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So, with all the critical details here about CCD sensors, you expert guys are telling me that I should not rush out and spend $10 K, $20 K, or whatever for the

by graycat 14y ago

So, with all the critical details here about CCD sensors, you expert guys are telling me that I should not rush out and spend $10 K, $20 K, or whatever for the latest Nikon/Canon single lens reflex with a CCD sensor and a bag of lenses and, instead, keep my old Nikon Nikormat with its bag of Nikon lenses? Let's see, opening the bag for the first time in a while, I have a Nikkor 200 mm f4, a Nikkor 105 mm f2.5, a Nikkor 55 mm f3.5 macro (good for closeups and general usage) with an extension tube for getting even closer, and a Nikkor 50 mm f1.4. Ah, I guess the f1.4 is for taking shots of the girlfriend in her little cocktail dress sitting at the candle lit romantic dinner table waiting for the rest of the evening! Or maybe I should be sitting at the table taking the picture as she comes in with a frilly apron over her cocktail dress and carrying a serving tray with her hand made Sachertorte mit Schlagobers (whipped cream)? Also in the bag is a Honeywell strobe light: It uses a 900 Volt dry cell battery if can find one and otherwise just uses the A/C adapter. The recharge time on the A/C adapter is fast. I suspect I will be able to buy film such as Kodak Kodacolor for a long time, but processing is an issue: I've had Sam's Club start with my Kodacolor 35 mm and return to me a CD with JPG images with 1818 x 1228 pixels which seems to be a little below the resolution of the best of the Nikon equipment. At one time Kodak offered Kodak PhotoCD with much higher resolution. Any suggestions? What about getting good processing and scanning to JPG of the film? Sounds like my old Nikon equipment is still competitive with newer single lens reflex cameras with CCD sensors and roughly 35 mm image width? E.g., on resolution Dalsa made a CCD image sensor with 48 million pixels, a light detection rectangle 36 x 48 mm, i.e., much like 35 mm film in my Nikon, with each pixel a square 6 microns on a side, capturing about 55,000 electrons per pixel, and, net, 6 K x 8 K pixels. Sounds good until notice that apparently each pixel is for just one color, red, green, or blue, and they use a 2 x 2 array of four such pixels, one red, one blue, and two green, for one 'color' pixel. So, in such 'color' pixels their sensor is 3 K x 4 K and, thus, not necessarily a lot better than 35 mm film? Where am I going wrong?

cuu508 14y ago
* this sensor is for video, your Nikormat cannot do video * practicality of digital vs analog, people will trade quality for convenience * with Bayer filter you don't lose exactly 1/2 of resolution, the algoritms employed do a little better than that
- graycat 14y ago
  Thanks. I had to Google "Bayer filter" -- the Wikipedia page is good. So, yes, without knowing it, I was describing a Bayer filter. For video, sure, my Nikormat is only a still camera, but my guess is that the Canon CCD sensor will also get used for still photography. Then a question is, would that chip make a much better 35 mm 'class' still camera than my old Nikormat with, say, just Kodacolor film? Apparently on ASA speed values, the Canon sensor would totally blow away any film. But on resolution, I was guessing that film such as Kodacolor in a good, old still camera such as my Nikormat might still be close to competitive. But I have fallen so behind in photography that I don't even know what the camera ads mean when they say how many pixels their sensor has. For the Dalsa sensor I described, would the ads say 48 million pixels or just 1/4th of that many, 12 million, after the Bayer filtering?
Domenic_S 14y ago
> carrying a serving tray with her hand made Sachertorte mit Schlagobers (whipped cream)? What am I reading
- graycat 14y ago
  It's a fantasy image that would be good to photograph, if it happened. A Sachertorte is a chocolate cake famous from Hotel Sacher in Vienna. It has lots of chocolate and eggs, some apricot jam, and only a little flour. The cake is chocolate, and there is a covering of a soft candy-like chocolate over the whole cake. As is common with coffee and deserts in Vienna, it is commonly eaten with whipped cream. If you are having a romantic candle lit dinner with a pretty girl wearing a pretty cocktail dress and for desert she goes to the kitchen and comes out wearing a frilly apron over her dress and carrying a tray with that cake and whipped cream, that she made herself just for you, then you have lots of symbols, worth photographing, of a potential of a very happy marriage and home life (although some women would say would be happy mostly only for you) which, of course, is one of the main reasons to take pictures.
dietrichepp 14y ago
> I suspect I will be able to buy film such as Kodak Kodacolor for a long time Check your suspicions again. Kodak has discontinued, in the past few years: * Kodachrome * High color Portra films (the VC versions) * Ektachrome (pro and consumer) * Plus-X Pan I suspect consumer negative film is on the way out. You'll be stuck with Ektar and Portra, or maybe just one of those two choices. All of the above films were discontinued before Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, so perhaps it will only get worse. THE BIG PROBLEM: You cannot inexpensively scan 35mm at high resolution. Photographers have been saying for years that film is great because you can just hang on to your negatives and wait for the prices on good scanners to come down, but my experience is that the nice scanners ($3,000 Nikon Coolscan 9000) yield an actual resolution much closer to 2000 dpi rather than the advertised 4000 dpi. You could also buy a Flextight or a drum scanner for like $12,000, and you can send good frames out for drum scanning at $40 per frame. This means that with a good setup you'll be getting roughly 5+ MP pictures out of your 35mm rig. In most situations, it's not even close to competetive with the quality of a modern 24 MP DSLR with a full frame sensor. It's just a hell of a lot cheaper.
- graycat 14y ago
  Well, I wrote Kodacolor realizing that Kodak was in Chapter 11 and film is on the way out. But I was hoping that Fuji or maybe something from Europe would be equivalent to Kodacolor, as I recall, called color negative film. But I don't know anything about Fuji film either. On scanning resolution, thanks for the detail. So, the resolution I am getting now at Sam's Club, 1818 * 1228 = 2,232,504 maybe isn't too awful. Apparently getting color negative film scanned to something like the old Kodak PhotoCD is still possible at, say, http://www.twocatdigital.com/scanning.html http://www.twocatdigital.com/scanning.html Their Web site mentions files sizes and file types, but I didn't find much on their resolution in pixels. So, net, right, it looks like a current, high-end, Nikon or Canon full frame 35 mm digital single lens reflex camera or even a movie camera with the Canon CCD sensor of the OP will be much better than color negative film in my old Nikormat on sensitivity, i.e., ASA 'film speed' and resolution. So, if I want to dig into photography again, then I should get a sack full of modern equipment and copies of the relevant Adobe software. In the meanwhile, shooting color negative film and getting it scanned at Sam's Club (if they still do that), Wal-Mart, TwoCat, etc. seems like still a relatively good way to take pictures.

