Newbie question

[Mitchell H.]

I consider myself more than proficient shooting in natural light with my pentax slr 35mm camera, but upon trying to shoot knives with my new sony cybershot point and shoot, I look like some lackey photo class reject. I have a lighting setup for my pentax, umbrella, remote flash spotlight,etc, is there any way to use this with the sony as it has no hot shoe?? If not, is there any other option other than reverting to my 35mm and 50speed slide film for quality pics. Oh, I should qualify that spending $1000.00 on a new digital slr that still can't produce prints the quality of my $250.00 slr and fuji velvia 50 speed is out of the question.

[Terrill Hoffman]

First let me say that shooting with a good 35mm can never be wrong.
Shooting with a point and shoot digital (or film) is taking all control from the person and giving it to a cheap piece of machinery. The results will seldom be good.
Injvesting $1000 or more for a SLR digital camera can be good or bad. If you have the need, do it. If you only shoot now and then, it may not be worth the cost. Either way, the prints you can get in this day and time from the high end digitals will match and in some cases surpass those you can get from a 35mm.

[BoyNhisDog]

Originally Posted by Mitchell H.

Oh, I should qualify that spending $1000.00 on a new digital slr that still can't produce prints the quality of my $250.00 slr and fuji velvia 50 speed is out of the question.

Mitchell that is not the case. I have no problem with film and in fact I have shot more of it than I care to think. I still use it most every day for mapping photography where I shoot a lot of it. We are talking about a 9.5"x9.5" format there. The camera I use is a Leica RC-30 and is a bargain at $600,000 compared to the Million dollar digital camer.

You might want to weigh these facts before you blow off digital for most everything else. Personally I have seen stunning prints come out of a 4 megapixel Canon P&S by a friend of mine who knows how to shoot it manually and knows how to use a modern 8 cartridge printer. Tiny twigs on trees and blades of grass are as good as it gets. Consider the following;

In practical application, film is rarely (if ever) resolution limited, but is nearly always "grain" limited. The enlargement potential for a fine grain color capture at 35mm frame size maxes out at about 16 x 24. When you go larger, grain begins to seriously compromise aesthetics.
Professional level digital sensors such as you would find in the DRebel or 10D are all resolution limited, but have few limitations in terms of grain. What this means in simple language is that for narrow fields of view such as portraits, most macros, etc., there is no practical limit to enlargement. Beautiful 100 inch prints have been made of head and shoulders portraits from a 3MP Canon D30. When the field of view becomes wider, then resolution begins to become an issue. For wide angle landscapes with lots of detail enlarged to 16 x 24, it takes about an 11 MP EOS-1DS to outperform 35mm and it does so by a significant amount.

For most practical applications, a 6MP DSLR is a very satisfactory replacement for 35mm fine grain color film. It's not as good for 16x24 wide angle landscapes and is considerably better for large portraits.

the sensors in D cams have pixel density and size limits, the ccd and cmos used in them is very different in some ways to a regular micro processor. Noise is one issue, where the tighter the pixel density the greater the noise, the larger the pixels/less density the better. This is why a 6 mp medium format digital back has superb image quality vs a 6,8,11 mp dslr and the dslr has far superior image quality vs a 8 mp prosumer cam.

The most lucid discussion of the 35 mm film vs. digital comparison that I am aware of can be found in a special issue of Photo techniques magazine titled Mastering Digital Imaging. Ctein, a brilliant traditional printer, explains both the mathematics and the characteristics of human visual perception that explain the differences between the two media. It's well worth seeking out this article. His conclusion is that 35 mm film does have higher absolute resolution, but that grain from even the finest-grained films adds a layer of visual noise that impairs perceived resolution, while images from digital SLR's are virtually noiseless. The result is that 6 megapixel SLR's yield images that equal or better 35 mm film at most any reasonable print sizes. He goes on to point out that the smooth creamy tonality and absence of noise from good digital capture provides percieved image quality that can even exceed that of 4x5 film until you reach the resolution limit of enlargement.

William Neil in an article ("Intimate Nature") in "Digital PhotoPro" (July-August) says that one time Ansel Adams had a poster and print. The print was priced at approximately $7000 and the poster at $20. Neil asked which was better. Ansel Adams said the poster was much better because of the control he had over it through the use of the digital technology the printer had used.

"I eagerly await new concepts and processes. I believe that the electronic image will be the next major advance. Such systems will have their own inherent and inescapable structural characteristics, and the artist and functional practitioner will again strive to comprehend and control them." ?Ansel Adams

More here; http://www.luminous-landscape.com/re...shootout.shtml

If you want to shoot film for the sake of doing something different, go for it. Just don't be under any illusions that it's faster or cheaper or "better" image quality-wise than digital. Oil on canvas has even greater disadvantages as an imaging process than film, but that doesn't mean it's not a valid art form.

35mm film can be matched in quality with the 4MP 1D in many cases quality-wise. 6MP on up will be a significant improvement over film in most cases, especially at higher ISO. The 10MP resolution of film is exactly that; theoretical, only achievable with high contrast test targets like resolution charts. The dithering effect introduced by the film grain reduces detail captured by film in most real-world images to about 4MP equivalent in most cases. The 11MP 1Ds can match or beat 6x7 medium format when comparing prints head-to-head, and the difference between the 1Ds and 35mm film is comparable to the difference between a CD and a cassette tape. The only real advantage a film body has at this time is inexpensive wide angle, but at a significant quality cost.

Film look" in one of many different options you have when post-processing DSLR images; it's the only option you have with film. I wouldn't call that an advantage of film, digital can do it too if you know how.

