Okay... compact film vs compact digital ..

Okay, I know some of you guys will say that a dSLR is great and
wonderful, but put this out of the question, on account of its size
and weight mainly; i haven't bought a film SLR lately, so i won't buy
a dSLR either.

I've recently had my liking of photography rekindled, and have gone
the film route for image quality. My current favorite camera(s) is a
Minox 35 GT-S/E (I have both, and I love them immensely). SLR image
quality in a 200gm camera. I also have 2 other cameras that would be
of interest from a compact photography as well as a collector's
interest, one of them is a limited edition fujifilm sivli black f2.8,
and the other, though far less significant, is an olympus xa working
perfectly and in very good condition. I suspect i'll be selling the XA
because i have not felt much affection for it. I also have two other
P&S that interested me but I won't be keeping them much.

Why so many P&S cameras? Well, the minoxes are out of production, and
i found mine in mint or like new condition, so i have no regrets. The
fujifilm silvi f2.8 black is a 24mm/f2.8 that zooms to 50 and it has
exposure compensation in half steps up to 2 +/-, so it's very
interesting, in addition to it being a limited edition of which only a
few had been made. All these are less than 200gms with extraordinary
image quality. The other P&S were acquired on the way, all from ebay
at good prices, and will probably go back to it pretty soon. All in
all, buying several compacts was not much different from buying an SLR
and a few lenses, except that i prefer the smaller form factor of the
compacts and can load different films in them.

But I'm wondering if i should be considering a switch over to digital
and forget all about film. So here are my questions...

1. are there any compelling compact digital cameras? One that'd
compete with the minox for image quality and enlargement possibility
while retaining the small form factor? My current impression is that
there is none, considering that most are 5 megapixels max, and the
ones that are higher such as the 6 megapixels fuji finepix aren't true
megapixels. (dSLRs and the 8 megapixels ones are too big and bulky).
2. What's this thing about image interpolation? Does it mean that i
can interpolate an image to a higher pixel count? how does that work
in reality? is it really effective? I've seen that those fujifilm
cameras can produce 12 megapixels in a consumer digital camera, which
sounds phenomenal, how do these compare to film? how does an
interpolated picture done on photoshop or the best available software
compare? can i just go ahead and buy a 5 megapixel compact in the
comfort that if i want to enlarge it i can easily do that with
interpolation?
3. at what point should i get rid of my film equipment? I plan to put
any of those i won't be using and that don't have collector value on
ebay within the next week or two, but what about the collectibles? are
they likely to increase or decrease in price? I would love to keep
them for a while and use them, but do you see any digital technology
happening very soon that may render them worthless, or would they
remain valuable for some time to come regardless?

 

You should have put your film gear on eBay a couple years ago - as value has
plummeted since. As for "collectible" film cameras, very few on eBay are
drawing even trivial bids now.
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I'll let someone else field the specifics, but here's my input:

If you won't print pictures larger than 8x10 and you examine them from
normal viewing distance (I.e. you don't put a loupe on them), you
probably won't be able to tell the difference between a compact 4
megapixel digital and a compact film camera.

Interpolation can increase the number of pixels in an image, but not the
amount of information. If done cleverly, you can expand images larger
than their native resolution and still retain the appearance of detail.
It's not something you want to rely on to produce high-quality images.

As for cute compact digitals with decent image quality - there's a
bunch. Canon has a digital Elph that is fairly compact, and Pentax has
the Optio S which is about the size of a Altoids tin. Sony has got a
new 5 megapixel ultra-compact, but I haven't seen any reviews yet.

A good place to start searching is at:

http://www.dpreview.com

They have in-depth reviews and sample images you can view. Since a lot
of quality is subjective, you can choose the camera that produces the
best results to your eye.

As for the film cameras - that's your call. I wouldn't toss them unless
digital wows you over and makes you swear at developing fees like I did.

 

Speaking as someone who only uses one camera at a time, I am rather glad I
never got rid of my old SLR as my digital turned up it's toes a couple of
weeks back.

It is now in the (hopefully safe) hands of the Olympus repair centre.
Meanwhile, I dusted off my old SLR and, one new battery later, started
taking traditional photos again.

I found I had forgotten a lot, like:

1. The cost of traditional camera batteries.

2. Just how heavy my old SLR was.

3. Having exchangable lenses means you never have the right one on the
camera when you need it.

4. You're never quite sure whether the photo will turn out the way you
intended, you just have to hope.

5. How expensive it is to get film processed.

6. The frustration of having to wait for your prints.

The photos turned out looking good in the end, but I can't wait to get my
"proper" camera back.

