CHUKKAS DIG THE FABULOUS EOS-1V !

1 Roll of cheapo Fuji Superia: $3
Developing 1 roll of cheapo Superia: $9
Spending an hour scanning and tweaking just to get
one decent pic for my $12: A total waste of time.

http://www.pbase.com/bret/image/103089433/original

 

Annika1980 wrote,on my timestamp of 14/09/2008 12:58 PM:

excellent! If we could now keep you away
from ALL photography...

 

Here's one I took just for you, sweetie!

http://www.pbase.com/bret/image/103095149

 

Alan Browne, 9/15/2008 6:19 AM:

I dunno about that. The middle horse's back legs are black, no shadow
detail, and the white areas of the players' uniforms are mostly blown
out, not to mention relatively drab colors everywhere.

IM not so HO, Bret's 40D can do it from a great height all over the 1V -
or at least the film he used.

I'm drooling over the 50D when I can raise the cash.

Colin D.

 

Colin.D wrote,on my timestamp of 15/09/2008 2:19 PM:

Have you *ever* considered that "detail" is not present
in highlight or dark areas? Ever heard of the zone system
and what each zone is supposed to represent? Have you
*ever* considered that a photo does NOT need
to have detail in every pixel?

 

Annika1980 wrote,on my timestamp of 15/09/2008 2:00 AM:

yeah, that seems to be your specialty...

 

The point Colin made is very valid, Alan is trying to say that the
film shot has more DR, but this is clearly not visible in the shot as
posted. As for detail in every pixel, in a print you night not want
some black areas to show as black with no detail, but in an image that
is being viewed on a screen the more detail that is in the shadows the
better IMO. A good photo will have enough detail in the shadows that
the only way to see it is to load the image into a photo editor and
adjust the levels, in otherword your monitor show limit what you see,
not the photo.

What you really don't want is so little detail in the shadows that you
are forced to clip them to black to avoid seeing a ton of noise in the
shadows, that can look pretty unnatural IMO.

It is posible that the negatives have the range in them, and it is the
scan and editing after the scan that is limiting DR of the final
photo, but the photo as posted looks to have captured around 5 stops
of DR, not even close to what the 40D will capture. Again the film
might have a lot more on it then the photo as posted, but how Alan can
look at that photo and say it shows more range I just don't get.

Scott

 

I might be able to re-work the shot by combining multiple scans like
one might do with a RAW file. But my theory on the original shot is
that if some of the brightest highlights get blown, so what? Nothing
to see there anyway.
One thing's for sure .... if you expose the shot so as not to blow
those highlights you're gonna end up with a very underexposed pic.

 

Scott W wrote,on my timestamp of 15/09/2008 11:31 PM:

No sorry, I don't think it is valid at all. One thing
is a monotonous dynamic range digital shot, where there is
"detail" everywhere because nothing is saturated and everything
looks watercolour-painted, the other is a saturated film photo
showing colour as we all see it. The two couldn't be more
different. Regardless of the relative merits of the media used
to show the images.

oh yes, I might indeed! I *do* want some black
areas to show up with NO detail whatsoever. That's
what they are: black, with no detail. Nothing wrong
with that. In the case of this photo: couldn't care
less about the detail in a black leg, in the shade,
of a dark horse. That is *not* what the photo is
about and any detail there only serves to detract
and distract from the real purpose of the shot:
showing the intense action of polo.

Whats is the point of having detail in something you
are not meant to see?

Noise and detail are neither synonymous nor opposites.
You can certainly have little detail in shadows with
little noise. Or lots of detail with lots of noise.
Or any other degree in between those two, in any mix.
With both film and digital. It means nothing if the
shadows are not the main part of a photo or the
main subject.

Doubt it: that is superia 400, it has about 6 stops
in excellent conditions. For higher you need Reala or
Pro160. And that is not - or does not appear to be - a
very well lit scene, as in full range natural light.
Sky would have been hazy - my guess.
The point to me is: if the scene hasn't got the range,
why then represent it as having it?
Yeah, I'd say with careful scanning and some colour
adjustment this could be made a lot more striking.
But that is not likely the light it was taken under, so
why have it?
I mean: if the message of the shot was "striking colours",
then yes. But it isn't: it's action in a fast game.
Fine as is. Unless of course one's last name is Rockwell...

Actually, it's not half bad. I can see detail in the shadows
in my screen, but it's finely adjusted to do so. Not the
usual srgb calibration.
But like I said: horses for courses. (ooops,sorry!)

 

Annika1980 wrote,on my timestamp of 16/09/2008 12:55 AM:

Hang on a tick, that's a colour negative: you should be able
to pull detail out of the highlights without hdr stuff?
Still: like you say, nothing to see there and not the
point of the shot anyway. Fine as is.
I'd maybe try to saturate the colours a touch: it's supposed
to be a sunny shot from the shadows of the horses yet the
lighting looks like it's a very hazy day.
Not Rockwellian, but a tad more sat. Nikonscan can do that
at scan time, dunno what you use for the Minolta.

 

And that's exactly the point. It is all about his choice of film.

Superia is a high contrast film that is designed to give some apparent
sharpness to photos taken with low contrast consumer-grade lenses used
on film SLRs and in inexpensive point and shoot cameras. Use it with
good lenses and it blows out the highlights and fills in the shadows
just like any digital sensor will.

