Re: Digital vs. film cave test
Anthony Farr wrote: Like I keep saying, if there is a fair way to compare digital to film then it can only be by putting the best possible print of each side by side. Why prints? Simple, because that's the one medium where both technologies can show their best. Any other medium gives an advantage to one or the other, or can negate an advantage of one over another. Then I will submit that the best quality print you can get with film is actually a slide. cheers, caveman
Re: Digital vs. film cave test
- Original Message - From: Caveman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Then I will submit that the best quality print you can get with film is actually a slide. cheers, caveman Very well then, if you want to make a comparison that calls for film to be viewed as a projected slide, make the best slide from a digital image file that it's possible to make, and view it via the very same projector that the film original is using. My point about using prints as the means of comparison is that it requires neither capture medium to be converted to the other as part of the process, and very fine prints can be made from either by their own native workflow methods. You certainly could digitise the film if you believe that digital printing is better, but you wouldn't need to, and you could print the digital image as a C-type print if you wanted, and that would be nice, too. You made a nice lampoon of the classic film v digital comparisons that use digital's own native display methods but require film to be converted to digital format by questionable means (a Flextight scanner might be damned good but that doesn't make it the best possible means of digitising film). That in itself should be the point of your exercise, not any retrospective claim that the test was serious. You clearly introduced the test as Digital vs. film cave test, but it was actually damned good slide projector vs. so-so digital projector. regards, Anthony Farr
Re: Digital vs. film cave test
Anthony Farr wrote: My point about using prints as the means of comparison is that it requires neither capture medium to be converted to the other as part of the process, and very fine prints can be made from either by their own native workflow methods. And on what magic digital media do you intend to print ? I don't even bother comparing a slide to a CD or a hard drive or a memory card. ;-) You made a nice lampoon of the classic film v digital comparisons that use digital's own native display methods but require film to be converted to digital format by questionable means Yes, that was one of my purposes. I plead guilty for that. That in itself should be the point of your exercise, not any retrospective claim that the test was serious. And I still submit that there is a serious part to it too, which basically tells that, for projected images, the classic film based workflow produces better results than a full digital workflow. You have to mix some film in the digital process to get to some better results, but then what is the advantage of using digital. In the pure digital workflow we have the advantage of fast production without any photo processing lab mixing into our affairs and delaying things. If we mix film there we have the worst of both worlds. Film-like turnaround times and costs, without the quality. cheers, caveman cheers, caveman
Re: Digital vs. film cave test
You leave my hairy butt out of this ;-) Butt seriously now, what Caveman did was to compare a slideshow with a presentation (Powerpoint?). It would be insane to project any photo with a CCD projector if the image quality of the projection was a concern. However if any graphical elements were to be mixed with the photos then it would be insane to pursue the old fashioned, all film path. I've produced graphics and captions for those (even superimposed captions into slides), and the time and cost (both labour and material) were ridiculous. For the purpose of a lecture, refusal to advance to digital workflow is sheer Ludditism. For the audiences' requirements, ultimate quality is not a concern. If it was then an old fashioned slideshow would be in order, but forget graphics if the budget is tight. Caveman, as a joke, compared apples to oranges. Now you are arguing apples while I argue oranges. The troll worked, and we got sucked into its vortex. regards, Anthony Farr - Original Message - From: William Robb [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, 9 June 2003 10:02 AM Subject: Re: Digital vs. film cave test - Original Message - From: Anthony Farr Keep saying it all you like, but if the needed use is projection, then a print is as useless as mammaries on a nun. For a test to be valid, it has to take into account the end use. Any test that ignores this fact is no longer a test, but a pissing contest. Sometimes, tests just are not fair. When I was looking at cars the last time, my intended purpose was to have a vehicle that would get me out to my father in laws farm in any weather condition. My test bed was a farmers field not to far out of town, and a winch to pull the failures out of the muck. I discovered that an Isuzu Trooper was much better than a Honda Civic for my intended use. Was the test biased towards the sport utility? Sure, but to not test for the conditions I anticipated would have been hairy butt stupid. William Robb
Re: Digital vs. film cave test
Anthony Farr wrote: For the purpose of a lecture, refusal to advance to digital workflow is sheer Ludditism. Call me a Luddite, but I found that the safest way is to prepare the slides on a computer and print them on letter sized tranparencies for overhead projectors. When something goes wrong with a lecture, it goes really wrong, like in having a blown fuse somewhere and no electricity to the power outlets. You can still salvage the lecture by handing out the transparencies to the audience and going to plan B lots of talk and drawings on the whiteboard. With Powerpoint you have a wide choice between a) Blue Screen Of Death b) Windows insisting that you have to (un)install some stupid network/printer/whatever driver before continuing and wants some OEM CDs inserted c) pop-out messages all over the place, with warnings that you are low on system resources or disk space, and offering to close your active programs (Powerpoint) or delete your files in order to make more resources available d) some X-rated screen saver starting out of the blue e) your batteries going flat and you don't have the charger because the laptop said it had a full charge; in the rare event that you do have the charger, there is no extra unused power outlet where to plug that one too f) XP detecting that too many hardware changes have happened and wanting you to phone Microsfot in order to get an authorisation number to continue ...and many many others The Digital Age has come. Enjoy ! cheers, caveman
