Meduim Format Film vs Nikon D3X

joburger63 · Apr 3, 2011

I was recently talking to a photographer who does child portraiture for a living. He has recently changed over from meduim format film to a Nikon D3x. When I agreed that he must find a high resolution DSLR more convienient for his type of work, he agreed but also added that the resolution he got with the D3x was equal or better than MF film taken with a Pentax 645N and produced better detail and tonal graduation as well.
Excluding any philosopical views on the tired digital vs film debate, has anyone on the APUG forum tested these two cameras next to each other purely to test the above criteria.
I'm a beginner but I would still be interested to know. Thanks, Sean

donbga · Apr 3, 2011

joburger said:
Excluding any philosopical views on the tired digital vs film debate, has anyone on the APUG forum tested these two cameras next to each other purely to test the above criteria.

You should probably ask this question on APUG, I'm sure it would generate a lot of discussion.

I have a good friend that shoots with the D3 and he would tell you that the Nikon out performs MF film. The camera is quite impressive when used with excellent optics.

Don

joburger63 · Apr 3, 2011

Are you trying to get me into trouble Don? Ha! I HAD previously posted it in APUG and nearly got my head bitten off!

donbga · Apr 3, 2011

joburger said:
Are you trying to get me into trouble Don? Ha! I HAD previously posted it in APUG and nearly got my head bitten off!

Well you asked if anyone on APUG had done the comparison. Just my left handed way of pointing out that this DPUG.

David Brown · Apr 4, 2011

I can't speak directly to your question. However, I am a dedicated (and life-long) medium format shooter who just bought a Sony a850. I have no plans to do side by side tests, as I know from 40 years of "informal testing" that I can get both good and bad photographs with 120 film in a variety of cameras. I have no doubt that I will do the same with the Sony.

Is there a possible difference or comparison of say, lines-per-millimeter or perceived sharpness in an obscenely large print. Maybe. Possibly. I'll never know.

I have also found that many individuals who have just switched formats, media, brands, etc, find the new one to be "better". It justifies their decision. Speaking of APUG, you can find numerous testimonies over there that going back to film from even high-end digital is producing better pictures. The inverse is, of course, true on other forums. It is not always objective.

And, as always: YMMV.

joburger63 · Apr 4, 2011

Thanks David, I strongly suspect you are correct!

JerseyDoug · Apr 4, 2011

It's the new grocery store syndrome. Every time I visit a new grocery store I immediately notice the items they carry that my regular store doesn't, and the items that are priced lower than at my regular store. It's only after going to the new store half a dozen times that I start to notice the things they _don't_ carry and the prices that are _higher_ than at my regular store.

Exactly the same thing happened to me every time I switched cameras, films, formats, etc., over the years. In the end I always come back to 6x6 B&W negatives shot in a camera with a WLF. Now, if I could only get my regular grocery store to carry Tri-X roll film

joburger63 · Apr 4, 2011

I've heard the same analogy used to descrice the experience of marriage with dining at a resturant. At first you are happy with what you have on your plate until you see what the guy on the next table has and you decide you wouldn't mind some of that as well!
Back on subject, I was telling Don via PM that I attended two exhibitions recently. The first was Nick Brandt's 'A Shadow Falls' and the second was Christopher Rimmer's 'In Africa - A Journey in Photography.'
If both artists statements to the media on how they work are to be taken at face value, the former uses Pentax 67 and the latter uses Nikon D3X. Both exhibitions were excellent and displayed a high level of compositional and technical skill however, to my eye, Nick Brant's images had slighly more subtle tonal graduation and probably a bit more detail edge to edge. When you take in to account the fact that Brandt's work is hybrid i.e. he scans and then prints digitally, I couldn't imagine these advantages going backwards on a wet print.

It is somewhat subjective when you are comparing work of this quality I realize, but I can only report what I see myself.

Allen Friday · Apr 5, 2011

I regularly shoot film with my Mamiya 7 II and I shoot digital with my Nikon D700, which has specs very close to the D3X. Both are excellent cameras. I have a bit of a problem with claiming one has better detail or tonality because there are so many variables involved in getting from pressing the shutter to producing the final print. I think it is very difficult to do an apples to apples comparison. Silver prints just look different than inkjet or lightjet prints. Which is better is going to be up to the viewer. I love the look of traditional prints, others like the lightjets, some can't see the difference. For color, how are the prints made, what papers are used, which process, etc? I have never seen any kind of print (film or digital) that compares to a well made Ilfochrome print. But how many of us do Ilfochrome, and how many of us do Ilfochrome well?

