000 dpi, not 5000. It's an easy mistake to >make, given the model name, but you would have thought that someone >who owned one and used it to scan an entire collection of photos would >have realised that by now. No practical difference in this context though. The point is that 4000dpi seems to exceed the grain size in most 1980s era film. Incidentally, and sorry if this is a stupid Q, is there any way I can use my OM lenses with the Pentax DL? I have some weird lenses which come in handy once a year: a Tamron 500mm F8 catadioptric lens, a 2x converter to give me 1000mm/F16, an Olympus 50mm F1.4 fixed lens, a 27mm (or is it 17mm?) wide angle but non-distorting lens of very good quality. Obviously the automatic features will be lost e.g. autofocus but would say aperture priority still work? >> The Nikon 5000 scans at 4000 dpi, not 5000. It's an easy mistake to >> make, given the model name, but you would have thought that someone [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > Incidentally, and sorry if this is a stupid Q, is there any way I can > use my OM lenses with the Pentax DL? No > I have some weird lenses which come in handy once a year: a Tamron > 500mm F8 catadioptric lens, a 2x converter to give me 1000mm/F16, an [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > Obviously the automatic features will be lost e.g. autofocus but would > say aperture priority still work? SignatureTrev You can always tell a Yorkshire man, But you can't tell him much. >Incidentally, and sorry if this is a stupid Q, is there any way I can >use my OM lenses with the Pentax DL? No, because the flange-to-film-plane distances of the two systems mean that there is no room for an adaptor. >>Incidentally, and sorry if this is a stupid Q, is there any way I can >>use my OM lenses with the Pentax DL? > >No, because the flange-to-film-plane distances of the two systems mean >that there is no room for an adaptor. OK, thank you; however I should add that the Tamron in particular is a generic lens and has an OM adaptor on it, which could be removed and possibly replaced with some sort of Pentax mount? However the mount on my 2005 Pentax might be completely different to any mount Pentax used in the 1980s... Presumably, in any case, the focal length of the lens goes up by the ratio of 35mm to the size of the CCD, doesn't it? >>>Incidentally, and sorry if this is a stupid Q, is there any way I can >>>use my OM lenses with the Pentax DL? [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] >generic lens and has an OM adaptor on it, which could be removed and >possibly replaced with some sort of Pentax mount? That's true. >However the mount on my 2005 Pentax might be completely different to >any mount Pentax used in the 1980s... I think (but please check) that your *ist DL will work well with almost any Pentax lens ever made, including M42 screw mount lenses with an adaptor. >Presumably, in any case, the focal length of the lens goes up by the >ratio of 35mm to the size of the CCD, doesn't it? The focal length stays the same. But the smaller sensor crops the field of view giving what appears to be a longer focal length. This "apparent focal length" is 1.5X the one marked on the lens. In other words, a 50mm becomes an apparent 75mm, and an 80-200mm zoom becomes an apparent 120-30mm zoom. >>> Incidentally, and sorry if this is a stupid Q, is there any way I >>> can use my OM lenses with the Pentax DL? [quoted text clipped - 11 lines] > Presumably, in any case, the focal length of the lens goes up by the > ratio of 35mm to the size of the CCD, doesn't it? Maybe if you can find a Tamron adapter for Pentax as I understand older Pentax lens can be used on the digital But it will be all manual an a 750mm equivalent SignatureTrev You can always tell a Yorkshire man, But you can't tell him much. > Kodachrome 25 shots were good. But one can't get a sharp image with > 25ASA without a tripod :) and I reckon that wasn't a patch on Kodachrome II |
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