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Digital camera resolution and image quality in real life - compared to film Addendum per August 4,2005: I had the opportunity to get a Nikon ED8000 scanner on loan and with that scanner, I rescanned all film negatives and slides - so please be aware that the scanned crop from film are now replaced with the new scans. As the Nikon ED8000 is much better than an Epson 4870 for 35mm and 120/220 film, the scans are much better as well. For a comparison with the new CANON EOS 5D follow this link: Canon5D Review Well, I could not resist to do it as well. Not that there were not enough comparison photographs available on numerous websites, but I wanted to know it myself and with taking pictures from an everyday scene without mathematical evaluation of the result - just comparing what amount of details are available and what quality they show. Wolf Camera on Arapahoe Road in South Denver CO, a store, which I know quite well, they have got quite a lot of digital cameras and so I went and shot the same scene with several cameras. I used the 4Mpx Kodak 6490 - which was a rather good camera about 18 months ago, the new Nikon D70S, the Canon 20D, the Canon 1DMkII and the Nikon D2X and - to compare to film, my Nikon F100 equipped with an aspheric Nikon 17-35mm/2,8 zoom and loaded with Fuji 100ASA color negative film and an ALPA12SWA medium format camera, equipped with a Fuji 400ASA film (the comparison with 50ASA Velvia is in preparation) Without further written comments, which are unnecessary in my opinion, just look at the comparison photographs. All have been processed the same way, compressed the same amount for web-display and if you do not believe what you see, you can email me and get the large original files if you want to compare them on your computer. The first photograph shows the entire scene, shot with a Nikon D2X and the mentioned Nikon 17-35mm/2,8 zoom. In the rear, about in the middle, you can see a building, it is a restaurant, and this part, I have cropped out of all full size images and compared the quality and content.
To demonstrate the progress of digital cameras, here the cropped selection, the same as in the other images below, shot with the Kodak DX6490 - as I said, about 24 months ago, regarded as a pretty good camera at 4 Mpx...OK, let's forget this quickly...!
Another "Oldie" is the Kodak DCS 460c camera, which incorporates a 6 Mpx sensor and was about 10 years ago top of the line - still not bad for 6 Megapixel as you can see on the image below - still now much better than the current Kodak 4Pmx or 5Mpx "prosumer" models. The good news is that such a camera you can get on eBay for about 400-450$, which is a good deal if you have Nikon lenses anyway from your film based camera.
In most literature, also those from Kodak, it
is strongly recommended to use an IR cut-off filter in front of the camera lens
to prevent IR to reach the sensor as this would create unwanted color changes
and color would be inconsistent - depending on how much IR would be around. Now to the comparison sets with current cameras - The first set of comparison photos shows the Canon 20D vs. the Nikon F100 film
The second pair is the comparison of the Nikon D70S vs. the Nikon F100 film
The third set is the comparison of the Canon 1DMkII vs. Nikon F100 film
An finally the last set is the comparison of the Nikon D2X vs. the Nikon F100 film
At another day, a few weeks later, I took from the same point a picture with the same film based Nikon F100, equipped with the 2.8/17-35mm S Nikon lens and a ultra-fine grain film, the Gigabitfilm, exposed without color filter at 40ASA. Here the crop which is limited in resolution by the scanner resolution and not by the the negative itself. I am looking for scanning that negative with a scanner which has got a higher optical resolution than 3200dpi because what one can see as "grain" structure is the structure coming from the scan and this is not that visible on the negative itself.
B&W Gigabit Film 1/250sec, 1:5,6, f~28mm And here below now the same image, taken a day later, but at the same point with an ALPA12SWA, equipped with a Schneider-Kreuznach 5,6/58mm lens on a 6x8cm film format - just to show the difference. Please note, that the scan crop, which was here before has been replaced by a much better scan as I got hold on a Nikon ED8000 scanner and the difference to the previous scans with an Epson 4870 is impressive...
Alpa12SWA, Schneider-Kreuznach 5,6/58mm, Fuji NPH400ASA The next image shown below was taken with the same camera outfit but on a Fuji Velvia film at 50ASA. Please note, that the scan crops which were placed here originally have been replaced by much better scans as I got fortunately hold on a Nikon ED8000 scanner with which I scanned these slides again - the Alpa12SWA and the Pentax 645 slide.
