Howard wrote:
Thinking about Karl's comments below, and the article, I realise that I
must never make "big" prints - from my old D100 or even really, from my
new D80.... =-O
Now I accept the maths totally. Can't argue!
But I do make those size prints, and visually I swear that the A3 prints
I have made from my D100 are far far better than the same size prints I
have had made from my older 35 mm Nikons, in terms of colour fidelity,
lack of noise sharpness and detail.
But visually, I would rather look at an A3 print from my old D100 than
one from my 35 mm Nikons or FD Canons. And that is comparing it to f=50
standard lenses on film cameras with 100 ISO film.
Just as everyone complains about image noise in today's digital cameras,
have a look at the grain from similar ISO films. Are they really that
much different? Or worse? Perhaps someone in the group can answer that.
But the D100 produces surprisingly low noise A3 enlargements even at ISO
800 whereas I'd never dare make an A3 print using ISO 800 colour films.
Has anyone in fact compared high ISO digital images to high ISO film
results?
At HIGH ISO, the digital is *so* much better. The difference gets even
bigger in tungsten lighting (which is where essentially all my high ISO
images are taken; I don't know what was wrong with the film
manufacturers to make nothing but *daylight* film at high ISOs, when all
the low-light conditions I found to shoot in were tungsten lit).
Are your film prints that you're comparing to made to comparable
standards, by an equally good printer (that's the person doing the
printing)? And are they from modern film, or from decades old film? I
strongly suspect that my low opinion of slower films is skewed by not
having done much with the modern versions.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b@xxxxxxxx; http://dd-b.net/dd-b
Pics: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum,
http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery
Dragaera: http://dragaera.info