Keith

 

DSLRs are lighter? Not. The compacts are are nice and light, but they suffer
from slow focusing and handling. Not a fair comparison to film SLRs.

Not having interchangeable lenses means you pretty much are always shooting
with a compromise, but this isn't unique to film or digital.

Please. Unless you're a total rookie, your shots will come out just as you
had envisioned. Film is wonderfully reliable. Digital does not gaurantee
results.

As opposed to the totally free process associated with digital for
downloading, storing, archiving, and then later updating those archives to
newer media every few years. Jury's out on this one.

Unless you're shooting with a Polaroid, you're going to wait to get prints.
They don't appear by magic.

 

Except for the Fuji 690, prices of which are becomming astronomical.

Graham

 

Is this why pro's bracket their exposures? Every one makes mistakes. With a
digital you see it immediately and can take another shot.

Actually I can shoot and have a print within a minute or so.
Just depends how close I am to my printer.
In any case you can see the shot you just took immediately.

I had the same experience. A small and light digital is simply much better
for most pictures I take.

-Jack

 

Have you ever seen this camera? It sounded great, but it's been announced
for a year, and I've never seen it for sale anywhere.

 

Pros bracket to overcome the limitations of film, for the same reason
digital pros do the same thing. And, to overcome the limitations of the
technology, we do quite a bit of tweaking in PS, don't we? But to claim that
you won't know how your photos will look if you shoot with film is, well,
ridiculous.

Right. So if you're willing to carry a printer with you, that's great. What
type do you lug along?

And that's what it's all about. Personal choices. Digital, for me, isn't a
film replacement, just another tool. Use what works.

 

Are DSLR's (with the same lens mounted) weight much less? There's
something for compact cameras of all sorts!

If you apply some epoxy to your lens mount for your favorite lens
that'll fix the problem and make it the same as a non-removeable
digital camera.

Such confidence! Do only a few of yours come out okay? Surely
you do better than that! Have confidence!! Any missed surely
couldn't have been all that important of a shot (mumble).... .

Try Costco if you have one there. Use the overnight bins,
not the instore 1-hour service. VERY VERY cheap! Prints
are something like 6 cents with processing free.

How long did it take you to make "all" 36 prints when using your
digital camera?

Don't blame you. My wife got her *red* Sony DSC-P100 yesterday (straight
from Sony to get it quick as possible). 5.1 Megapixel and very tiny
(relatively speaking) and light (6.5 oz w/battery and memory card).
Made a print last night (on a Canon i9900) and it looked great. I
can't say it's economic, but it's fun and the camera's small/light/etc.

Mike

 

Unless you're shooting with a Polaroid, you're going to wait to get

Depends where and what you are shooting. In a studio I'd imagine that the
printer can be right there along with a large display to check the image
immediately.

Please don't forget that the image shows up immediately on the back of the
camera and you can typically zoom in to see the details.
Now, I expect you will say "So if you're willing to carry a camera with you,
that's great. What type do you lug along?" but hopefully you will just
realize that you are splitting hairs and building a strawman before you
start typing.

Ah, but it is replacing film in those situations. So it is at least a
partial replacement.

-Jack

 

Who blinked in that group portrait you just took? No use finding out a week
later with film.

 

(Anoni Moose) wrote in

I am pretty sure that Keith was simply commenting that after using a
compact digital, he found an SLR a lot heavier. The same I found when I
sold my Nikon CP950 and bought my Canon 10D.

I have to agree with this, I have never found it a disadvantage to be
able to change lenses. I changed to a D-SLR because I regularly found my
compacts didn’t have enough zoom.

Keith never said that he didn’t get what he expected 9 times out of 10,
he said that he was never quite sure that he would. This is an obvious
difference between film and digital. With digital you can check your
shot, with film you assume you got it and hope you’re right.

WOW! A roll of 36 film developed and printed for $2.16! It’s hard to
see how they could make anything out of that service. You certainly can
not find any service in this country close to as cheap as twice that
cost.

I think that this is another of those obvious differences between film
and digital that Keith is highlighting. With digital you can take 36
shots, walk back into the house and copy to the PC then view the pics
straight away.

So after picking apart the post you are in complete agreement?

After reading Keith’s post I thought that it was a very true comment on
how you get used to some new tech and then when you go back to the
previous tech you are surprised at how different it now seems.