Use a low contrast film such as Fujicolor NPS 160 and the results will
be very different. There is not one brand of digital sensor that will
come close to the dynamic range that NPS 160 offers.

The OP could hardly have made a worse choice of film to illustrate the
relative abilities of film and digital capture. I wonder if that was
his intention ...

 

It was Alan who was say how much more DR the shot had then the shots
from the 40D, clearly he saw something in the shot that others did
not.

As for NPS 160, from the spec sheet it looks to a bit less then 10
stops of DR
http://www.fujifilmusa.com/shared/bin/AF3-809E.pdf

The 40D has just over 9 stops of DR
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos40d/page20.asp

So I guess by not coming close you mean less then one stop?

And unless you expose you negative on the dark side most of that range
is in the highlights, the shadows will be lost.

Scott

 

A little misleading because, in common with almost all graphs
for negative film, the graph cuts off while the film is still
linear. What you can conclude is that the film is linear at
least up to the same level (+0.5) that results in clear film
with Velvia 50. If you were to expose it as if it were Velvia 50
then you would use the top of the range shown on the graph.
From the toe to the right hand side of the graph is 9 1/3 stops
of dynamic range. (From -2.3 to +0.5 on the x axis.)

The actual point where the film really runs out of linearity
will be somewhat to the right of the right-hand side of the
graph. You can prove this to yourself by doing a latitude test
in which you do a series of exposures each one stop higher than
the last. A moderate increase in exposure in negative film
results in increased contrast due to the lower end of the exposure
coming off the toe, if you have real overexposure you should see
highlight compression and decreased contrast. With colour film
the different layers of the film will not likely become non-linear
at the same time so there may be colour shifts in the highlights.
This used to be a real problem decades ago when colour negative
materials had much less range than they do now.

Peter.

 

Noons, 9/15/2008 11:23 PM:

Of course. Where the subject is black, or very nearly so. But the legs
are not black, nor are they in 'deep' shadow, so there should be some
detail.

Of course again, and I used the zone system with a zone-modified spot
meter with my 5x4 Wista monorail for years, before the advent of digital.

Of course^3. Specular highlights do not require detail, they should be
255^3. But highlights - or more correctly light-toned areas, zones 8
and 9 if you like - such as light-colored shirts and riding pants should
have some gradation to show shape and form, and at least hint at the
fabric texture.


A question for you. Why do you assume that I, or any other poster here,
automatically knows little about the technical side of photography?
It's an attitude that does you no credit. But, I guess that will fall
on deaf ears, and probably trigger the usual profane response.

Colin D.

 

Whether the range is in the shadows or highlights depends on how you
do your exposure. It is very rare that I have a photo where the
highlights are blown in the capture, I might convert the raw image to
set the white point such that they are blown, in the same way you
might when scanning a negative. But I have a lot of negatives where
the shadows are so thin that trying to pull anything out is just about
impossible.

And just what do you do with the extra highlight headroom in the final
image? Let’s say you are photographing a scene with some areas of
bright white snow in full sun, and also some specular reflections off
a metal surface that goes three stops brighter then the snow, where do
you set the white point in the print? Are you going to put the snow
three stops down from full white in the print, that would look like
crap. Do you set the white point half a stop above the snow and
compress the 3 stops above it down to ½ hoping that will look good?,
maybe, but then the snow is going to look a bit dirty.

I see a lot of people who shoot film that seem to believe that just
because film has good highlight range that they will not have problem
with blown highlights in the final image, this of course is nonsense.
The real art to making a print, whether from a digital capture or
film, is fitting all that range onto a print that might have 5 stops
of range at best.

I won't speak for others, but I have had far more under exposed
negatives then over exposed digital captures. It is always easy to
shoot a stop or two faster, say going from 1/60 second to 1/120, but
shooting a stop or two slower can be a real pain, say going from 1/60
to 1/30.

Scott

 

My intention was to stop by the grocery store on the way to the match
and buy whatever film I could find, which is why I went with the
cheapo Fuji Superia "XTRA" 400. Believe it or not, the idiot Noons
was correct in that the day started out very gloomy and overcast with
only occasional glimpses of sunlight. Otherwise, I would have gone
for 100 speed film. I hate grain, dontcha know.

I guess I'll include a couple of rolls of NPS 160 in my next order
from B&H. I've used it in the distant past a few times, but my usual
film was Reala back in the day.

 

Huh. That's funny. Because the Canon S3 IS P&S camera has a total dynamic range
of 10.3EV steps. So much for that mythical urban-legend that's perpetuated by a
few with a deceptive personal-agenda trying to convince everyone that larger
sensor cameras always have more dynamic range.

See the lab-test graphs for yourself

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3142/2861257547_9a7ceaf3a1_o.jpg

Even at ISO800 it still has a total dynamic range of 8.93 EV steps, beating out
the dynamic range of most all APS-C sized sensors at that ISO.

You people shouldn't blindly believe what you are told and then stupidly spew it
back out again as if they are some hard facts that always hold true.

 

"Suck up to Helen."

I can't be bought and I'm not easily swayed.

 

It's a great action shot and well composed, but it's clear the 40D
gave better dynamic range and a cleaner crisper look.