Is this the end of Nikon 35mm cameras?

[reprobate]

I think I read that Mamiya are replacing their medium format with digital. I know nothing about photography, I just know that film is being killed off by digital from what I have read on geek websites. I also watched a documentary on photography, the paparazzi, and how it is evolving. All the proffesionals on the documentary had switched to digital, apart from one guy who was put off by the post shot computer work than the idea of shooting in digital. There is a big difference between shooting for weddings and shooting for Saatchi and Saatchi.

Are you a film photographer, then?

 

[reprobate]

http://www.popphoto.com/article.asp?section_id=2&article_id=1469

Not long ago, most serious photographers dreamed of joining the elite club of pros who shot with 6x4.5cm or 21¼4-inch medium-format cameras. Why? Nearly all top wedding, portrait, and nature shooters favored medium format for its ability to produce higher-quality photos than the lightweight 35mm SLRs carried by photojournalists. But the image quality gap narrowed in the ’90s as 35mm slide and print films improved dramatically, showing clearly that good 35mm lenses surpassed most medium-format glass in sharpness. The digital SLR onslaught has further eroded the mystique of medium format, as most DSLRs to date have been designed to accept 35mm lenses. In this digital world, can medium-format systems survive?

Mamiya says “Yes!” and plans to steal back the hearts of pros with its new ZD digital SLR. (While no retail price had been set by press time, we estimate $12,500 street, body only.) The ZD is the first SLR that has an integrated, large-scale CCD sensor with 21.5MP effective resolution, and full compatibility with current AF and older manual-focus Mamiya lenses. But it shares many of the features, and even the looks, of a 35mm DSLR.

 

[5T3R30TYP3]

I would challenge anyone be able to tell the difference between a digital image and a comparable one shot on film

I accept this challenge. Obviously it depends on the kind of shot but a lot of the time it's obvious and some of the time it's easy if you know what to look for...

 

[zenie]

There is a big difference between shooting for weddings and shooting for Saatchi and Saatchi.

Are you a film photographer, then?

That all depends on what weddings you are doing really now doesn't it?

Bit of a sweeping generalisation I feel.

Yeh I must have about 5 or 6 different manual film cameras, I love them. But no I'm not a photograher nor do I claim to be.

They're dependable, they feel 'right' in your hands, there's always the element of surprise with them.

I did have a DSLR a D70 (which I may or may not get back this week) and I did love it. But I just dont get the wow factor when I take photo's with it.

Horses for courses.

 

[wordie]

What kind of current DSLR spec gives you the 'equivalent' quality (ignoring digital issues like how it handles blown highlights and noise) of a 35mm SLR?

My impression from doing a bit of reading around this, is that while digital is starting to be considered equivalent to 35mm and increasingly used by those professionals who might previously have used 35mm SLR (e.g. wildlife types and photojournalists rather than e.g. landscape types, who might tend to use medium or large format cameras), we're mostly talking about something like a top of the line Nikon or Canon DSLR and not the £500-ish consumer models.

In terms of at least an equivalent to 35mm film or slide quality, if I was in the market for a DSLR that gave me exceptional quality images, I'd be looking at the Canon EOS 5D It's a 12.8MP, full frame 35mm sensor. And yeah, it's a bit more than £500... but not that much more for what you get!

Many sports photographers swear by the EOS 1D Mkll, which is an 8.2MP camera and shoots 8.5 frames per sec. Then there's the 11.1MP, EOS IDs which has been used quite extensively in studios for fashion work. This has been mostly superceded by the full frame, 35mm sensor, 16MP, EOS IDs Mll.

Those are professional high end DSLR's all of them. And they will all produce images that are as good if not way better than 35mm film. The 1Ds Mkll has had it's images compared to some 6x4 MF cameras! The EOS 5D (body only) can be found for less than £2000. The EOS 1Ds Mkll is around £4500.

That said, the EOS 350D with 8MP, and the 8.2MP, EOS 20D are perfectly adequate for most standard print and publishing image qualities (say 300dpi) and can be had for around £500 and £750 respectively.

Why the price differences? Camera spec and build quality mainly. The EOS 1D Mkll has (with extra strapped on hardware) wireless transfer ability (as do Nikon) which allows images to be transferred direct from the camera, to a picture desk via a laptop. A vital piece of kit in the deadline obsessed sports photography field. (And strangely enough, the papparazzi business as well!)