The only thing I disagreed with was his comment on the nuisance of being
able to change lenses. Obviously someone with an SLR has the simple
option of buying a 28-300 zoom lens and never buy another lens, therefore
with no lenses to change to you always have the right (and only) lens on
the camera.

 

Not everyone's an SLR person, naturally. And SLRs vary; my Olympus
OM-1 and OM-4 are smaller and nearly as quiet as the Canon Vt, P, and
7 (rangefinders) that I used to own. And I have a Canon Pro90IS
digicam that, while not a total film replacement, is certainly smaller
and more capable than any SLR and just one lens.

Any 35mm compact with a good, fixed focal length, can argue 35mm
quality. I still have a number of compact 35mm rangefinders, popular
in the 70s and early 80s, which were small, accurate, sharp, good in
low light (typically an f1.8 lens), etc: Konicas, Canons, Yashicas,
Minoltas. They got caught in the squeeze beteen "prosumer" SLRs and
more consumer friendly 35mm P&S, but it kind of the model for what
you're after, I think.

I loved the XA; my wife still has an XA2, but pretty much uses my old
digital Canon ProShot 350, even with that model's weak resolution.
Kodak sold zillions of really bad cameras to people who just didn't
care... it happens.

Because you're missing the truth of photography. Most people out there
really just want a point and shoot. The folks who bought Instamatics
in the '60s, 110s in the 70s, Disc cameras (argh!) in the 80s, 35mm
P&S in the 90s, now buy digital P&S. That's a market 100x larger than
the SLR market, I'll bet.

Plus, it's easier. It's been a long road, making a digital camera
deliver the quality of a 35mm SLR. We're close enough for more needs
every year, but not quite there yet. P&S cameras, especially the small
35mm pocket with zoom and auto-everything types, are orders of
magnitude better than instamatics or 110s, but no great shakes for the
most part. So replacing those with digital, it's a lower bar, and
those people never shoot beyond 4x6 or so prints. So if they get
2-3Mpixel, they're happy as they were with 35mm.

I understand the kind of camera you want. It's not on the list at most
companies. And those who still do a good job of it, in the purest
form, they charge too much, because of the fact that Leitx has served
that market. So a 6Mpixel rangefinder-like camera has to be, for some
reason, a $1500-$2500 camera, even if frickin' Epson and Cosina (or
Leitz and Panasonic) make it. Go figure.

Have you considered a used Pentax Auto 110. Ok, just kidding, but I
did sell mine recently.

No. You will not find anything that's exactly as good as a compact
35mm with a very good, fixed focal length lens. At least if you always
shoot on something like Velvia. Now, "almost as good", yeah, that can
happen.

For size, have you looked at the Canon "Digital Elphs"; Canon has had
very good sensor color and good lenses on their smaller digitals.
Personally, I wouldn't go quite so small, and I'd consider the Canon
G5. That's the closest you get to a rangefinder-like form and
function, without getting into the Leitz-inspired nut-zone. It's not
as small as a Minox, but what is.

On the Fujifilms? Ok, they play a trick. Most digicams have a sensor
that's an array of pixels, in a rectangular form. Like you eye, this
is actually an array of blue, green, and red sensors. What Fujifilm
does is tilt this sensor by 45-degress, basically. This has the effect
of making the horizontal and vertical lines based on interstitial
sensors, rather than a clean matrix. So they interpolate this back to
a normal X,Y grid. That interpolation is kind of fake, but necessary
to fit it all in the standard image bitmap. They're basically adding
performance in the X,Y direction, and subtracting performance from the
diagonals. Bottom line: a 5Mpixel sensor turned 45 degress is still a
5Mpixel sensor. Maybe it's better, maybe worse, in the result; that
would depend entirely on your subject matter. I think most of the time
it doesn't matter.

Based on a calculation I did on my own, then saw replicated pretty
much elsewhere, the practical limit in "pixel equivalent resolution"
(eg, what kind of digital camera could reproduce this result) for 35mm
is about 30Mpixel. That would assume some super sharp film such as
Velvia 40, one of the best lenses Leitz has ever made, etc. But in
reality, if you actually took that captured image and scanned it into
the PC, by then you're more like 20-25Mpixels worth of possible data.
And using lesser film, it continues to fall.

I think the general consensus is that 16-20Mpixel cameras are pretty
damn close. 6-8Mpixel is about the point at which serious hobbiests
will consider hanging up that film camera for good. Maybe some pros,
too, but I think it's more like "building you toolbox" with a pro.

