It occurs to me that if you push film as hard as the militant pixel peepers push these digital images, they start to show defects as well, graininess being foremost among them. And surprise, surprise, you get more grain when you go to higher ISO film. Seems like there is a lot of apples=oranges sorts of comparisons going on, Velvia 200 vs. digital at ISO 1600, that sort of thing. The way I look at it, VPN is simply the film grain of our day.
I look forward to a day when digital can capture every last bit of the dynamic range that top-quality slide film can, but in the meantime, digital offers advantages that are too numerous to recount here. I admit to my fair share of photo-geekyness, but really... And, occasional dynamic range-related issues aside, my digital images simply look and print better most anything I have ever taken with film, and are a hell of a lot less labor-intensive and bother to work with. Look, I can even use my "darkroom" to type email! :-) -Tom *ist DS Mark Erickson wrote: > Brendan's post and the response bring up an interesting issue that seems to > increasingly dominate the digital photography world--pixel peeping and > hunting for defects. It is easy to zoom up to 200% and tear apart an image, > but how much of the defects we observe will actually show up in real world > applications? > > For example, the DPReview Pentax SLR forum has had several VPN (vertical > pattern noise) threads lately. Basically, if you crank the ISO way up, > shoot in very low light, then amplify the shadow areas in Photoshop you'll > see patterns in the noise. My *ist-Ds does it, but I never noticed it until > I went looking for it. My ultimate conclusion is, "So what?" It's like the > old joke where the patient says, "Doctor, it hurts when I do XXXX," and the > doctor responds, "So don't do XXXX". > > I know that blooming and CA can be pretty obvious in certain situations > (e.g., backlit tree branches in winter). In less contrasty cases, you may > be able to find it if you go looking for it. If it's not obtrusive, > however, why worry so much about it? > > Just a thought.... > > > -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