Beside the additional wait for developing, don't forget the hassle of scanning. Getting a good scan of a negative is not easy, especially if you don't want to scan dust bunnies. It's like having to do DSLR sensor cleaning on every single scanned frame, either on the film or in Photoshop after the scan with the clone tool, or both.

First, remember that film has resolution which can't be tapped because of grain intrusion. We are limited to an enlargement size of around 16x24 with fine grain color film in the 35mm platform. Digital doesn't have this restriction on enlargement size, so though we never run into resolution limits with film, we can easily reach visible resolution limits with digital enlargement.

For "practical" everyday photography, six megapixel pro-sensor level digital equals 35mm fine grain color film. When you get to wide angle infinity focus landscapes with abundant detail, it takes 8 megapixel pro-level digital to equal 35mm fine grain color film or transparency at an enlargement of 16x24. But when we are enlarging much smaller fields of view such as head and shoulders portraits, even three megapixel pro-level digital sensors such as found in the Canon EOS-D30 or Fuji FinePix Pro S1 will out perform 35mm color film or transparency in enlargement potential.

What really is the deciding factor is the amount of geography within the frame captured. Film simply never reaches the limits of its inherent resolution potential because grain "always" intrudes long before this level of enlargement can be accomplished. So when we have smaller frame geometry (large focal lengths) or closeups, it takes much less "resolution" in terms of sampling site count (pixels) to properly define the amount of fine detail. Since digital doesn't suffer from grain intrusion, enlargement can be made to the limits of the human perception threshold for tolerance of detail identity.

Think of it like this...we readily accept a few brush strokes in oil on a painting as perfectly good representations of leaves on trees or pine needles on trees in a forest. If we examine this painting under intense magnification, the deception is revealed and we are forced to realize that these are only brush strokes in oil. All capture media be it film or digital has a point where capture resolution is exhausted and though with small prints we can readily accept a few "marker pixels" (pixels or silver halide which simply marks position, luminance, hue and intensity) as representative of "detail," when we enlarge the digital by interpolation to levels where the "deception" is revealed, we see the results of the interpolation algorithm perfectly reproducing these marker pixels at sizes which force us to realize that detail capture has been compromised. Now if we view these results from a greater distance, then our human senses are once again satisfied and everything looks fine. If we reduce the print size to below the threshold of recognition for these marker pixels, again everything looks great.

The essence is to completely equal 35mm color film or transparency...in any event we need about eight megapixels of digital resolution. To exceed 35mm we need eleven megapixels. On the other hand for anything less than a wide angle landscape with abundant detail printed at 16x24 six megapixel resolution will do very nicely and it lets us enlarge smaller fields of view well beyond the grain induced limitations of film at the color 35mm platform.

Though we can continue to reveal tiny incremental gains in film resolution at even 6000 dpi with expensive drum scans, grain intrusion limits the practical enlargement by scan to around 4000 dpi. It's certainly possible to scan 35mm color film or transparency at fourteen megapixel digital "resolution" equivalency, but that doesn't mean it will in any way "equal" fourteen megapixel digital capture quality in print. It won't!

[Mitchell H.]

I had a feeling that last part would ignite a very interesting and informative discussion :evil . Perhaps I should have qualified my statement a little more. I am not a professional photographer, and I have no real experience with digital save my new sony 7.2 megapixel point and shoot. I do not have the money for the type of digital camera necessary to equal the performance of my pentax 35mm. I would love to have a new digital rebel or sony mavica, but have spent far too much money on knifemaking to be able to afford or justify it. I have had many discussions on the pros and cons of digital with my cousin http://www.seifriedphoto.com/main.htm who is a professional and he always preferred film, of course technology may have caught up since we last spoke( a couple of years). Anyway, I had hoped that with a 7.2 megapixel camera, I could take better pictures than this http://www.knifenetwork.com/forum/sh...ad.php?t=29463 so anyone know what I need to do? I take really nice landscape pics and natural light pics of people, at least I think they are good( see attachments) with my 35, so why can I not take good pics with my digital?? When I look at those pictures, I feel proud, when I look at my knife pictures, I feel embarrassed.

[BoyNhisDog]

Those two images are stunning. It is the light that is so magic and you saw it.

Knives are one of the most difficult subject to photograph in natural light. Blade reflections are its true bane. I like to watch some of these guys doing it.

As for megapixels, they are not equal. A P&S with 7 megapixels crowed on a tiny sensor cannot compete with a camera that spreads them out on a larger sensor. That wont make the blade reflections in knife photography any easier but it will give you much cleaner images. That new Rebel XT looks to be a very good choice. The learning curve in digital is very steep in the beginning. The switch from the wet darkroom to the digital "darkroom" took the most time learning for me. I used to have my own little home color lab when shooting film so I could control my prints. Now I have a lot more control and no chemicals or darkroom needed. It is all good but my preferences have definately tilted to digital. Even our mapping lab has switched over for most products. Sometimes I aim my little camera out the window and if they like what they see, the sometimes print a wall sized image that stands up fairly well.

You have a very good eye and will do well with any media in photography.

[J. Criquet]

Shooting good photos with a digital camera has more akin to shooting good video with a camcorder than it does to shooting photos with a 35mm slr camera, IMHO. It's a whole different ballgame, and hinges on learning the behavior and characteristics of not only the digital medium, but also the particular camera in question.

In other words, lots of practice

[Mitchell H.]

Just wanted to say thanks for all the info and opinions, guys...I am going to try and make a light box like the one from plastic pipe and plastic trash bag from a tutorial or something I saw on here. This has got to be the best #### thing since sliced bread, you can get a light years head start on the entire knifemaking field all in one place, knives, stock removal and forging, heat treating, embellishment, photography, sheathmaking, absolutely incredible, thanks guys......Mitch