Oh, and all of the above can use the entire Canon EF lens system.... not cheap, but very, very good glass.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

OK, so assuming you've got good lenses, the difference between consumer and pro DSLRs seems to be mainly a matter of print size and build quality, rather than image quality per se?

So the right question, concentrating only on image quality, would presumably be more like 'how large a 300dpi print can you make from 35mm film vs any given DSLR?'

I know how to calculate that for any given DSLR, but what's the max print size for 35mm film, say Velvia?

 

[reprobate]

That all depends on what weddings you are doing really now doesn't it?

Bit of a sweeping generalisation I feel.

Yeh I must have about 5 or 6 different manual film cameras, I love them. But no I'm not a photograher nor do I claim to be.

They're dependable, they feel 'right' in your hands, there's always the element of surprise with them.

I did have a DSLR a D70 (which I may or may not get back this week) and I did love it. But I just dont get the wow factor when I take photo's with it.

Horses for courses.

No more sweeping than your generalisation earlier in the thread surely. About film being better than digital, (which has subsequently been described as dog poo and not the case)? I just thought if you had such a strong opinion then it must be based on experience or a long standing hobby.

I only own an old SLR, I like it and it does its job. If I was into photogrpahy to warrant spending more than the cost of getting Boots to develop my prints, then I would buy a digital compact

P.S

Why do you always roll your eyes?

 

[ViolentPanda]

While I mourn the loss of Nikon film bodies and manual focus lenses, it's obviously a cost effectiveness move isn't it. I'm sure there are those at Nikon that hate to see film go as well.

However, it may not be all bad. Perhaps it will allow Nikon to concentrate on making digital 35mm as good as film 35mm.

IIRC from a camera repair mailing list I subscribe to, Nikon sold over 7 million dSLRs worldwide last year against half a million 35mm SLRs. They're playing the money game, pure and simple.

 

[wordie]

I accept this challenge. Obviously it depends on the kind of shot but a lot of the time it's obvious and some of the time it's easy if you know what to look for...

Well aside from the fact that most magazine covers are shot digitally (this month Arena has a really crappy, over manipulated shot of Evangeline Lilly as an example) how about this poster? It's 1600 sqm on two sides of a building at Frankfurt airport. Was the phone shot on film or digitally?

And without knowing exactly what posters are currently on display along the Cromwell Road on the way to Heathrow, I'd put good money on the majority having been shot digitally!

I wouldn't disagree that a lot of the time it's obvious if you know what to look for. That doesn't necessarily equate to digital being of inferior quality to film. However, most of the people looking at commercial photography don't know what to look for. And that, as much as anything has led to the change..... a dumbing down of perceived quality if you like.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Aha, I found this rather useful page at Luminous Landscape which puts things on a rather more objective basis, using a sensible-looking information theoretic approach. The author estimates the megapixel equivalent for Velvia and Provia (at 35mm 21.4 mp and for 645 Provia, 58.4 mp) but then normalises on the basis of noise in order to estimate the amount of information in each sample. This means it handles the difference between a noisy compact camera sensor and the less noisy sensor in a DSLR of the same megapixel rating. It also means it takes account of digital's reduced noise over film grain at an equivalent ISO.

This then allows a calculation of the largest maximum quality print for each sample, with no interpolation.

645 Fuji Provia 100F = 24x30"
35mm Fuji Provia 100F = 13x19" (approx)
10mp DSLR (e.g. current semi-pro models) = 13x19" (approx)
6mp DSLR (e.g. current consumer models) = 11x15"
5mp 'bridge' camera (example was Sony 707) = 8x11"

These figures assume that the film is scanned at high quality and processed in photoshop, otherwise this approach would give slightly lower perceptible information content estimates for film.

The conclusion seems to be that someplace around 10mp, a DSLR is the rough equivalent of good quality 35mm film like Provia or Velvia and the current top-end pro models would be doing rather better than 35mm film, but still lagging quite a bit behind the same film type in medium format.

It may be no coincidence that Nikon made this announcment shortly after shipping the 10mp semi-pro D200, priced at just over a grand body-only.

