rookieshot said:
Always liked borrowing my friends DSLR and looking to purchase my own camera, so my question to all the intelligent and experienced members, should I just buy a SLR because it will teach me more about getting a good shot or a is that crap and just get a DSLR, thanks guys!

It's crap - Buy a DSLR and you will learn 1000 times faster. Film you have to wait for 2-3 days to see what you messed up on - DSLR you just wait 1 second then adjust and try again. Instant feedback is what DSLRs moved the whole game forward.

Always liked borrowing my friends DSLR and looking to purchase my own camera, so my question to all the intelligent and experienced members, should I just buy a SLR because it will teach me more about getting a good shot or a is that crap and just get a DSLR, thanks guys!

Gitzo said:
I give up ! When I posted this, for some unknown reason, it came up double. Then I tried to delete the bottom "copy", highlighting it and pressing the "delete" key; (didn't work) then, I just held the "delete" key down (for about 5 minutes), and it DID delete the text, but not the rest of it.

Does anyone know of an online "how to use a computer" course ?

This is what mods do.... makes us feel like we are really doing something :-)

I give up ! When I posted this, for some unknown reason, it came up double. Then I tried to delete the bottom "copy", highlighting it and pressing the "delete" key; (didn't work) then, I just held the "delete" key down (for about 5 minutes), and it DID delete the text, but not the rest of it.

Does anyone know of an online "how to use a computer" course ?

Before I found NRF, I was "accustomed to" a web site where everything was written in about the last 24 hours or so; here, "threads" go on for "years and years" ! But I will say this.........for the most part, the "people" here are MUCH nicer !

Now.......back to page 1 of this thread. A member, "Pavlov" (I believe), was talking about (three years ago) a subject that I have seen discussed many times, in various places..........how best to get our years and years of color slides onto our hard drives. My son gave me a perfectly good Nikon film scanner a few years back, (before I got around to "going digital"). ( I never "got around" to using the scanner either.)

But there IS a "better way" to do it; anyone who used to shoot a lot of reversal film will remember "slide copiers"; I have a very nice one lying about someplace, but alas, it was for Canon FD lenses, and I don't use any of them any longer.

Anyway, I believe it was on another forum where I read a very good post someone had made, about using a slide copier to hold the slide, while photographing it with with a macro lens and a D SLR; the fellow writing the post reported getting excellent results with this method, (much better than scanning the slides), which ALWAYS has problems with dust. )

My question is.......has anyone tried this ? Like most people, I have a huge collection of slides that I would LOVE to go through and digitize some of the better ones. If anyone has had any experience with photographing slides, I think there's a huge number of people that would be very interested in hearing about your experience doing it.

While I'm on this subject, I've noticed a few people mentioning shooting B&W. Years ago, when I first started shooting 35mm film, I used to shoot a lot of Kodak's VERY fine grain Panatomic X; (ASA 25) at the time, Kodak sold a "direct-positive" processing kit, and you processed the Panatomic X just like any other negative film, but then you re-exposed it with a #2 photo-flood lamp, (or am I getting this mixed up with processing Anscochrome and Super Anscochrome color reversal film ?) we used to do both, but it's "been awhile" ! It developed "positive" rather than negative, then you cut each image apart, and mounted them in cardboard "ready mounts"; the results were far sharper than almost any Kodachrome slides. Again, does anyone remember this, and has anyone ever had any experience doing it ?

All of these posts about shooting large format..........at one point, a friend and I had a fine old Crown Graphic 4X5 camera; talk about "beautiful, sharp images"! (and hours and hours of time spent, not to mention it took an hour to take 2 or 3 pictures, what with all of the "loading" film carriers, inserting the "dark slide", then doing everything over again, in reverse order, to take a picture!)
I seriously doubt that I'll ever get "hooked" on doing "large format" again ! ( and I can only imagine doing all of that with 8x10 film, (or even larger) !

kyoshinikon said:
Grain can be faked in digital but the effect is not the same. Film has a softness to its grain wheras digital grain is akin to the static screen on tube televisions with stark blacks and whites amiss the grain...

I am still a bit baffled by the terminators disappearance... Maybe we will see him in the future...

Yes, on the grain...The "effect" of natural grain in film is due from the thickness of the emulsion I think. And this is difficult to reproduce.

In view of the suddenness of NikonDoby disappearing, I can only think it was either a severe medical event which has prevented computer use or the final day and Niko is no longer with us. Niko remains a legend on NRF. All of my investigations have been for naught. Niko's email does not reject the messages but I get no response.

I have been shooting with a minigraphlex as of late and was surprised to discover that it can facilitate 120 film... More choices!

Grain can be faked in digital but the effect is not the same. Film has a softness to its grain wheras digital grain is akin to the static screen on tube televisions with stark blacks and whites amiss the grain...

I am still a bit baffled by the terminators disappearance... Maybe we will see him in the future...

msmoto said:
So, what I have seen after my first ever attempt at introducing grain,

I use the Nik Silver EFX Pro software for B&W conversion. Much better results than ding it all manually in my view.

