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I have done a bit of testing in recent times as part of my look at the Nikon D100 D-SLR, mostly trying to beg, borrow and scam my way into getting some film scans done to make some comparisons. Digital capture and film capture are two separate beasts; however, many photographers feel the need to compare the two with film being the standard for digital capture to live up to. I doubt that there many left who do not believe that digital will eventually surpass and relegate film to the status of the dodo or at least, vinyl records (still around but on the fringes of society). 35mm format had already been surpassed critically by the ultra-expensive medium and large format digital backs of a few years ago, but their expense and limitations to the tethered studio environment made them less than useful for the majority of photographers. Now that is changing. With the initial reviews and first looks of the new Canon 1Ds, I think it is fairly safe to say that 35mm film is no longer a peak for digital to conquer and now the next mountain of medium format is being scaled. Again, there have been digital backs that have rivaled medium and even large format film but only within the confines of the studio. However, what everyone wants is a digital system that is as portable and rugged as the best film cameras available without a huge penalty in power consumption and more importantly, price. How much
longer will the film Everest and
And economics is the key right now barring even more widespread adoption of digital by the masses. When one-time use film cameras sell for less than $10 per 24 roll that is the bar that digital has to come down to for it to finally conquer film and relegate it to the lead bag of history. Enough psychic meanderings into the future no one knows about, what I really wanted to discuss is the notion that the current state of digital capture is good enough to rival 35mm or medium format output. I have always been skeptical about the notion that a Nikon D1, D1H or even the D1X and D100 have enough resolution to output a poster-size print and be meaningful enough in quality to compare to medium format, let alone 35mm. When I did the various bits of testing with the D100 and compared the output to scanned film, the details did even not match what an entry-level 35mm film scanner could retrieve from a fine-grain slide film. How on earth could 6 MP rival medium format as some have suggested on various forums on the Internet? Certainly no qualitative tests would indicate that digital capture as produced by the converted 35mm format bodies even come close to the line pairs per millimeter that the best 35mm lenses and sharpest films can retrieve. But then, who puts framed enlargements of air force test charts on their walls? The key appears to be a common qualifier used by those who would claim digital output being able to rival film, viewing distance. One does not view a poster-size 20x30 or larger print from mere inches away, or even at arms length distance. Proper viewing distance is going to be measured in feet for such large prints in order to allow them to “breath”. At proper viewing distances, a digital output, even from a mere 6 MP could indeed look as good as a print scanned from medium format. Get closer though, with your nose a mere foot away and you will see all the micro details in the film output that are either diminished or were never even resolved by the digital camera. Viewing on the monitor will make the discrepancies even more obvious; however, the key is that viewing on the monitor is definitely not the same as viewing on paper. At the typical 72 dpi screen resolution of many PC-based monitors, the output from 6 MP would be the same as a 27x41 inch print when viewed at 100% magnification. Editing an image through the monitor means being very close up so we can see all the details and this is fine because photographers generally nitpick about the details and try to extract all that our skills will allow for. However, it is rather ironic that all of this work could be for naught when we output to paper because we generally lose a bit of detail by printing the image and if large, the viewing distance will also affect an inability to see the details. So, on the basis of the qualifier, “from viewing distance”, I submit that my lowly Nikon D100 can match the quality of a scan from my 6x6 medium format. What did I do to put this into practice? Well, I do not own a large format printer such as the Epson 7600 or 9600 and I have no desire to order and pay for such a print from a custom lab and pay hundreds of dollars for prints I don’t really want.
I also did some small-scale prints in which I printed an 8x10 inch crop of 20x30 inch size equivalents for some quick and dirty comparisons. Once printed and put together, I placed the prints on the wall and started from a comfortable distance to take them all in (about four-feet away). Then I moved in closer and closer to where I could actually resolve the differences between the two different types of output, which was about 1.5 feet away. The results were in accordance with what many on the Internet have suggested that from proper viewing distances the digital output had a similar quality to the print from scanned medium format. Would I be satisfied with this kind of quality output, hell no, the devil’s in the details and as much as details are a pain to deal with and bring out; is this not why we use the best lenses we can afford on our format system of choice? And viewing distance is more about fooling the eyes into thinking that they see little to no differences by being far enough away that qualitative details cannot be discerned than it is about 6 MP output actually being good enough to compare to scanned film under critical scrutiny. My personal
biases and choices for my D100 output is to not go beyond about 12x18
inches and even then this would require Genuine Fractals interpolation
with extra sharpening needed for the print to look good. I’m going
to hold to around 10x15 or 11x14 inches as the appropriate maximum
output size for my D100 and keep in mind that all of this is strictly
my opinion and experiences with my eyes on this topic. You may well
be satisfied enough with what a 6 MP D-SLR can output for your large
printing needs. |
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Correspondence & About this website Copyright © 1998-2008 Edwin Leong |
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Edwin's
Vignettes -
Digital Print Perspective 
I
took my medium format scan image done through a Creo Eversmart and
reduced the print dpi from 300 to 240 to allow for