[filmscanners] Re: film and scanning vs digital photography

["R. Jackson" <jackson.robert.r@comcast.net>]

On Jul 1, 2007, at 6:00 PM, Laurie@advancenet.net wrote:

> Yes because you are mixing apples and oranges in your comparison.
> The D200
> and D2X produce a 35mm equivalent first generation capture; it does
> not need
> to be converted into a digital file after the capture by a second
> external
> process.   A 35mm film capture's quality after scanning will depend
> on the
> film uses, and how it was processed, for starters, and the scanning
> of the
> film will comprise the equivalent of a second generation capture
> with the
> possible introduction of noise, artifacts, and other degrading
> components
> during the scan.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's going to find this a little
suspect. I own a D200 and I like it quite a bit, but at the end of
the day I like a scanned Kodachrome/Velvia slide more most of the
time. Now, it's true that the slide may well end up being a
troublesome scan and may have dust or other artifacts that I'll have
to clean up and won't ever completely transfer to digital. There's
always going to be a percentage of what's on that transparency that
doesn't make it into the computer for whatever reason, but it's still
a pretty good source, IMO. At 4800 dpi a 35mm scan is 6255x4079.
That's over 25 megapixels. I can't really tell the difference between
a 4800 dpi scan and a 6400 dpi scan, so I never go higher than 4800
dpi, but it's still a pretty decent capture medium, IMO.

Not knocking digital. It's cool. Very convenient. Very high quality.
And I'd agree that the D200 is probably resolving as much detail as
film, more or less. It's just that film's detail extends down to its
grain structure and things that the lens didn't even necessarily
resolve, as well as having a different appearance in general than
electronic capture. A certain vibrance in things like afternoon
sunlight seems to be there on film that I, at least, have real
trouble duplicating with digital properly. The instant feedback is
very conducive to a sharp learning curve, though.

Robert Jackson
Santa Rosa, CA

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