In another thread, you can see I said I am about to start on a CLA type project on a 120 film camera (its even a bellows/folder type). Lord knows if it'll work and I'm even less sure about not breaking it. Not worth sending it away as it is worth about $50 to $75 or so...

I am with you bjrichus... Got to playing around with an image taken with a little P & S. Here is the image:

And the 2000 pixel where on can see the difference:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fantinesfotos/8136281499/sizes/o/in/photostream/

So, what I have seen after my first ever attempt at introducing grain, is, the image resolution with digital is IMO much higher when the digital image is recorded. I believe this is due to the aspect of the sensor having no depth or thickness while B & W film has a thickness which in effect causes a loss of resolution. OK, so this might get something started... and as our beloved NR Admin stated at the opening of this thread "There will be blood in this forum... please keep it civilized. Thanks!"

NikoDoby said:
I still prefer using E6 film but now mostly only in 120. The newest Portra 160 and 400 films from Kodak are amazingly good though!

Re-directed here by MsMoto ... only to discover that our beloved Nikodoby is now well into Lomo toy cameras. At least we now know why he isn't here anymore!

(It's a joke - I know he wrote 120, not Lomo and all the other reasons why MF film is better etc or not better etc).

I still prefer using E6 film but now mostly only in 120. The newest Portra 160 and 400 films from Kodak are amazingly good though!

I do agree on the Kodachrome extinction as NOT meaning film was dead. Another thing I failed to mention (maybe) is that I stopped using chrome films and switched to negative films. Part of that way way better latitude. Part of that was way better offerings in negative film. In large format I switched to negative earlier than I did in smaller formats like medium (6x6,6x7,6x9,6x12, 6x17). In 8x10 and up my switch to negative film was almost mandatory.

heartyfisher said:
for me nothing unexpected besides having to do mental maths as my lenses were of different apertures and the camera couldn't get down to iso 50 :-) .. my maths is not good so I decided if I were to do this often I would write a phone app to do these calculations for me :-) then I had to decide which phone to get that had the nice enough development kit to make the task fun. of course by the time I looked in to that and decided on an android phone, I had to investigate the best tools for my linux PC to do that. In the mean time I decided to rebuild my PC to install windows 7. For that I had to investigate the whole new bunch of harddisks now available and deciding if I would go for a SATA3 or a sata2 2TB disk.. so ... still have not written my app yet! LOL!

Oh my god, that's funny, hearty!

for me nothing unexpected besides having to do mental maths as my lenses were of different apertures and the camera couldn't get down to iso 50 :-) .. my maths is not good so I decided if I were to do this often I would write a phone app to do these calculations for me :-) then I had to decide which phone to get that had the nice enough development kit to make the task fun. of course by the time I looked in to that and decided on an android phone, I had to investigate the best tools for my linux PC to do that. In the mean time I decided to rebuild my PC to install windows 7. For that I had to investigate the whole new bunch of harddisks now available and deciding if I would go for a SATA3 or a sata2 2TB disk.. so ... still have not written my app yet! LOL!

Drab said:
So, back to the query which started this, I use my digital camera as a "Polaroid" for my 35mm film (B+W negative) camera all the time. It's accurate enough and since the head and tail of film are more forgiving I wouldn't see any minor error anyway.

Thanks for your reply!

Drab said:
The problem I see (please correct me) is that one would need to test with subjects in zone 3->8 to stay in the most linear part of film's response. And since most people calibrate their negative development to zone 5, how much are you going to see? I guess that's really a parallel point. A film's ISO rating for the portion of its dynamic range captured by digital is very dependent on development processes/times. Unless we're talking zone 5 gray targets shot at rated ISO and developed with the manufacture's rated developer at the exact rated time and temp, the "rated" ISO is off.

Exactly! Well-said, Drab!

All I wanted to know was a gross estimation of how closely Zone V would "match" on both media, given identical ISO ratings (e.g., ISO 100-400). I'd assume they'd be similar (at least for that zone), but since I've never done it before, I thought I'd see if anyone experienced anything unexpected.

Paperman said:
My suspicion is more lens specific ISO boost as previously discussed in forums.

A simpler test would be to mount any non-CPU lens on a digital camera w/o physical aperture coupling and lie to the body. This would prevent the Nikon firmware from "correcting" for anything. Using a revering ring is probably the easiest way for most people. Then you can perform the identical test on a film body and on a digital body. Both shot in manual mode, of course. Controlled lighting situation, no meter.

The problem I see (please correct me) is that one would need to test with subjects in zone 3->8 to stay in the most linear part of film's response. And since most people calibrate their negative development to zone 5, how much are you going to see? I guess that's really a parallel point. A film's ISO rating for the portion of its dynamic range captured by digital is very dependent on development processes/times. Unless we're talking zone 5 gray targets shot at rated ISO and developed with the manufacture's rated developer at the exact rated time and temp, the "rated" ISO is off.

I have to agree with you Drab as I initially stated that a clash between hand held meters ( which come from film times & SLRs ) and DSLR's metering would be unacceptable .

My suspicion is more lens specific ISO boost as previously discussed in forums. If anyone here had a 300/400/600mm fast tele lens , he could do the comparasion on SLR & DSLR bodies and let us know :-)

While I'm with you, Paperman, let's play devil's advocate.

