Digital Medium Format Crops?

[Jamesino]

Does anyone have any links to 100% crops from high-end digital Medium format cameras such as the Hasseblad H3D?

[DrPablo]

Here's one from film medium format -- 6x6 Hasselblad with Velvia, drum scanned at 4000 dpi, and an actual res crop.

http://www.pbase.com/drpablo74/image/103906854.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/drpablo74/image/104190080.jpg

[S.Horton]

Nice to see you 'round, DrP!

Of the gear you have, what is your favorite to use?

The 8x10?

[DrPablo]

Hey Sam,
They're all fun! My newest two toys are a Howtek 4500 drum scanner and a Noblex 150 panoramic camera. The 8x10 is a jawdropper for portraits and landscapes, but the 4x5 is a lot more flexible for all subjects, incl macro and wide angle and architecture. The Hasselblad is a nice, easy walkaround camera.

For digital medium format, I got my Hasselblad with three Zeiss lenses for $1400, and the drum scanner for $2000 (they go for up to $100,000 new). So for a total of $4000 (including all the film I've ever shot and developed on MF, plus a bunch of accessories), I've got a 6x6cm digital medium format camera. If I scan my film at 6 microns, I get a roughly 90 megapixel image from the Hasselblad.

[S.Horton]

Whoa -- The photog I know at a local shop basically told me that if I was going to do MF on the 'cheap' I should do what you're doing -- Film scanning.

Now, when you get that 90 MP image, you capture sharpen/noise reduce first, then PP as normal?

(curious)

[DrPablo]

I do PP as normal and I sharpen at the output size.

Noise reduction is a more complicated subject on drum scanners. First of all, drum scanners do not use a Bayer (CCD or CMOS) sensor, so there is no interpolation and just a trivial amount of color noise. Aliasing is basically impossible except in rare situations, so there is no need for any antialiasing filter. On my scanner the smallest aperture size is 6 microns, which is about the size of the smallest film grains, so grain aliasing is extremely unlikely except with super high res films. And if I get grain aliasing, I could just scan with a larger aperture, which would slightly lower effective resolution but would eliminate grain aliasing without sacrificing sharpness. The scanner also has effectively no digital noise unless I'm applying a lot of gain to the scan (generally unnecessary -- you can just increase the gamma instead).

At 4000 dpi, grain is visible even on Velvia (as you can see above). Noise can be reduced simply by resizing to a smaller output size (the Bicubic engines do enough 'proximity' comparisons for size reduction that noise gets reduced out but details remain. But I often will run Noiseware at full res just to clean it up a little. If I were ever to print a huge enlargement, like a 24x30 print from a scanned 35mm film frame, I'd certainly need to reduce noise, though.

[S.Horton]

Interesting......... good to know.

I wonder who even processes MF film these days -- It isn't CVS or WalMart!

[Wilt]

I wonder who even processes MF film these days -- It isn't CVS or WalMart!

Those outfits didn't process medium format, even 15 years ago!

[S.Horton]

.........right, I never knew who did. When we did film as kids we processed B&W in a tiny little home darkroom.

I kinda miss the excitement of seeing photo appear, sometimes, then I go into reality check remembering the cost of film and the dozens of mistakes I made.

[Wilt]

Digital is fast, incrementally cheap (per shot), and very forgiving (cost wise) of errors. Something that is missing is the articstic satisfaction of bringing a display size print to life yourself, in the darkroom. I really miss making exhibition size Ilfochrome prints!

[DC Fan]

The Luminous Landscape (http://luminous-landscape.com/) web site has reviews (http://luminous-landscape.com/reviews/) of medium format cameras, both digital and film.

[René Damkot]

Does anyone have any links to 100% crops from high-end digital Medium format cameras such as the Hasseblad H3D?

What do you want to know?

[Wilt]

Does anyone have any links to 100% crops from high-end digital Medium format cameras such as the Hasseblad H3D?

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/h3d-review.shtml


look at the 100% crop taken from the shot of Pumululu National Park, about 50% down the page