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With digital television, there is even the opportunity for consolidation. But do you think that anyone will want to let go their standard ? No way... It's sad to have to go through another VHS/Betamax debacle all over again. Some people/industries will never learn.

First off, 10MP in the pro digital arena is considered entry level, not high-end. Digital backs that do upwards of 16MP are common, though wildly expensive (15k or so, last I checked, here's a review).

If you take a good, low-noise 10MP camera, though, and shoot the same shot as a film camera, you're going to find that modern printers who have modern software scaling capabilities will give you 8x10 prints that are arguably better than you would get from film. Certainly no worse. The key is in the scaling techniques used. Film scaling has progressed over the decades from simple magnification to an imensely sophisticated process. Only recently have digitial scaling processes begun to become this sophisticated.

With capabilities like this, you would still need a great deal of work before, during and after shooting and patience along with it, to get a shot comparable to an Adams... interestingly, so did he.

Why don't you just read what a landscape photographer has to say about it? In his comparison, the Canon 1Ds full frame 35mm digital camera "blows away" 35mm film and comes close to MF. That shows you what digital sensors are capable of.

I doubt Adams would have been hung up on the specifics of black-and-white film; if he was, he just wouldn't be relevant today. He would probably be using the best technology for making spectacular images of nature, and that is clearly digital at this point. He'd probably be using cameras like this one, or he'd be compositing multiple DSLR images. He'd be dealing with the idiosyncracies of digital just like he was dealing with the idiosyncracies of black-and-white when that was the thing.

You can get away with much less than this. This article compares a 10MP digital versus medium format film on a drum scanner.

Not to mention that there isn't a decent system for printing b&w from digital yet.

I'm surprised that this article even made /. to begin with. It is very, very superficial look at the question it asks. For those truly interested there is lots of information available easily on the web at sites like http://www.luminous-landscape.com/ and http://www.37thframe.com/

The real story with digital is that medium format is dead. Large format still isn't touched by it,
so don't sell your 4x5 view camera just yet, but that Hasselblad is a goner in 5 years unless you switch to a digital back for it.

digital cameras still come nowhere near the resolution of regular film

Uh, no. 11 megapixels is higher resolution and overall much better quality than film. The myth you're repeating was comprehensively shot down by the Canon 1Ds field report last year: "There is no area in which 35mm film scans are superior". Read the entire report, ignore the largely clueless commentary that greeted it on Slashdot. (Key point: yes, film is analog, but the grain of film causes worse artifacts than a high-res digital sensor.)

However, that particular camera still costs nearly $7000!

35mm film is nowhere near a gigapixel resolution, sure you could scan the film grain, but it's film grain you're getting not useful information. I could equally well enlarge any image in photoshop for no extra detail, it's just as pointless. I doubt even large isn't going to get you there. Look at online comparrisons between a 1Ds (~11 Mpix) and medium format here:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/ 1ds/1ds-field.shtml

As you can see film doesn't catch all the detail some people seem to think around here.

I've also done my own 35mm film tests with provia iso100 shooting digital test cards & scanned at 4000dpi and concluded that ~12Mpix would be the equivalent of 35mm high res provia, but you have to ignore some issues with film, like noise in the darker portions of the image. Digital in a 1Ds is already significantly better in a number of areas at slightly less resolution than my conclusions at the time, and noise get's worse at higher iso films or push processing and a 1Ds really starts to kick ass.

On top of this scanning is a laborious and expensive proposition.

So, both of those issues need consideration. At the moment, a full-frame 35mm DSLR costs big bucks, but the prices will continue to fall. In the meantime, if you can live with the focal length and depth of field issues, the Digital Rebel is a really nice way to break into DSLR photography. If you have any good SLR experience, you can essentially ignore the built-in modes, and go directly to (P)rogram, (A)perature prefered, (T)ime prefered, or (M)anual.