Obviously though, this approach focusses on the amount of perceptible information in the sample, rather than on the different characteristics of film and digitial (e.g. the way digital clips blown highlights etc)

I'd be quite interested to see if this corresponds reasonably well with the subjective evaluations of all the experienced photographers around here.

 

[5T3R30TYP3]

OK, so assuming you've got good lenses, the difference between consumer and pro DSLRs seems to be mainly a matter of print size and build quality, rather than image quality per se?

So the right question, concentrating only on image quality, would presumably be more like 'how large a 300dpi print can you make from 35mm film vs any given DSLR?'

I know how to calculate that for any given DSLR, but what's the max print size for 35mm film, say Velvia?

That's a hard question to answer. It's gonna take me a while to answer it...

The constraints are different for each format. Let's start with an image from a 36mm x 24mm sensor. Assuming that we must print the digital image at 300dpi without increasing its size with interpolation software or any other method, there is a definite, calculable maximum size of print which is dependent on the camera's pixels (as you know).

With optical, photographic prints from film, there is no definite maximum size. You could make a print as big as a house if you wanted to, and it would probably look good and sharp from far away. Whether the small details in the picture would be sharp enough to be recognizable close-up is a different matter. When viewed close-up, sharp edges would appear less sharp, there'd be no fine detail, the film grain would be hugely magnified.

So it depends on the subject, and the detail in the picture, and the size of the detail, and how important the detail is.

I'm not sure if that answers the question. But I tried.

As far as I know, there is a way of calculating a film's resolution, which is lines per millimetre, if I remember correctly (actually I think that's for lens resolution... forget it), you could probably convert this to dpi and then work out how large a 300dpi image you could make. With an ISO 50 film like velvia I would expect this to be huge...

 

[Bernie Gunther]

See my post above this one. The approach described uses the modulation transfer function then normalises for noise, to get an estimate of the perceptible information contained in the sample.

It predicts an 'equivalent' quality to Velvia or Provia 35mm at around 10mp, which oddly enough is the rating of the 'affordable' D200 Nikon just launched.

 

[5T3R30TYP3]

See my post above this one. The approach described uses the modulation transfer function then normalises for noise, to get an estimate of the information contained in the sample (rather than just the number of pixels)

It took me ages to think about what I was writing so it's no wonder you got in there first.

I'm actually quite surprised that 13" x 19" is the maximum, best quality print size for Provia 100. That's only a little bit larger than A3 paper (which is about 12" x 17"). If you place a 35mm slide on an A3 piece of paper it's pretty amazing that you can get something that large out of something so small.

Never mind this maximum size thing though. I'd print pictures at 24" x 36" or even 48" x 72" if I could afford it, and stick them on my wall. They wouldn't be maximum quality according to the article but they'd still look damn good.

I'd suspect that a black and white film with the same speed (e.g. T-Max or Delta) would do better than a colour film, and that a colour neg film would do worse.

 

[5T3R30TYP3]

I wouldn't disagree that a lot of the time it's obvious if you know what to look for. That doesn't necessarily equate to digital being of inferior quality to film.

Agreed.

 

[5T3R30TYP3]

By the way I think an interesting thing to think about is which would look better (or which would look less bad) when printed larger than the maximum size.

 

[wordie]

OK, so assuming you've got good lenses, the difference between consumer and pro DSLRs seems to be mainly a matter of print size and build quality, rather than image quality per se?

So the right question, concentrating only on image quality, would presumably be more like 'how large a 300dpi print can you make from 35mm film vs any given DSLR?'

I know how to calculate that for any given DSLR, but what's the max print size for 35mm film, say Velvia?

Well Bernie, I'm sure there are equations out there that would allow you to make that comparison, although I don't have them.

Let's go back to a good quality 35mm film slide. And let's take a standard printing process. I wouldn't want to print that slide any bigger than say A4, although you could print it up to A3 and even beyond. I would expect the quality and sharpness of the image to fall off significantly between those sizes! It depends on where your perceptions of quality kick in, what you need the print for, the medium that it'll be printed on, not to mention the type of image, etc.

Imagine a 35mm slide, actually sitting on a piece of A4 paper. The paper represents how much you need to expand the image on the slide. Now tell me how good/sharp the focus on your slide is!

I could take that 35mm slide and print with a different process and still get acceptable print quality at much greater sizes that A3. And that would be on a different medium than say, standard magazine paper stock. Glosss, semi-gloss or matt stock? Coated, laminated or art paper? Brillaint white or something else?