Alpa12SWA, Schneider-Kreuznach 5,6/58mm, Fuji Velvia 50ASA And to round this film comparison up, here the last one, taken with a Pentax 645 on the same Fuji Velvia at 50 ASA ( the new scan done on a Nikon ED8000 ), the only difference was that the CopyMax car was not there anymore....
Pentax 645, 45mm Takumar, Fuji Velvia 50ASA After I published these few images, I got several requests for repeating the test with maybe another difficult object and redoing some of the photos - some people thought that their camera brand was better than shown. Well, I went out again and did some more tests. Again, same location but now a different direction.
This is again the total view, taken with a Nikon D2X (I do not get any $$ from Nikon to promote their products, but they are excellent). I have selected again a small part in the middle and what you see below is a shot with film (Fuji Velvia), taken with an old Hasselblad 500C and the Zeiss 50mm Distagon. This crop (again re-scanned with a Nikon ED8000) is what you will see further down then for all cameras I was using.
Hasselblad 500C, Distagon 4/50mm, Fuji Velvia 50ASA
Here comes the first digital camera crop, taken with the Canon 20D (all files converted from raw format) - the lens was as before the Canon 20-35mmAF
The next shot was taken with the Nikon D70S, equipped with the Nikon AFS 17-55mm
The next shot was taken with the Pentax *istDS and the Pentax lens which comes with it as standard outfit
The shot below now is from the highly acclaimed Fuji S3Pro with that special sensor system - my opinion is that it does not compare at all with a 12Mpx camera, I would estimate from what I see, maybe in the range of 6-7MPx....but judge yourself!
And at last again the Nikon D2X, which I think is again showing the advantages of some more Megapixel and a very good image acquisition mode:
One observation, I made, was that as soon as you start improving the image in Photoshop (CS2), the small amount of halos around the high contrast areas become stronger as you can see on the image below. The image above is the unaltered crop out of Nikon Capture 4 (with the resolution set to 400ppi), transferred into Photoshop and saved, the one below is the same image but with Nikon Capture 4's default resolution of 300ppi and a few color and contrast adaptions.
Why did I change the default resolution in Capture 4 - well, to get to comparably sized crops, the resolution of the raw image should be as close as possible to the desired size of the crop. If you take the default value of 300ppi, the above shown crop looks like that, as soon as you enlarge the image to get the same size. You can see the difference in quality in the high contrast areas, so if you change the resolution, I suggest to do it in the raw conversion program and not later then in the image enhancement program.
What I also realized is, that the final quality seems to depend to a certain amount also on the program which converts the raw image into TIFF. I think that from what I have seen, that it would be a good choice to use the conversion program which is supplied with the camera, so the Nikon Capture 4 for Nikon and not an other solution. Maybe I am wrong, but I think the converted images are slightly better than with 3rd party programs. I also took again the shots of that restaurant, the ones, which you can see at the top of this review - a different time of day, quite some contrast, dark parts and highlights. And here is the outcome, again starting with the total overview, taken with the Nikon D2X
On film, taken with the same old Hasselblad 500C and Fuji Velvia, it looks like that - the same very small crop out of the center:
As you can see, the light was difficult, there is a lot of contrast, dark areas, highlights and how do the digital cameras perform, well, here they come, starting again with the Canon 20D:
The next shot was taken with the Nikon D70S, the lenses were always the same as before:
Here, it is obvious that the Canon 20D is better than the Nikon D70s, no doubt, just look at the details and the contrast rendition. The next shot was taken with the Konica Minolta D7 (unfortunately, the comparison shot of the crop of the First National Bank, shown before turned out black and I could not repeat it)
And the next one below was taken with the Pentax *istDS
And the next one taken with the Fuji S3Pro
And as before, the last one, taken with the Nikon D2X equipped with the AFS 17-55mm lens:
I would like to thank again Wolf Camera for helping me with these shots during normal business hours. I do not think that I have revealed anything unknown or unpublished, what I wanted was to show how the various cameras perform under a bit more difficult lighting situations and with every day's very normal targets. If you like to read a much more detailed and very objective comparison of the pro's and con's of film and digital, written by a professional photographer, I would suggest you to go to Ken Rockwell's tutorial and review of film-digital here: Film or Digital? Email me if you have got questions or if you would like to comment on anything!
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