Also, spend a bit more and get the 550EX flash, that gives you some manual modes. You can use it to add 2nd curtain and high-speed sync back to the Digital Rebel. It also has a nice near-IR focus assist light, which beats the way the Rebel uses the built-in flash (flash, flash, flash) as a poor-man's focus assist. If you are really wiley, you can coerce the Rebel into using the 550ex for focus assist, but not use the flash, for museum photography, and other low-light situations where a flash is prohibited or not desirable.

I had a blast a couple of weekends ago, night shooting the American Niagra Falls from a balcony room on the Canadian side. Exposures ran from 10 to 15 seconds at f/8, using an older 70-210 f/4 lens. A large, stable tripod and remote control for this is a must! Shot RAW, and post-processed in Capture 1 DSLR Rebel edition ($29). Wonderful pictures.

One last thought. If you are really into long exposure/long lens landscape photography, consider that the Digital Rebel lacks mirror lock-up. This might be enough to cause you to reconsider, although I've not detected a vibration problem, yet, probably because I'm not using 'L' lenses at high focal lengths. My lenses are probably too soft, to be able to see any effect from mirror vibration.

The 10D only costs about $700 more (sans lens), and you might not care for the $100 18-55 zoom that comes with the Rebel kit, anyway. If you already have a nice collection of Canon glass, you could make do with what you have, and get a better body (like the 10D). I was starting from scratch, having only an old Olympus SLR, pre-auto focus, so none of the lenses would have done me much good. After looking over the reviews and comments on The Luminous Landscape, I decided to go with Canon lenses and equipment. In particular, Canon DSLR's have a very impressive noise factor at ISO 400, usually better than other manufacturer's cameras at ISO 100. This can make all the difference in the world when trying to get that elusive shot in available darkness.

The 11 megapixel Canon 1Ds seem to be much better than 35mm and almost as good as medium-format; here's a review. I don't think Nikon has an equivalent camera out yet, but I have all Canon gear (a D60 at the moment) so I haven't been paying much attention.

The 11 megapixel Canon 1Ds seem to be much better than 35mm and almost as good as medium-format; here's a review. I don't think Nikon has an equivalent camera out yet, but I have all Canon gear (a D60 at the moment) so I haven't been paying much attention.

Digital cameras with large sensors such as the Canon EOS D60 have much less noise/grain than film, so their image quality matches 35mm film at around 6 megapixels.

For a technical discussion, see:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/dq.sht ml

almost forgot... read this link to see his conclusions

Check out this link at the Luminous-landscape. He is a well known pro photographer who stoped using this medium format equipment in favor of the 11megapixel Canon D1s. Very in depth artical with many real life comparisons.

It's just polite to make such links both active and accurate (extraneous spaces in both links -- probably inserted by slashdot because you tried to submit the URLs as plain text).

If you are an amateur digital photographer then conversion speed may not be as important to you as it is to Mr. Galbraith. His site is for professional photographers. Folks that will, at times, takes thousands of photos in a week. For these people the speed of conversion is critical.

As an example, Micheal Reichman at the luminous landscape recently shot 1,700 frames (13 gig!) in less than four days. Each of those images has to be converted from raw format to a useable rgb format as well as the normal image editing processes (unsharp mask, levels, etc.). For Michael and for people like him, conversion and raw processing speed matters.

Benchmarks are only useful if they test something that is important or useful to you. This test was pretty well focused on the needs of digital photographers who have a high volume of images to process. If that's not you then no worries.

I once estimated that you'd need around 60 MP to equal film. But the signal-to-noise is so low in some digital imaging sensors that you don't such extreme resolution to have comparable image quality. See the Digital Camera Image Quality page.

Also, check out the Canon EOS-1Ds review where this 11 MP camera's image quality comparable to 35 mm film.

The minilab system that is widely regarded as the best is the Fuji Frontier system. How does it work? By scanning film. Of course, it accepts files from digital cameras as well.

What is the best way to get large, "professional" prints? The Lightjet. How do these operate? Using very high quality scans! (See West Coast Imaging, for example). My point? You can already get digital images produced in the exact same manner as the best film prints.

