[filmscanners] Re: Digi, film and scanning in movies

["Arthur Entlich" <artistic-1@shaw.ca>]

Well, I have been saying this for years, although I think the G3 and its
predecessors are some of the best non-SLR digital cameras on the market,
they have their shortcomings.  One thing to remember is that the actual
resolution of the chip in terms of the color, is considerably less than
the the stated 4 MP.  Every color digicam except the Sigma uses Bayer
interpolation pattern, as I am sure you know.   That means the color is
interpolated in literally every pixel, for two color elements based upon
its closest neighbor.  There are 25% R and B and 50% G color separating
CCD sensors in the chip.  So, although the luminosity is relatively
accurate for the image, the color information is still a lot of guesswork.

I am a great supporter of the Foveon technology, although for some
reason, and I believe it to be internal industrial politics, it has not
caught on.  Take a look at reviews and comparisons of the Foveon chip to
standard equivalent CCDs using the Bayer interpolation grid.  The Foveon
wasn't perfectly implemented by Sigma, but keep in mind it was their
very first digital camera, also.  I suspect no other digicam company was
willing to "offend" Sony or Kodak who supply the vast majority of the
CCD chips for digital cameras.  I really "wonder out loud" if the
digicam companies weren't warned that if they used the Foveon that might
have some supply problems with the normal channels they use.  Otherwise
I really can understand the unwillingness of other companies to use the
chip, which supplies superior results in most areas.

Anyway, I think digital cameras are here to stay, are great to learn on
due to the immediate feedback, save a lot on film and chemistry (and
environmentally), are perfect for snapshot takers who rarely, if ever go
beyond 5x7" prints, are fast for web and other digital applications, and
do some really amazing things with night and low light photography where
film tends to go massively grainy or just won't record well due to
reciprocity failures.  I'd love to see the Foveon chip get more
"exposure(s)" ;-) and for people to have a choice of cameras using that
technology, so we could see what it really can do.

Art

Frank Paris wrote:
> 22 megabytes is what you get from a raw scan (but 48 bit pixels), so 11
> megabytes by the time you convert it to 24 bits. Compare this with 60
> megabytes from my 4000 dpi scan of the film. Still, people were "saying"
> you could produce great 8x10 inch prints from this G3. If so, I don't
> know how to do it.
>
> I took the G3 out on a hike with my Nikon F100 loaded with Kodak Portra
> UC, which although touted as fine-grain for a 400 ASA film, is still
> fairly grainy. I took the same series of pictures with the G3 as I did
> with the Kodak. I tested the same prints from each camera out on "naive"
> eyes. Interestingly, upon first sight most people thought the prints
> from the G3 were sharper. But once I started talking about the prints,
> people saw the superiority of the print from film. It was smoother to
> the eye and when you looked realy close you could see more detail in the
> print from film. Putting a 3X glass on it revealed the blockiness of the
> print from the G3 and the continued presence of detail in the print from
> film. Thin branches showed a two-tone in the G3 print, but looked
> rounded and shaded in the film print. Initially, people mistook the
> two-tone as being sharper in the G3 print. But it was really lack of
> small detail and the presence of sharp edges along blocked up detail
> instead of gradual shading exhibited by the print.
>
> I was careful to get the colors and contrast the same in both prints,
> and indeed from a viewing distance of 3 feet they looked almost
> identical. When you stuck your eyes in them, however, the differences
> were obvious. It would be unethical to pass off the G3 print as
> professional quality. Not the film print.
>
> Frank Paris
> frankparis@comcast.net
>
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: filmscanners_owner@halftone.co.uk
>>[mailto:filmscanners_owner@halftone.co.uk] On Behalf Of Arthur Entlich
>>Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2003 4:29 AM
>>To: frankparis@comcast.net
>>Subject: [filmscanners] Re: Digi, film and scanning in movies
>>
>>
>>I guess one question is what is the file size coming from the
>>G3, in raw format?  Although much of a scanner's data may
>>consist of artifacts like grain, a 56-60 meg 8 bit file has
>>to have some useful content...
>>
>>Art
>
>
>


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