Moose, there is a lot of red, white and other BBQ'd meat to chew on. I'll
opine on a couple of items here.
"Provia has ... The highlights in this case would have busted a digital
> camera image and would have been extremely difficult to have captured
> without getting out-of-gamut colors.
>
One area that I know nearly every digital camera isn't the best at is when
the sensor reaches saturation. This is a physical trait of the technology.
Essentially, sensors are A-D devices and in nearly all cases have a hard
limit after which ugly things happen. This is usually not that big of a deal
when the highlights happen to be of a non color, but when the highlight is
of a color that specifically uses one or two of the three sensor colors, we
get out of gamut problems and we get weird solarization-like artifacts. One
particular aberration is when the image contains a bright red object--the
red will turn white or yellow and be fringed by red. (This has been a really
big problem with fireworks photos). Is film immune to these problems? Not
necessarily. Each type of film is engineered in different ways to have
certain strengths. I mentioned how Provia worked in this picture while
Velvia did not. I was not digital-bashing, but pointing out a specific
technical issue which is fair game, however, I did balance it by mentioning
that not all films were created equal. In reality, nearly every problem I've
had with Digital in this situation are mirrored by Velvia.
> Let's make a deal. I'll try my darndest not to assume anti digital bias
> from you - and you do your darndest to not assume that when I talk
> digital, it's only about Canon. Deal?
>
LOL, deal. I'm still dreaming of a Fuji-sensor equipped full-frame
digital-OM body.
Different, probably, how much, I don't know. A spot reading for
> highlights might be just right.
>
I went back and checked my notes. I'm lousy at keeping field notes, but did
make a concerted effort this time and wrote about 30 pages in a small
notebook. Unfortunately, "exif" style notes aren't my forte. I'm too busy
shooting to distract myself with geeky stuff. Anyway, it looks like I did
use -2/3 exposure-compensation to protect the highlights as much as possible
AND because I was up against the shutter-speed limit. This, however, is more
photographer-preference/experience/desire and less technical in nature.
As I said, a DSLR exposure would almost certainly be much shorter.
> Possibly, as Chuck pointed out, even shorter than I calculated, as
> digital has no reciprocity failure. Thus the issue of light changing
> during a dSLR exposure might be quite a bit less than you experienced.
>
True. I could have used a faster film too, which would have leveled the
speed playing field and selected a print film to give me additional
latitude. But, in the digital world, just shoot RAW and worry about it in
post. My artistic desires, though, may require exposures that run long. This
may be for star trails, car head/taillight streaks, water reflections, etc.
Shorter speeds are fine most of the time, but having the flexibility of
"confetti" free images in time-exposures may be important for some of us
some of the time. It's nice having options both ways.
Color fidelity -
> I've never used an E-1, so I have no practical experience. I was
> surprised when the ShootSmarter shoot-off rated the 5D on top for JPEG
> skin tones. I'm not saying it's better or worse than any E-thingies,
> only that it's apparently not bad.
>
The 5D is the one Canon body which all others should be compared to. I
thought that SmartShooter thing was a joke because of the lens aspect, but
I've seen enough images from other professionals to know that the camera has
succeeded in being able to deliver good skintones and background colors
simultaneously. Within the E-system, if you use in-camera JPEGs you have the
same successful color fidelity, but not necessarily when shooting RAW and
processing with ACR. From everything I've seen, I'd suggest that the 5D and
E-1 are actually about as close as any two cameras from different brands out
there.
On the other hand, nobody knows what the true colors of this image were.
> You admit both that they couldn't be seen by the naked eye and that the
> film used has differential color channel reciprocity failure. So the
> colors are only an impression or approximation of colors we wouldn't see
> in a "true-to-life", close to all black, web version or print.
>
Exactly. But maybe we need to define "true colors". Is what the human eye
sees in low-light accurate? Is our own vision flawed or is it the
gold-standard? I wasn't sure what I was going to get when I was shooting
the scene, but I knew that I was going to get something interesting. Neither
Provia or Velvia were accurate. But that doesn't matter too much, because we
make many choices as photographers to warp reality. Besides, I did do a
little bit of "enhancement" to the scan to get the final contrast and color
densities where I wanted. This, however, is no different than any image
processing that we perform on any digital camera image. Scans rarely are
exactly as the original slide or negative, and we have to modify curves,
sharpness and saturation in post just as we always do with DSLR images.