There are already a lot of people who think digital photography has surpassed even medium format photography. See the Luminous Landscape, for example.

As for widespread adoption, photojournalists have all but abandoned film. The P&S crowd is already beginning to abandon film.

> I want to take pictures of the night.

read this --
http://luminous-landscape.com/techniques/leonide s- 2002.shtml

Well, I already posted this a bit further down, but here it is anyway: A site about photographing the Leonid 2002 Meteor Shower.

Seriously though, I know I plan on attempting to take some pictures this year, and hopefully something will turn out. For those of you complaining about a full moon, the moon doesn't rise until late in the night, which should give plenty of good photography time, particularly for those of us on the west coast.

If anyone else is interested in this sort of thing but isn't sure how to get started or what you need, this very good beginner's guide makes for good reading.

Since it seems like many of the folks who have posted here haven't read the it yet, perhaps an excerpt from this quite lengthy and detailed article might cast some illumination on the subject. If you're have any interest in photography, a visit to the site will be rewarding if only to view the lovely photographs.

Quote from Luminous Landscapes

[snip text]

What would a Luminous Landscape digital camera test be without a comparison with film? With an 11MP imaging chip producing a 32MB file, and full frame to boot, the 1Ds cries out for a direct comparison. This is the first thing that I was interested in testing. So, here it is.

[snip photo]

Above is a view of part of downtown Toronto taken with the 1Ds. I took the same shot with a Pentax 645NII, a Canon 1V and a Canon D60. (There's no point is showing the 35mm and 645 film versions since at this size they're essentially indistinguishable). The digital frames were shot at ISO 100 and the film was Provia 100F. Film scans were done with an Imacon Flextight Photo scanner at 3200 PPI. As I've stated before, this scanner is as good as and likely superior to the film scanners that most photographers use.

[snip some more photos]

The difference in size between the 1Ds' 31MB file and the scan at 35mm is negligible. But what can be clearly seen is that the 1Ds' image is significantly higher resolution than that of the the scan. (Note that the same lens Canon 70-200mm f/2.8l IS lens was used at the same aperture, and because the 1Ds is full-frame the image size recorded is identical (no magnification factor to confuse things. The difference in resolution is therefore solely due to the camera / imager and no other factor). Also, the 1Ds' digital image clearly has less "grain". The sky is essentially noiseless. Not so at this magnification for the 35mm film.

The 645 scan clearly can produce a significantly larger file, and while the resolution seems more or less comparable to the 1Ds', again the grain in the sky is clearly inferior.

Now, before you start jumping up and down saying that this is confusing and unfair because the sizes are different, below is the 645 scan reduced so that it is the same size as the 1Ds image. On my screen at least (and in test prints) the resolution is not as good as that of the 1Ds and the grain in the sky is still visible.

[snip photo]

What does this all mean? Here's what I see on prints, not just on the JPGs that I've created for this page, but real-world 11X17" and 13X19" prints made on an Epson 2200. In any print size up to 13X19" (Super A3), prints made from the 1Ds are sharper and have less grain than those from 35mm or 645 film scans. There is no area in which 35mm film scans are superior, and the 645 scan is only superior in terms of its ability to make prints larger than 13X19".

Frankly, my initial impression of 1Ds images is extremely positive. There are still many things to explore, but I find little to fault at this point, and much to be very impressed with.

[snip text]

Finally, resolution is but one factor to consider. Noise (grain) is in my opinion of as much if not more significance, and digital files from cameras like the D30, D60, 1D and 1Ds are clearly superior to film in this regard at 100 ISO, and at higher speeds there's no contest -- film loses hands down. Dynamic range is another critical factor, and I plan to explore that further over the next few days.

[snip]

You're absolutely right about CMOS vs CCD. What's insane is that this is CMOS! Now we'll get to see what another manufacturer can do with the way-cool technology let Canon blow past it's competitors. (Info from http://www.dpreview.com/news/0209/02092304kodakdcs 14n.asp)

And for those interested, read this review on the D30 about why MP quality at luminous-landscape.