How much of that 2, 3, even 4 stops was made up in printing? I'd love to test (properly with a nice set of gray target fields and a densiometer) because my gut feels the same way you do. BUT I no longer have anything but paid access to a darkroom (I scan) for printing, and I think I need to make a lot of prints to "prove" either side.

One can abuse the heck out of a small print w/o substantial quality loss.

So, back to the query which started this, I use my digital camera as a "Polaroid" for my 35mm film (B+W negative) camera all the time. It's accurate enough and since the head and tail of film are more forgiving I wouldn't see any minor error anyway.

Drab said:

The point of his anecdote was that the metadata of the digital shot shows the exposure being at least two stops outside the range one would have expected, leading Paperman to question just how well that digital camera's ISO ratings match with film ratings in real-world situations.

My sentiments exactly

Super Shooter said:
So I still don't get how the digital shot was different than what he got on film.

I didn't say anything in that regard . You need to have shot in the film times to understand what I mean . All I'm saying is I never ever shot anything where there was more light than a 1/125 f22 ASA100 exposure ( EV 16 )on the brightest summer day at noon on beach ( almost what sunny 16 will work out to ) - and this was with a 4-5 element 50mm prime .Yet these days , I see exposures equivalent to 1/125 f36 @ISO 100 ( EV 17.5 ) with a 16 element 400mm and it is not even noon .

I didn't say anything about focal plane shutters. Back when sunny 16 was being used most if not all cameras used central or leaf shutters anyway. That wasn't my point though. As bhoveyga wrote the bird could have been on water, snow, or sand. How was the shot being metered? Paperman didn't give any details. So I still don't get how the digital shot was different than what he got on film.

kyoshinikon said:
this is why they should up the bit rate or have an addon firmware that provides many of the color profiles and gamuts found in software like photoshop...

You can describe a 10 stop dynamic range with 128 bits if you want, but it is still only 10 bits worth of information. Do not confuse accuracy with precision.

So long as digital has a narrower gamut than the range of possible films any in-camera processing would be a shift (1->1024 now equals 124->1147) or stretch (1->1024 now equals 16->16384). Nothing new is created, no data is gained. Since the DR limitation of digital is a physical constraint (today) the only solutions are physical manipulations (bracketed HDR is an example of a physical manipulation. the use of a gradient density filter is another.).

Save the parlor tricks for the Coolpix line, please.

Super Shooter said:
Why is f5.6 and 1/5000 at 100 so unusual? It's 1/5000 of a second versus 1/125th. Most film cameras back in the day of sunny 16 couldn't go over 1/500 of a second. Was the bird in flight against a bright sunny sky? I don't get it?

Ignore the fact it was 1/5000th, and don't draw upon the irrelevant fact (focal plane) shutters didn't go that fast back when the sunny 16 rule-of-thumb was popularized. That doesn't matter.

The point of his anecdote was that the metadata of the digital shot shows the exposure being at least two stops outside the range one would have expected, leading Paperman to question just how well that digital camera's ISO ratings match with film ratings in real-world situations.

Why is f5.6 and 1/5000 at 100 so unusual? It's 1/5000 of a second versus 1/125th. Most film cameras back in the day of sunny 16 couldn't go over 1/500 of a second. Was the bird in flight against a bright sunny sky? I don't get it?

Paperman said:

>> I saw some bird shots made at 1/5000 f5.6 @ ISO 100
>> It is against all I know about sunny 16 from film days.

Well, the sunny 16 rule is pretty old... maybe it's time we adjusted it, what with the earth getting closer to the sun an' all... ;-)

Seriously tho, what was going on in the bird shots? I know you're supposed to add a stop for snow or sand but in my experience, sometimes it's more than a stop. In the case of water birds, sometimes reflections off the water's surface will add a lot of light too if the sun's in the right spot.

Other things could explain this as well. A lot of digital photogs are really paranoid about protecting the highlights so the image may have been underexposed and corrected later in software. Or the photographer just didn't report the stats correctly.

studio460 said:
... if you shoot the identical scene with the identical lighting, using the same lens, at the same f/stop, for any given ISO, how closely would the resulting exposures match?

Considering camera metering and hand held meters should match, it should be the case . However , I did have some doubts a while ago after I saw some bird shots made at 1/5000 f5.6 @ ISO 100 with a 400mm f2.8 in late afternoon - 5pm . It is against all I know about sunny 16 from film days . Maximum exposure in summer at noon used to be something like f16/22 1/125 at ASA 100 ; I don't remember ever going above 1/22 & 1/125 . The above works out to be something like f36 1/125 @ ISO 100 ...

Maybe it is lens specific ?? Remember all the fuss about ISO boost in f1.2 & f1.4 lenses .

studio460 said:
Exactly. That's what I was getting at. If the manufacturers' ISO ratings on their DLSR dentente positions accurately correlated to ISO-standard sensitivities which could be associated with equivalent film sensitivities (all reciprocity, and other film anomolies aside).

It's NOT that sensitive of a difference when comparing it to film for the reasons that have already been mentioned. You are over analysing it.