My comments about the dynamic range of the sky in this photo wasn't very
clear. In this case, I needed to compress the dynamic range in any way
possible. During the scanning process I even reduced contrast of the
mid-ranges just to make it where the saturated colors reproduced.
Your comments about this shot and many others on film talk about the use
> of different films to get different color results. How does that jibe
> with a lot of talk about color accuracy?
In this case, it has nothing to do with color accuracy other than the
ability to hold the highlights without them color-fringing on the
highlights.
My supposition is that you want
> accurate/good skin tones without post work when shooting all those
> people at events, but are more interested in effecting your vision of
> what the image should look like in nature.
>
Precisely. Event shoots are no place for creative interpretation of colors.
I'm not sure just what you mean by "practical dynamic range".
Moose, what I am thinking here is that in in reality the bulk of our image
really utilize five or so stops of dynamic range. Everything else really
ends up in the toe and shoulder. When a camera has, say, 12 stops of dynamic
range and you push all of that into a narrower range for printing/viewing
that the image starts to look flat or just off. So once you get the midtones
stretched properly, everything else gets compressed into the toe and
shoulder. So, the main difference between cameras of differing dynamic
range is not mid-tones but highlights and shadows. Improved dynamic range
does help in the before mentioned color artifacts, though. Nikon's latest
generation of processing has improved this even more, so I believe that it
is just a matter of time before this is a non-issue, but it will probably
take multi-color sensors like we have with color inkjet printers.
My 5D cost $2,620. I've taken almost 7000 shots with it. That's about
> $0.37 per exposure. Looking back at the invoice, the amazing thing is
> that a 2GB Sandisk Ultra II CF card cost $86!
I'm up to 42000 on the E-1 and about $1025. So that's something like $0.025
per exposure. Oh, and that price included the 14-54 zoom. It doesn't owe
me a dime. My first 1GB CF card was around $160. Times have changed. I
wish all of my purchases in life were this efficient and rewarding.
I wasn't and am not suggesting that you should have anything but what
> you are using. You are doing excellent work and enjoying it. Why look
> any further until that changes?
As much as I've enjoyed the E-1 and appreciate some aspects of it, I'm well
aware that it isn't the end-all, be-all in digital cameras. For its humble
specifications though, it seems to hold its own quite respectfully. But I've
kept my investment very low for several reasons. When it does come down to
buying another new camera, I'm as likely to switch system as I am staying
put. My reasoning for buying a different system are very similar to yours.
Just because I can milk every ounce out of a camera doesn't mean that I
want to all the time. It's actually very difficult to get what I think are
top-quality images with the E-1.
Hard to argue with personal taste. On the other hand, I don't see
> anything in the finished web version that makes it stand out as
> something unique to film.
>
Only the red-shift (and intensification) that was specific to Provia.
As usual, I'm mystified by why one would go to a lot of trouble and
> expense to use a film with demonstrably inaccurate color. You want funny
> colors, you can always do it in post. I'm quite serious. I'm sure an ICC
> profile to convert E-1 colors, for example, into Velvia colors should be
> possible. With that, Velvia on demand is almost instant.
>
Close, but not quite. I truly believe that when the 8-color sensor arrays
come out we'll clearly understand the difference. Bit-bending isn't the
answer to everything. Not all sensors see the same, just as not all films
see the same. Point your cameras at a tasseled corn field. The tassels
will appear reddish-brown with Velvia, yellow with Provia, and tan with
Astia. Digital? My E-1 and A1 capture the tassels differently too.
Meanwhile, the green leaves and blue skies may look all the same.
I expect Sony to have the first six-color array and this will be the next
camera war over the following five years to see who can stuff the most
colors on the sensor. Pixel-count battles have run their course and that
means we'll see the same thing with colors that we saw with printers when we
expanded from four colors (CMYK) to five, six, seven, eight...eleven. I
believe the reason we haven't seen this technology yet (except for oddball
two-green arrays from Sony) is that to effectively do it, we really need 24+
megapixel to work with. When this does happen, we'll finally see our
primary colors actually respond correctly--and maybe be able to finally
capture purple.
I've put it on my agenda, but it will more likely be ISO 800 and 15 sec
> or less. I've taken many post sunset shots, but not that far post.
>
I looked at my notes again, and it looks like that shot was close to an hour
after sunset. We talked about how unusual the sky stayed light that night.
A similar shot, taken last year at the Badlands National Park with the E-1
is here:
http://zone-10.com/cmsm/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=191&Itemid=1
AG
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