Interesting, I've found the exact opposite to be true. I'm going to first assume you're talking about slide film, which has a dynamic range of about four stops, since that's what most people are shooting professionally (save for photojournalists and wedding photographers).

I've found that the shadow detail in digital cameras (specifically the canon d60) can be absolutely stunning- through some Levels adjustment I've been able to take parts of a digital image that appear completely black, and get excellent detail out of them, something I'd never be able to do shooting on transparencies.

I'd recommend a look at Michael Reichmann's site, where he reviews the D60 vs. 35mm vs. Medium Format and concludes that for up to 11x17 prints, the Canon D60 is at least as good as 35mm. Furthermore, I've personally found that the raw images delivered by my D60 look better on screen and in print than scanned in images, since the pixel quality simply seems better (despite using a top of the line film scanner that's optimally configured).

In closing, as a professional photographer, I've never had a client need anything more resolution than what I've been able to deliver digitally.

...at least some think so.
A quote from: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/d60-first.htm

"I have yet to do extensive testing with the [Canon] D60 [a 6 Megapixel digital camera], but I can say that D60 8X10" prints, and indeed the one D60 11 X 16.5"print I have done so far, are better than any previous 8X10" or larger print I have made from 35 mm colour, no matter how printed. In fact, I would say that the 11X16.5" print is pretty close to similar-sized images printed conventionally (or digitally) from 645 format negatives. In simpler words, I believe the 6 MP D60 is superior to 35 mm colour film-not just the equal. A possible exception might be a really good print from a Kodachrome slide -- but I can't claim to have any that are in fact better" ...[cut cut]... "I doubt that I will ever 'seriously' use 35 mm colour film again! When I want to produce a quality result, I will choose digital -- or a larger format than 35 mm."

And as a side note, MegaPixels aren't always a good measurement of the quality of Digital Cameras. For example the Canon D30, a 3 megapixel camera produces better images than Sony F707, 5 megapixel camera. Why? Here is a quote from http://www.luminous-landscape.com/dq.htm

"The reason is simple, it [Canon D30] has a much better SNR. Why you ask? The Sony pixels are much, much smaller. Smaller pixels have less area to gather light. Less light means less signal. For a given semiconductor process, the noise stays the same regardless of pixel size and the signal increases with pixel size."

...at least some think so.
A quote from: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/d60-first.htm

"I have yet to do extensive testing with the [Canon] D60 [a 6 Megapixel digital camera], but I can say that D60 8X10" prints, and indeed the one D60 11 X 16.5"print I have done so far, are better than any previous 8X10" or larger print I have made from 35 mm colour, no matter how printed. In fact, I would say that the 11X16.5" print is pretty close to similar-sized images printed conventionally (or digitally) from 645 format negatives. In simpler words, I believe the 6 MP D60 is superior to 35 mm colour film-not just the equal. A possible exception might be a really good print from a Kodachrome slide -- but I can't claim to have any that are in fact better" ...[cut cut]... "I doubt that I will ever 'seriously' use 35 mm colour film again! When I want to produce a quality result, I will choose digital -- or a larger format than 35 mm."

And as a side note, MegaPixels aren't always a good measurement of the quality of Digital Cameras. For example the Canon D30, a 3 megapixel camera produces better images than Sony F707, 5 megapixel camera. Why? Here is a quote from http://www.luminous-landscape.com/dq.htm

"The reason is simple, it [Canon D30] has a much better SNR. Why you ask? The Sony pixels are much, much smaller. Smaller pixels have less area to gather light. Less light means less signal. For a given semiconductor process, the noise stays the same regardless of pixel size and the signal increases with pixel size."