Bottom line, we can look at all the test numbers and charts in the world, and they will not tell us which look we will prefer. Either camera, in the right hands, can produce great results.

Bateman · Apr 5, 2011

Hi, I have been lurking on this forum for a while and decided I'd better join after I saw this debate. I use a Nikon D700 with a 24 -70 f2.8 VRII lens. I also saw the Christopher Rimmer show In Africa when it was on in Melbourne and all I can say is that if he's using a D3X he's getting one hell of a lot more resolution than I'm getting with my D700 which is supposed to be 50% of the sensor of a D3x as I understand it. Pretty much all of the shots looked like film to me.

clay · Apr 5, 2011

I think most of the differences pretty much boil down to the lenses you are using. Really good lenses in combination with a good drum scan can yield some incredible results. I visited Yosemite a month ago, and shot a lot of images with my M Leica glass using FP-4/FX-37 as the film/developer combo. Drum scanned at 8000 dpi, they are every bit as sharp as anything my D3x can spit out, even at large print sizes. That said, if you could slap a 50/1.4 ASPH summilux on the D3x, it would be pretty impressive.

donbga · Apr 5, 2011

clay said:
I think most of the differences pretty much boil down to the lenses you are using. Really good lenses in combination with a good drum scan can yield some incredible results.

You make a great point Clay. I can only comment through vicarious experience though about the D3.

My local bud who shoots with the D3, D700, and his Leica M9 and who drum scans his film clearly favors his M9 theses days, in part due to the Bayer-less sensor and the excellent Leica glass.

Don

joburger63 · Apr 5, 2011

Clay, I need to learn more about scanning. Did you do the scan yourself or does a drum scan have to be done by a pro lab?

joburger63 · Apr 5, 2011

Actually, I just received an email from a lab and they said that they would do a 200 meg scan of my 120 negs $56.00 each. They say that this will enable me to make sharp A1 size enlargements.
I'm a bit confused, is the quality of a scan based on how many meg it is or the dpi as in the example Clay has provided here?

clay · Apr 5, 2011

I lucked into a good deal on a drum scanner a few years ago, so I make them myself. I use a Howtek HR8000 that will sample up to 8000 spi. The biggest difference you will notice with a drum scan versus a typical flatbed scan done at the same sampling interval is that the drum scanner is noticeably sharper. I think there are plenty of tests floating around the internet to show that even though you may be scanning at 4800 samples per inch on an Epson V750, your actual resolution is somewhere closer to 2000dpi. In short the actual maximum optical resolution on drum scanners and the very high end flatbed scanners is very close to the maximum stated resolution.

That said, I used a Nikon Coolscan 8000 before getting the drum scanner, and when you use both at 4000 spi, it is pretty hard to tell any huge difference over most of the scan. It does seem the drum scanners can dig out more detail from the extremes of your film - both in the highlight areas and the shadows. But I am sure that a skilled operator using either tool could get excellent results.

I have never understood exactly why scanning bureaus quote their scans in megs. It seems that samples per inch is the relevant number. Since 120 negs are often square, this means that X * X = 200Mb, (or approx 204,800,000 bytes) - square root of that is 14310 samples on a side. If you use the nominal 2.25 inches, that works out to be roughly 6360 samples per inch. This much true optical resolution is definitely attainable with a drum scanner. Now whether there is actually this much resolution present on the film due to the camera lens is another question altogether.

BTW, be sure and ask for 200MB worth of samples, and that these samples have 16 bits of information. This means that your actual file for a B/W monochrome neg will be twice the stated 200MB, and 6 times the stated size for a RGB file at 48bits per sample (16 bits each for Red, Green and Blue)

joburger63 · Apr 5, 2011

Thanks so much for this Clay, I have printed it out to ensure the lab I'm using understands what is required. I'm looking forward to trying out the hybrid road, the equipment is so much cheaper than high end DSLR.

L Gebhardt · Apr 6, 2011

I'm guessing that the lab's 200MB scan assumes 8bit color, so the resolution will not be 6360, but rather closer to 3500 based on 3 bytes per sample (RGB).

Eric Rose · Apr 6, 2011

I use a D700. Since perfecting my workflow my blads have been gathering dust for professional work. Big or little the prints from the D700 are superior in the areas mentioned on the OP. Preference for silver gel prints over inkjet is a whole other and unrelated question.

