The Fuji GFX100 and its ilk...

[George Mann]

You have still failed to provide evidence of your point.

A good slide viewed thru a good loupe (and light source) should provide you with all of the evidence that you need.

 

[Craig75]

People never learn...

 

[Ai Print]

I have seen many crappy and mediocre slides. And as many piss-poor digital images. That proves nothing beyond lack of the photographer's technical and artistic abilities and sometimes bad equipment. You have still failed to provide evidence of your point.

And he is not going to prove any point because there is none to prove now, that ship has sailed and the horse is beaten and dead.

I never used chromes to just view them on a light table, I used them because they were reproduced in magazines, for ads, for type R prints in display situations and they gave accurate rendition of the applied techniques.

In print or via electronic display, details rendered in slide film started taking a noticeable back seat to a 35mm sized sensor at just 11MP. The less saturated and contrasty slide films like Astia and Provia had a very nice if not complete color gamut but that is now very easily attained in print or on electronic display with any good 14 stop sensor. When using my Nikon Z7II or especially my CFVII 50c back with an excellent lens, those images in print or on electronic display give even 4x5 film a serious run for the money in terms of detail and tonal realism.

The debate is silly really, you use film because you love the process and the consistently unique look like I do. But for all out possibility, pliability, resolution and large scale print ability, high res digital sensors are the dominant force for a reason.

 

[NortheastPhotographic]

And he is not going to prove any point because there is none to prove now, that ship has sailed and the horse is beaten and dead.

I never used chromes to just view them on a light table, I used them because they were reproduced in magazines, for ads, for type R prints in display situations and they gave accurate rendition of the applied techniques.

In print or via electronic display, details rendered in slide film started taking a noticeable back seat to a 35mm sized sensor at just 11MP. The less saturated and contrasty slide films like Astia and Provia had a very nice if not complete color gamut but that is now very easily attained in print or on electronic display with any good 14 stop sensor. When using my Nikon Z7II or especially my CFVII 50c back with an excellent lens, those images in print or on electronic display give even 4x5 film a serious run for the money in terms of detail and tonal realism.

The debate is silly really, you use film because you love the process and the consistently unique look like I do. But for all out possibility, pliability, resolution and large scale print ability, high res digital sensors are the dominant force for a reason.

+1. We have long since passed the days where you could make ignorant statements like "well film is really xxx megapixels". Just stop. You can make beautiful film images, you can make beautiful digital images. It's all about what process and basic aesthetics you enjoy. Much of the dogma you hear online about the needs of film scans, resolution, digital images have met my daily reality of working with thousands of images for clients big and small. Turns out you really can make a big beautiful print from an 8 bit jpg produced from a minilab scanner. Blasphemy! Using high quality materials and techniques often pays off but it's not the end of the story. For me, I just want my choices of materials to stick around.

 

[George Mann]

And he is not going to prove any point because there is none to prove now, that ship has sailed and the horse is beaten and dead.

Until I see a digital imaging device that is as accurate, realistic and resolving of fine detail as film is capable of, I am going to have to continue to disagree.

However, I would be paying you'all a disservice by pretending that full capabilities of film can be conveniently and readily utilized.

I didn't start this thread to bash the camera in question, but to raise my concern once again that digital needs improvement in order to be as convincing.

As I have stated on this forum previously, there are several things that manufacturers need to change in order to achieve this goal.

The biggest thing to change is to do away with the Bayer filter array, which prevents the full native resolution of the sensor from being utilized, which will also eliminate the need for the imperfect, distortion-inducing reliance on interpolation.

Physical anti-aliasing filters should also be discarded as well.

The next thing that can be further improved upon is the pixel site itself, in order to make them more efficient at capturing the wavelengths more directly (which has proven to be a difficult challenge).

I believe that a whole new type of sensor may have to be developed to fully achieve this goal.

 

[George Mann]

Turns out you really can make a big beautiful print from an 8 bit jpg produced from a minilab scanner.

If you are referring to the Fuji Frontier series, which I believe to be the best color scanners for 35mm negatives, then yes, quite good.

 

[Pieter12]

#23 was right. I give up, it's not worth the effort.

 

[George Mann]

In the end, it all comes down to objective vs subjective.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

I have rarely seen one that failed to (do to some defect).

Speaking of high resolution, the GFX100 has a true native resolution of 34 megapixels, which IS close to the resolution of an 8k monitor.

The true resolution of film begins around the equivalent of 78 megapixels.

The resolution of slide film is much higher, while being the most true-to-life photographic medium.

If you think Velvia is true to life, I want some of the crack you're smoking. Nothing in the real world is that saturated.

 

[George Mann]

If you think Velvia is true to life, I want some of the crack you're smoking. Nothing in the real world is that saturated.

In which universe is Velvia the only slide film? I hate Velvia!

Ektachrome E100 will give you the most accurate and realistic results followed by Provia.

ADOX Scala will give you the highest resolution.