1. Acquisition: getting the pictures in, whether from a flatbed scanner, a slide/negative scanner, PhotoCD or digital cameras. This also encompasses automated primary cleanup done from within a scanner driver
2. Reviewing: deleting dud pictures, and if you have duplicates, selecting only the best one. Getting rid of the chaff early is a major step in improving your productivity, but it is difficult to be objective about one's own photos
3. Asset management:Cataloguing your pictures in a database, with categories, captions and all. Professional organizations like photo agencies go to a very high level of detail as this is the key to their business, but this is also essential for anyone contemplating building an imae collection of more than 1000 pictures or so.
4. Editing:You can go hog-wild with Photoshop or the GIMP, although since this is a very labor-intensive process, it is usually done to a small minority of pictures
5. Output:getting prints made, but also publishing to the Web

What hardware you use for acquisition controls the final quality of your results, so don't skimp on a cheap scanner, use slide or negative scanners rather than flatbed scans from prints, and use digital cameras like the Canon D60 or Nikon D100 that have larger sensors with less thermal noise rather than point and shoots. Using a alide/negative scanner is a very slow and laborious process, and a better option is to have scans made by a photo lab. Avoid the low quality Kodak PictureCD and opt instead for PhotoCD, which has higher resolution and scans made more carefully.

For most of the other phases, the choice of software does not matter very much and will indeed change over time. It is essential to get asset management right up-front, however. The solution you use must be

1. scalable to accomodate an expanding collection of photgraphs
2. open: you don't want to be locked in a proprietary database format, at the very least you should have the ability to export the database to some kind of text format
3. flexible, allowing you to enter as much or as little metadata as you require for any given photo
4. Offer powerful retrieval capabilities: you should be able to run queries like "find all the photos of me and my grandma in front of the Golden Gate bridge", or full-text caption search (if you use captions, not very common because of the amount of work involved)
5. standards compliant, the key standards being EXIF (picture metadata like aperture and exposure) and IPTC (the press photographers' standard for captions)

The best program I've found so far is IMatch (Windows only, I'm afraid), mostly because of its incredibly flexible category system, that works like set theory with multiple inclusion relationships and boolean operators.

Finally, the most comprehensive description of a Photoshop editing workflow is available here on Michael Reichmann's Luminous Landscape site.

Michael Reichmann is a professional landscape photographer from the Great White North.

For a more un-biast and real-world comparison of film vs. digital, take a look at these:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/iso100-400.htm
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/d30_vs_film.htm

This guy is a landscape photographer who works alot with film, in both 35mm, medium and large formats. It's worth a look round his site, he has some very nice images there, and plenty of other photography articals to if that's you cup of tea.

For a more un-biast and real-world comparison of film vs. digital, take a look at these:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/iso100-400.htm
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/d30_vs_film.htm

This guy is a landscape photographer who works alot with film, in both 35mm, medium and large formats. It's worth a look round his site, he has some very nice images there, and plenty of other photography articals to if that's you cup of tea.

I went from digital to film too. But it was more about the image quality itself, not just the resolution. Colors are better - more accurate on film. Not to mention much more pleasing. Digital cameras have very low dynamic range compared to film - meaning shadow details are often subject to noise.

Depends on the camera, and the film. I like the color off of my Canon PS100 better then the color off of Kodak Gold. I like Kodak Portra 160NC, and Fuji Realia 100 a lot more then the PS100.

The color off of the Canon EOS-D30 is very nice, as nice as most films. Of corse at $2500 one would hope it looks good on print. I have heard very nice things about the Fuji S1 Pro's color, but other then that it is a dog of a camera (and also about $2000).

If you look at luminous landscapes he favorably compares the D30 with ciba printed slides (and he is a cibachrome master printer!). Even if it isn't really that good, it is quite nice.

Bottom line: if you really are serious about photography - forget digital cameras for now. If you take snapshots here and there and do not care much about quality, maybe digital is worth a look.

I am going to agree with that, almost. If you are spending over $2000 you can do very well with digital. Under $2000 film is giving you better quality (this year!). Digitals do still help you learn a lot in a very short time though.