Now let's take say an 8MP digital image. (And similar parameters to above, apply here as well.) Personally I would probably put the same restrictions on printing size as with the 35mm slide, although you could print much bigger than A3, and given an image of sufficient quality, (in terms of lack of noise and overall sharpness) you could interpolate that image by say 50% (making it effectively 12MP) and print even bigger. But if you were going to those sizes you'd probably use a different printing process... to maximise quality.

No, I don't think it's as simple as comparing 35mm film material with however many megapixels a DSLR offers you. Personally I'd always get as many pixels as I could afford and try to get a full 35mm sensor, to avoid the 1:6 lens crop ratio attached to the smaller sensors. (And of course, there are other buying criteria to take into account as well.)

If it helps at all, amongst other things, I'm shooting 16MP images with a DSLR, that are being printed on plastic and stretched across buildings.... and they look great from 150 feet away! From 2 feet away they look like shit!

Question: What do you want to do with your camera? If it's commercial, then 35mm film was never that much in favour anyway... other than photojournalism and sports reportage. If it's prints you want to make, frame and sell, then you can get exceptional quality from digital, with (I would suggest) less hassle and cost, than with 35mm film... albeit without the darkroom and hand printing magic!

If it's simply for the fun of photography, you probably don't need a pro DSLR. But the difference between the semi-pro and pro stuff is blurring more and more. No bad thing either!

Sorry I couldn't answer your question. Maybe someone else can, but it's one of those "How long's a piece of string... " jobbies I think.

Note on interpolation: Some image stock libraries won't accept submitted images that have NOT been interpolated up to 48MB from an approximate 17MB/6MP image!



You see, according to your posts above this one, you guys are way ahead of me....

 

[chooch]

Never mind this maximum size thing though. I'd print pictures at 24" x 36" or even 48" x 72" if I could afford it, and stick them on my wall. They wouldn't be maximum quality according to the article but they'd still look damn good.

I've had some poster size prints from 35mm velvia that have looked just wonderful. To my eyes. Which I'm not vouching for

 

[mauvais]

I did have a DSLR a D70 (which I may or may not get back this week) and I did love it. But I just dont get the wow factor when I take photo's with it.

I have one, and I agree. However, it's simply cos you have to do post processing on them. I wrote about this not so long ago: http://urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=146249&page=2

 

[Bernie Gunther]

<snip> Question: What do you want to do with your camera? If it's commercial, then 35mm film was never that much in favour anyway... other than photojournalism and sports reportage. If it's prints you want to make, frame and sell, then you can get exceptional quality from digital, with (I would suggest) less hassle and cost, than with 35mm film... albeit without the darkroom and hand printing magic!

If it's simply for the fun of photography, you probably don't need a pro DSLR. But the difference between the semi-pro and pro stuff is blurring more and more. No bad thing either!<snip>

What I'm mainly interested in is nature and flower photography and hence printing stuff like macro shots of my roses up and sticking them on the wall. So that had me speculating a bit about whether I'd get better results from some of the nice, relatively cheap, film cameras (SLR because that seems to be about the optimum format for macro) that are around at the moment. I currently use an Olympus 5060 and a Fuji compact which I'm generally pretty happy with.

What the analysis I linked to suggests is that highest quality print size (I'm keen on really sharp macro shots, although I'm seldom capable of achieving them except by accident) for the 5060, which is my main camera for taking flower photographs, is about A4, which seems to me more or less accurate.

It also suggests that I'd get about double that size at the same quality with Velvia in a £300 quid FM3A and about the same image quality from a £1200 Nikon D200 or other 10mp 'ish DSLR. Assuming the other costs, lenses etc, were equal, that's a quite considerable saving, in terms of the up front cost.

I guess though, if you assume lab costs for developing and scanning are about £10 per roll, you only have to shoot about 100 rolls of film before you've made up the difference. The obvious alternative is to develop your own film, but then there's a hassle factor involved as well as getting the various sorts of gear required.

So, using myself as a test case, I think I'm reasonably convinced that for a keen amateur, digital is more or less at the point where it'd replace film for the sort of application where one would actually want to use an SLR in preference to either a medium or large format camera or a compact camera. It's already replaced film in the snapshot market and it's obviously starting to creep up on the medium format cameras, at least for those professionals who can afford cameras or camera backs that cost £10-20k.