 

[Tom Kershaw]

If you think Velvia is true to life, I want some of the crack you're smoking. Nothing in the real world is that saturated.

Velvia acts as a colour amplifier in my experience. I think it probably depends on the saturation of the original scene as well.

 

[Sal Santamaura]

#23 was right. I give up, it's not worth the effort.

 

[George Mann]

Let me clarify my response in post #33 by saying that I see it one way, and you see it another.

So in the end, neither one of use is subjectively wrong.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

In which universe is Velvia the only slide film? I hate Velvia!

Ektachrome E100 will give you the most accurate and realistic results followed by Provia.

ADOX Scala will give you the highest resolution.

You referred to slide film as a monolithic entity- as in "slide film will do X". I pointed out Velvia as an example of "slide film" that is not color accurate, but rather hyper-saturated. Just be honest - you hate digital on an irrational basis. It's ok - you're allowed to have opinions. But I can tell you that a Fuji GFX100 has slide film color profiles built in (of course limited to Fuji offerings, but still) so I can get a file out of the camera that has the color palette of Provia, Astia, or Velvia, as well as the Fuji color negative film palettes too. Fuji is renowned for their color science. It's one of the reasons I switched my digital system to Fuji X-series cameras when I upgraded a few years ago.

 

[George Mann]

Just be honest - you hate digital on an irrational basis. It's ok - you're allowed to have opinions.

Not irrational, just unhappy with the engineering and performance of them.

 

[Pieter12]

Not irrational, just unhappy with the engineering and performance of them.

It strikes me as odd that people get worked up about digital photography (and the "real"-ness of any photography for that matter) when the retina works by a similar principal of photoreceptor cells that transmit a signal to the brain.

 

[grat]

Not irrational, just unhappy with the engineering and performance of them.

But based on an irrational standard. All you want is a digital camera that defies the laws of physics.

The Bayer array has been supplanted in some cases... Look up Sigma Foveon (which, because it doesn't use the Bayer array, also doesn't have an anti-aliasing filter). But it's still limited to essentially three primary colors, which makes it somewhat akin to film in nature-- just more regular and less organic in structure.

There are good reasons to shoot film. There are good reasons to shoot digital. Dynamic range and resolution effectively stopped being an issue for both some time ago.

 

[George Mann]

But based on an irrational standard. All you want is a digital camera that defies the laws of physics.

Actually, I want a digital camera that looks less like an electronic facsimile.

There are good reasons to shoot film. There are good reasons to shoot digital. Dynamic range and resolution effectively stopped being an issue for both some time ago.

I shoot slide film over digital because it looks more like the scenes I am photographing.

I don't enjoy viewing artificial electronic facsimiles.

I also don't enjoy listening to digitally recorded music for the same reasons.

 

[Pieter12]

I shoot slide film over digital

I am curious what those who still shoot slide film (and I will interpret that as 35mm only) do with those slides. How do you view them, and how often and for how long? They obviously can't be displayed or shared very easily. In the end, what is the point of such a "realistic" medium?

 

[Chan Tran]

I am curious what those who still shoot slide film (and I will interpret that as 35mm only) do with those slides. How do you view them, and how often and for how long? They obviously can't be displayed or shared very easily. In the end, what is the point of such a "realistic" medium?

Unlike George I don't say that film is better than my digital camera with merely 16MP. But since don't have the darkroom anymore I shoot slides. I project them with my ektagraphic projectors. I don't share my photos.

 

[George Mann]

How do you view them, and how often and for how long?

I view them under a high quality loupe, just long enough to savor its unmatched realism.

You only need to do it once to be totally satisfied.

what is the point of such a "realistic" medium?

The same point as spending ungodly amounts of money on audio systems in order to achieve the most realistic playback.

 

[grat]

Except it's not very Realistic. And most of their stuff was Kenwood, which could be good-- or bad (sorry-- used to work for the Shack a long time ago).

You've either got three dyes with some couplers and an orange mask producing something that can be turned into a normal image, or you're looking at a super-saturated, narrow dynamic range image, with a magnifying glass. Either way, the limiting factor is your eye, and I doubt you've got the optical chops to distinguish between a slide transparency and a high quality pigment print on transparency from, say, a GFX100, just to bend the conversation back towards the original topic.

A good digital image beats the crap out of a poor film negative (or slide), and vice versa.

 

[George Mann]

Except it's not very Realistic. And most of their stuff was Kenwood, which could be good-- or bad (sorry-- used to work for the Shack a long time ago).

What thread are you responding to?

 

[grat]

This one, but I threw in an obscure reference in reponse to:

what is the point of such a "realistic" medium?

The same point as spending ungodly amounts of money on audio systems in order to achieve the most realistic playback.

Realistic was the house brand for audio equipment at Radio Shack.

 

[George Mann]

Realistic was the house brand for audio equipment at Radio Shack.

OK. But I wasn't referring to mass produced, run-of-the-mill equipment.