Different stuff. The Fujifilm thing is taking advantage of specific
knowledge of their tilted CCD, and attempting to presetve the
information in that snapshot that would be lost if they made it a
plain old 6Mpixel image. So in some cases, the Fujifilm image is a
little bit better than a 6Mpixel conventional shot scaled to 12Mpixel;
in some cases, a little bit worse. A real 12Mpixel shot will be much
better.

There's enlarging and there's enlarging. When you're printing a photo,
you probably print it at somewhere between 300dpi and 150dpi,
independent of the printer resolution. 6Mpixel is just dandy for most
enlargements. If you're doing 8x10s, a 3Mpixel camera is about
minimum, 4Mpixel is what you pretty much want. You wouldn't do any
enlargement in Photoshop, you'd simply print it.

For poster-sized prints, there are any number of fractal-based scaling
plug-ins or programs that do the scaling very cleverly, avoiding the
pixel pop-out that you'd expect. That doesn't really add resolution
(you can't), but it helps presever the relative viewing distance
thing.

Only when you can wipe a layer of dust from it. No one can teach you
this, grasshopper, you must find your own path.

What's the rush? If this isn't funding the digicam purchase, why not
wait, rather than reget it. Particularly before you have even proven
to yourself that your digicam purchase makes you happy.

Yes.

Dave Haynie | Chief Toady, Frog Pond Media Consulting
| Take Back Freedom! Bush no more in 2004!
"Deathbed Vigil" now on DVD! See http://www.frogpondmedia.com

 

This says nothing negative about film. The battery in my minox is
something i don't need to worry about for months and months and months
if not for years. Unlike a digital. I just pick up the Minox and i'm
ready to shoot anytime without worrying about recharing

Also, eventhough it's a mere 200gms I feel comfortable that its image
quality challenges a 6mp dSLR that weighs a lot more.

while i thank you for replying to my post i must say this is a bizarre
rationale, just what stops you from having the "right one" on the
camera when you need it?

If the right one means some generous zoom of sort that's on all-in-one
digital cameras then just get a zoom if that's what you like.

No more expensive than digital. Actually even less expensive
considering what you get.

Okay film is not for you. If you want instant gratification regardless
of anything then stick to digital.

Personally i really really do enjoy the fact that it could take me a
few days to finish an odd roll of film, and that it could take me a
few more days to get round to sending the film to be processedm, and
that then it takes yet a few more days for it to come back. And then,
one morning, i get a packet of prints and negatives in my mail, the
majority of its shots i had forgotten about, and i am so pleasantly
surprised and amused when i go through them.

At times i went to the 1-hour lab, and it really did feel like
premature ejaculation. You know that dreadful feeling? you know how
the joy of delayed gratification is immensely more rewarding than
instant gratification? it just feels like that.

 

No, I'm not in complete agreement, I disagree with him on a few
points. I like digital cameras but it's not like being a sports fan
where everything your team does is great no matter what.

If the purpose of the camera is to make digital images to be looked at
on a PC, then digital cameras are great and film cameras are a pain.

If the purpose of the camera is to make prints without effort
or any significant cost, then film cameras are much better, at least
if one has a Costco nearby (although I don't know if all costcos have
the incredible cheap prices they have here where I get double-prints
not because I want two copies, but they're SO cheap when gotten with
the processing -- onsies later on cost much more).

If one's in a hurry, then digital wins too (although in a hurry for
a print may not be too fast, depends on the person, who does the
family's printing, etc).

As to knowing how they turned out immediately, the digital camera helps
some, but the ~1.8" LCD display doesn't provide really critical evaluations
of the results -- but yes it is beneficial. But with film in an SLR,
I pretty well know what I'll get most of the time. Yes it's a benefit,
but not a strong one for snapshooting (normally what's done using P&S
cameras, be they digital or film).

Some aspects of weight and such were presented as attributes of the
camera being a digital one. They weren't. They were aspects of it
being a P&S camera, equally valid if the new camera were a film P&S
instead. Someone using a P&S film camera going back to a SLR would
have the same comments of weight and interchangeable lenses. In
fact if that old SLR were a digital one, the comments would still
hold.

I like all cameras, and use all kinds (although MF is the largest I've
used so far, large format is still in the future, if at all). However,
I don't think hype is overly useful either -- sports fan style. It
can confuse the bystander who may not understand what's being said.

Of course, not hard to get me confused either, but there's no lack
of folk to fix that situation.

Mike