by graycat 14y ago

cuu508 14y ago

* this sensor is for video, your Nikormat cannot do video * practicality of digital vs analog, people will trade quality for convenience * with Bayer filter you don't lose exactly 1/2 of resolution, the algoritms employed do a little better than that

graycat 14y ago
Thanks. I had to Google "Bayer filter" -- the Wikipedia page is good. So, yes, without knowing it, I was describing a Bayer filter. For video, sure, my Nikormat is only a still camera, but my guess is that the Canon CCD sensor will also get used for still photography. Then a question is, would that chip make a much better 35 mm 'class' still camera than my old Nikormat with, say, just Kodacolor film? Apparently on ASA speed values, the Canon sensor would totally blow away any film. But on resolution, I was guessing that film such as Kodacolor in a good, old still camera such as my Nikormat might still be close to competitive. But I have fallen so behind in photography that I don't even know what the camera ads mean when they say how many pixels their sensor has. For the Dalsa sensor I described, would the ads say 48 million pixels or just 1/4th of that many, 12 million, after the Bayer filtering?

Domenic_S 14y ago

> carrying a serving tray with her hand made Sachertorte mit Schlagobers (whipped cream)? What am I reading

graycat 14y ago
It's a fantasy image that would be good to photograph, if it happened. A Sachertorte is a chocolate cake famous from Hotel Sacher in Vienna. It has lots of chocolate and eggs, some apricot jam, and only a little flour. The cake is chocolate, and there is a covering of a soft candy-like chocolate over the whole cake. As is common with coffee and deserts in Vienna, it is commonly eaten with whipped cream. If you are having a romantic candle lit dinner with a pretty girl wearing a pretty cocktail dress and for desert she goes to the kitchen and comes out wearing a frilly apron over her dress and carrying a tray with that cake and whipped cream, that she made herself just for you, then you have lots of symbols, worth photographing, of a potential of a very happy marriage and home life (although some women would say would be happy mostly only for you) which, of course, is one of the main reasons to take pictures.

dietrichepp 14y ago

> I suspect I will be able to buy film such as Kodak Kodacolor for a long time Check your suspicions again. Kodak has discontinued, in the past few years: * Kodachrome * High color Portra films (the VC versions) * Ektachrome (pro and consumer) * Plus-X Pan I suspect consumer negative film is on the way out. You'll be stuck with Ektar and Portra, or maybe just one of those two choices. All of the above films were discontinued before Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, so perhaps it will only get worse. THE BIG PROBLEM: You cannot inexpensively scan 35mm at high resolution. Photographers have been saying for years that film is great because you can just hang on to your negatives and wait for the prices on good scanners to come down, but my experience is that the nice scanners ($3,000 Nikon Coolscan 9000) yield an actual resolution much closer to 2000 dpi rather than the advertised 4000 dpi. You could also buy a Flextight or a drum scanner for like $12,000, and you can send good frames out for drum scanning at $40 per frame. This means that with a good setup you'll be getting roughly 5+ MP pictures out of your 35mm rig. In most situations, it's not even close to competetive with the quality of a modern 24 MP DSLR with a full frame sensor. It's just a hell of a lot cheaper.

graycat 14y ago
Well, I wrote Kodacolor realizing that Kodak was in Chapter 11 and film is on the way out. But I was hoping that Fuji or maybe something from Europe would be equivalent to Kodacolor, as I recall, called color negative film. But I don't know anything about Fuji film either. On scanning resolution, thanks for the detail. So, the resolution I am getting now at Sam's Club, 1818 * 1228 = 2,232,504 maybe isn't too awful. Apparently getting color negative film scanned to something like the old Kodak PhotoCD is still possible at, say, http://www.twocatdigital.com/scanning.html http://www.twocatdigital.com/scanning.html Their Web site mentions files sizes and file types, but I didn't find much on their resolution in pixels. So, net, right, it looks like a current, high-end, Nikon or Canon full frame 35 mm digital single lens reflex camera or even a movie camera with the Canon CCD sensor of the OP will be much better than color negative film in my old Nikormat on sensitivity, i.e., ASA 'film speed' and resolution. So, if I want to dig into photography again, then I should get a sack full of modern equipment and copies of the relevant Adobe software. In the meanwhile, shooting color negative film and getting it scanned at Sam's Club (if they still do that), Wal-Mart, TwoCat, etc. seems like still a relatively good way to take pictures.