Amateur Photographer is a weekly UK magazine virtually dedicated to film
based photography. I enrolled on their postal Diploma course but had to give
up on it because of their insistence on usage of film. They are running an
'open day' to meet the tutor on Friday 27th which I was going to go to but
the first thing their letter said was 'it is a requirement of the day that
you bring along your film camera'.
Now this neatly ties in with the original subject of dynamic range because I
have a choice of taking along the OM4 or ignoring this requirement and
taking the 1D MkII. The 1D MkII produces vastly superior results to what I
can get from scanned negatives, better dynamic range, less noise, more
accurate colour, better focusing (I NEED autofocus) and has a very useable
ISO range of 100 to 3200. If I do go (and it is central London) guess which
I'll take.
In regard to blending two images, it was quite common for me to scan a
negative twice and blend the resultant files to recover over exposed areas -
I did this for one of my Tope entries. With RAW files it is easy double
development in CS PS in a similar manner. You can also simply extend the
shadow areas and recover contrast with curves. The shadow/highlight tool is
extremely useful but cannot recover data that has been lost in development.
To clinch it, for really difficult subjects I can auto bracket on ISO,
taking 5 shots simultaneously using the same shutter and aperture settings
but using ISOs of say, 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1600. There is additional
noise as ISO increases but nothing objectionable and even ISO 3200 has far
less noise than scanned neg.
I am NOT claiming that the dynamic range of DSLRs is wider than negatives
but in my experience, for processing images through a digital darkroom,
initial image capture via a DLSR gives superior results to scanning and
using RAW capture gives a more flexible start point.
Ian.... who starts foaming at the mouth at the mere mention of Amateur
Photography and their troglodyte attitude toward digital.
-----Original Message-----
From: olympus-owner@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:olympus-owner@xxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of Moose
Sent: 14 August 2004 02:51
To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [OM] Re: Dynamic range of Provia 100F, was ... DSLRs
Chris Barker wrote:
>Thanks Winsor
>
>But Moose used 2 different interpretations, for want of a better
>description, of the same image. I merely adjusted the various levels
>with the wonderful PS tool Shadow/Highlight.
>
I've added that form of adjustment to the right side of my comparison
<http://moosemystic.net/Gallery/CRW_0195x4.jpg>. Be sure to set your
browser to 100% size. You will need to scroll horizontally to see
everything.
>It's OK, I am not totally closed to the idea that Moose might be right
>... but my experience with my only digital machine, compared with my
>lovely slides (at least some them are gorgeous) tells me otherwise at
>present.
>
If you are shooting JPEGs, that will certainly be true
<http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/u-raw-file
s.shtml>.
There just isn't enough data space in an 8 bit file to hold the full
range of brightness that the sensor can capture, esp. in the shadow areas.
>Interestingly, the staff of Amateur Photographer are of my
>opinion, at present at least.
>
I haven't seen theri stuff, so I can't comment.
>Chris (for whom the discussion is at least as interesting as the
>conclusion ... ;-))
>
Oh yes!
Moose
==============================================
List usage info: http://www.zuikoholic.com
List nannies: olympusadmin@xxxxxxxxxx
==============================================
==============================================
List usage info: http://www.zuikoholic.com
List nannies: olympusadmin@xxxxxxxxxx
==============================================
|
