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Digital Camera Quality Passing Film?
smartbit writes "Luminous Landscape writes in their Preliminary Field Report of the Canon 1Ds 11 Megapixel camera: 'the 1Ds produces the best combination of resolution, colour accuracy and low noise that I've yet seen in a digital camera.
What about a comparison with both 35mm film and medium format? I'm afraid that film has definitively lost the battle. The 1Ds's full-frame 11MP CMOS sensor produces a 32MB file -- as big as a typical scan. But this file is sharper and more noise free than any scan I have ever seen, including drum scans. There simply isn't a contest any longer.'
Kodak's Pro 14n list price is $5000 lower and uses a similar CMOS sensor supplied by Fillfactory "
You haven't shot with a good digital camera. ANd I doubt you've eve used a decent film camera. the delay is about 50ms in the higher end digitals - plus time to focus if you are using auto focus.
I have a high end digial camera (canon d30) and it's as easy to use as the body for my film camera (elan II).
Photos taken with this camera aregood enough to print at 8x10 with very little pixelation, if any.
Film is dead. As a semi-pro photographer, and someone who has been doing it for a VERY long time, I can say: film is dead.
Being a semi-pro photographer, I've considered moving to digital for a while now. Lately I've been getting really close:
...but I've resisted so far. I shoot a medium-format Yamica and a 35mm Leica M4P, both dazzling in quality. Digital currently cannot match:
* similar image quality, with very expensive digital cameras, to medium format
* zero printing/developing cost
* high capacity for 35mm-quality shots
* flexibility in color response and grain afforded by different kinds of film
* quality of final print (photo printers haven't caught up yet)
* artistic manipulation. Photoshop does not count.
Until it's really worth it to blow $10000 on a top-shelf digital, I'll stick with my film.
My dad was an avid photographer and has a closet full of shoeboxes of 35mm color & b&w slides documenting the family going back to the 1940's and beyond. Most are in excellent condition (except for some ektachrome(sp?) organic dye slides with some mold slowly growing on them). To view them you just hold up to a light or use a fairly simple projector.
Q: If someone takes as many pictures in digital format will they be as easily viewable 50 years from now? Will those inkjet printouts have all faded away, the CD's become unreadable, or no readers available unless you transfer to the latest and greatest digital storage format every 5 years? Will your grandchildren have to hire a data recovery specialist to see their parents 1st birthday party or what Aunt Jane looked like?
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More importantly, how are these pictures going to be stored long term? We have photos and negatives lasting over a hundred years. I'm lucky to have a hard drive last longer than three. The possibility of the great photographs of our day being erased with an accidental click of a button or the failure of a hard drive read head worries me.
If there's one thing that the old 35mm cameras have over the newer digital ones is that we pretty much know how long the images will last over the course of time. How long will it be before we lose our digital pictures because of an unreadable format or digital failure?