I think I'm going to stick with my Olympus for now though

 

[wordie]

So, using myself as a test case, I think I'm reasonably convinced that for a keen amateur, digital is more or less at the point where it'd replace film for the sort of application where one would actually want to use an SLR in preference to either a medium or large format camera or a compact camera. It's already replaced film in the snapshot market and it's obviously starting to creep up on the medium format cameras, at least for those professionals who can afford cameras or camera backs that cost £10-20k.

Sounds about right. Bear in mind though that a lot of professionals don't actually buy their equipment... they hire it. Even a 12.3 MP Fuji S3 Pro costs from £65 per day direct from Fuji. Although I've never used them and don't know the ins and outs. Might be worth a look.... despite a very steep learning curve on a new camera.

Any good camera mag has small ads in the back offering camera and equipment hire.

 

[wordie]

http://www.popphoto.com/article.asp?section_id=2&article_id=1469

Not long ago, most serious photographers dreamed of joining the elite club of pros who shot with 6x4.5cm or 21¼4-inch medium-format cameras. Why? Nearly all top wedding, portrait, and nature shooters favored medium format for its ability to produce higher-quality photos than the lightweight 35mm SLRs carried by photojournalists.

Yeah, many moons ago I aspired to the ancestor of one of these! Ah, happy days....

 

[ViolentPanda]

Yeah, many moons ago I aspired to the ancestor of one of these! Ah, happy days....

Did you have the wooden handgrip on yours?

 

[wordie]

Did you have the wooden handgrip on yours?

Well I think they all came with that wooden grip... but like I said, I "aspired"... I didn't fulfill my aspiration unfortunately, but as you can see from my image, they're still around and being purchased!

 

[Pie 1]

How many 22MP shots on a 1GB CF card? Not many I'd bet.

Think it was about 25 - 30!
I was using it teathered though.

It was lovely bit of kit. I usually use the Imacon's but I'm definatly sold on the Aptus now

 

[Pie 1]

Digital is great for non commercial work but start playing with the big boys doing editorials that need fine fine detail with massive resolution and you just cant beat film (MF or LF ideally)

Sorry zenie, don't know who you've been talking to, but it's bollocks.

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

that makes me feel very sad and agree with ed on the build side of things.

having said that, I'm only going to get really freaked if fuji/kodak/ilford start winding down on film and it's price starts to go up dramatically....

haven't ilford already stopped doing bw flim and chemicals.. i'm sure i read this recently...

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

I can only go by what I've been told my best mate is a pro and she still uses film for portraiture (ie mug shots) for mags.

Another mate who is a pro says he still uses film for it too something to do with quality of skin tone.

With all due respect Hasselblads are the completely other end of the scale form people that are learning photography and going out and buying 300d's and d50's ey?

rubbish ...

there are a number of photographers who preffer film to digital but there is no reason that you cannot set up you digital camera propperly that you can't get the skin tone propperly, it's noticeable that most of my pap mates all use 1d mark2 ds as standard and d20'sor d5's as back ups ... the comparisions between these and film are frankly nil... there could be a comparison to draw if you were to full size and image bigger than a0 but tbh you never view that close up as it's big on a billboard...

 

[Stanley Edwards]

haven't ilford already stopped doing bw flim and chemicals.. i'm sure i read this recently...

No. Ilford have actually stated that they will be reintroducing some discontinued lines as well as introducing new lines in film and chemicals for B&W photography.

Kodak have moved film production to China I think(?). But, they have started to drop non-profitable lines. But, they've done that in digital also - the stopped production of DSLR's - so, possibly Kodak's problem.

FujiFilm seem to continue with all out promotion of film and have recently introduced new films.

 

[Robster970]

No. Ilford have actually stated that they will be reintroducing some discontinued lines as well as introducing new lines in film and chemicals for B&W photography.

Kodak have moved film production to China I think(?). But, they have started to drop non-profitable lines. But, they've done that in digital also - the stopped production of DSLR's - so, possibly Kodak's problem.

FujiFilm seem to continue with all out promotion of film and have recently introduced new films.

I think Stan has said that on an older thread hence me not thinking Ilford were pulling out.