For my own personal work I shoot either the D700 or 4x5 B&W film. MF for me is a waste of time. If I want to print in the darkroom I will use 4x5.

markbarendt · Apr 9, 2011

joburger said:
When I agreed that he must find a high resolution DSLR more convienient for his type of work, he agreed but also added that the resolution he got with the D3x was equal or better than MF film taken with a Pentax 645N and produced better detail and tonal graduation as well.

Apples and oranges taste different too.

Resolution in the digital world is a variable. Camera data is brought into PS or some other program that resizes it and you have a new version in a different size.

This is not an option in the digital world because the native camera file size almost never matches the output size pixel for pixel. You may send a native file size to the printer but it is almost invariably resized before it hits the paper. We also don't always view files @ 100%, nor is 100% on a monitor a reasonable facsimile of a print.

The tonality and sharpness and all that jazz are similarly variables too.

So, given a reasonable starting point, native camera resolution doesn't mean much.

My point here is that they are different mediums and aren't necessarily supposed to provide the same result nor do they take the same work.

The meaningful differences lie elsewhere. One example:

Personally for production work; portraits, weddings, etc... I don't want to do ANY processing myself. Film in this case is actually easier for me to use. Drop it in a mailer and I get proofs and scans back ready to show the client without any extra effort. No down loading, no uploading, no computer time.

donbga · Apr 9, 2011

markbarendt said:
Drop it in a mailer

And your work gets lost in delivery.

So your client fires your ass because it got lost or your turn around time is incredibly slow compared to the competition.

Please, give us a break with this film vs. digital palaver.

Don

David A. Goldfarb · Apr 9, 2011

As I see it, one isn't really a substitute for the other. For work, where I'm usually shooting events and portraits for publicity and press, not fine prints, the priority is usually on quick turnaround, so I shoot digital (5D mkII), since I ultimately need to deliver a digital file. I keep a medium format camera at the office, though, for occasions when I don't have a deadline, and I'm just shooting for the files and want the look of film and the lens/DOF characteristics and microcontrast of MF. I can develop and scan those images at leisure and have them ready for when we need them in the future.

markbarendt · Apr 9, 2011

Don Bryant said:
Please, give us a break with this film vs. digital palaver.

Don

Come on Don,

Did I somehow mischaracterize the variability issues in viewing digital resolution?

Isn't it important to understand that input resolution has no direct or absolute link to output resolution?

Did I say film resolution was better?

What I am suggesting is that the comparison is problematic at best.

2F/2F · Apr 9, 2011

joburger said:
I was recently talking to a photographer who does child portraiture for a living. He has recently changed over from meduim format film to a Nikon D3x. When I agreed that he must find a high resolution DSLR more convienient for his type of work, he agreed but also added that the resolution he got with the D3x was equal or better than MF film taken with a Pentax 645N and produced better detail and tonal graduation as well.
Excluding any philosopical views on the tired digital vs film debate, has anyone on the APUG forum tested these two cameras next to each other purely to test the above criteria.
I'm a beginner but I would still be interested to know. Thanks, Sean

The D3X provides advantages to medium format film in at least some areas (arguably "many" areas). But resolution is not one of them. The D3X just surpasses amateur 4,000 ppi home Coolscan scans of 35mm film for resolution. Things like speed of turnaround, instant viewing, non-permanent editing, easy-to-use software, supply costs, high ISO work, low light work, the availability of very fast lenses, etc. are the big advantages. Not resolution. This is not an argument for medium format film for his work, considering that all of those factors I mentioned trump resolution in terms of importance to getting the job done well and efficiently.

Also, if the guy is getting better detail and resolution from the D3X despite this, it is not surprising. IMHO, it takes an extremely skilled, careful, and diligent person to get the very best out of film. There are so many areas where great technical skill and near perfection are required to get the best out of film, and, frankly, those who are at this level are few and far between, so most people will truly get "better" results on digital once you factor this in.

markbarendt · Apr 9, 2011

2F/2F said:
Also, if the guy is getting better detail and resolution from the D3X despite this, it is not surprising. IMHO, it takes an extremely skilled, careful, and diligent person to get the very best out of film. There are so many areas where great technical skill and near perfection are required to get the best out of film, and, frankly, those who are at this level are few and far between, so most people will truly get "better" results on digital once you factor this in.

Well said.

nolanr66 · Apr 25, 2011

I guess the important thing is the guy thinks the camera is really great. He spent the money on it so he should shoot it and be happy.

Meduim Format Film vs Nikon D3X

Moderator

Privacy & Transparency

Privacy & Transparency