Re: Digital vs. film cave test
On June 5, 2003 11:04 pm, Rob Studdert wrote: On 5 Jun 2003 at 20:51, Nick Zentena wrote: So it was stacked in favour of the digital. What's new? Read again. It was nicely highlighting the inadequacies of mainstream digital projection options. No it was testing a digital projector that cost 2x what the film one did. That's biased in favour of digital. A fair test would have compared items in the same general price point. Claiming this was biased against digital is like the Yankees whining about having to play the big bad Twins. Nick
Re: Digital vs. film cave test
On June 5, 2003 09:19 pm, Mark Roberts wrote: It was stacked *against* digital. How can any test that gives one side that much of a monetary advantage be stacked against the side with more money? Nick
Re: Digital vs. film cave test
On Thursday, June 5, 2003, at 02:13 PM, Caveman wrote: The digital projector is one of the finest available, it costs over $4000 canuck... That's cheap for a digital projector. --jc
RE: Digital vs. film cave test
-Original Message- From: Keith Whaley [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Not pertinent. It's pertinent for me. When the test being performed has the resolution of the projector lens, good or bad, as a common factor, so long as you don't change the lens between tests, it can be ignored, and only the eyeball results considered. I have no idea what point you're trying to make. He didn't say he used the same lens for both projections, so I fail to see how that could be a common factor. I also fail see how it's a relevant factor when you're projecting a .7 meg image on the wall. You could project it through a coke bottle and not see much degradation. Basically he took an 11 meg image file, used an unknown method to reduce the file size to 6% of the original, threw it up on the wall and bhahaha'd at digital. If his point was that digital projection is inferior, fine, I don't think anyone would argue that an XGA resolution projector is going to beat any slide projector. He likes to project, so he should avoid them. However, he went to some effort to use files from dslrs that are way overkill for the projector's intended uses, implying that the capture method had something to do with his poor results. The implication is wrong. tv
Re: Digital vs. film cave test
tom wrote: If his point was that digital projection is inferior, fine, I don't think anyone would argue that an XGA resolution projector is going to beat any slide projector. You got it right. The cave thing was that before starting any kind of X vs. Y comparison, you have to define the purpose for which you want to use them, and please make it a valid one. The kind of testing we see now on most web sites is the we take a shot with both cameras, then we scan the film, and examine on a computer screen a small detail of the digital image vs. the scanned one. I seriously doubt that this is the way most viewers look at photos, so while the test is a nice technical exercise, it has little meaning. If you tell me my purpose is 8x10 prints and I took images with both kind of cameras and sent them to my lab and I got better results with X, I won't object, whatever X is (digital or film). Like you didn't object to the conclusion of the test for my purpose. cheers, caveman
RE: Digital vs. film cave test
-Original Message- From: Caveman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] You got it right. The cave thing was that before starting any kind of X vs. Y comparison, you have to define the purpose for which you want to use them, and please make it a valid one. The kind of testing we see now on most web sites is the we take a shot with both cameras, then we scan the film, and examine on a computer screen a small detail of the digital image vs. the scanned one. Right, but out of curiousity, why bother with full sized 10D and 1DS files if you knew the projector is only running at XGA resolution? tv
Re: Digital vs. film cave test
I wanted them to be the exact output of the respective cameras, without further processing or compression artifacts. I somehow hoped that I will see some differences, in the color rendition and local contrast dept., but no luck, the projector was a very good equalizer. No notable differences to see. tom wrote: Right, but out of curiousity, why bother with full sized 10D and 1DS files if you knew the projector is only running at XGA resolution? tv
Re: Digital vs. film cave test
What do you need, JCO to wander into this to know you're in the Twilight Zone? You've got folks who have an agenda to prove something, and don't care how they do it. So stop confusing things with facts. BR [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... he went to some effort to use files from dslrs that are way overkill for the projector's intended uses, implying that the capture method had something to do with his poor results. The implication is wrong. tv
Re: Digital vs. film cave test
On 03.6.5 5:33 PM, Bruce Rubenstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So stop confusing things with facts. Here you go again. Stop confusing things with something you know nothing about. What is the point of you suddenly coming into this without anything useful to contribute? Be specific as others do, rather than mentioning JCO and Twilight Zone etc. What's your point? Ken
RE: Digital vs. film cave test
I believe the point was humor. -Original Message- From: KT Takeshita [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2003 6:13 PM To: Pentax Discuss Subject: Re: Digital vs. film cave test On 03.6.5 5:33 PM, Bruce Rubenstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So stop confusing things with facts. Here you go again. Stop confusing things with something you know nothing about. What is the point of you suddenly coming into this without anything useful to contribute? Be specific as others do, rather than mentioning JCO and Twilight Zone etc. What's your point? Ken
Re: Digital vs. film cave test
KT Takeshita wrote: On 03.6.5 5:33 PM, Bruce Rubenstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [...] What is the point of you suddenly coming into this without anything useful to contribute? He's just trolling, as usual. Brucey, you're soo predictable Why don't you make some effort to surprise me ? Just once ? cheers, caveman
Re: Digital vs. film cave test
Nick Zentena [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On June 5, 2003 07:53 pm, Bruce Rubenstein wrote: Of course you didn't. That's why you didn't understand that the Valentin's original post was a spoof test. Projecting images with a high resolution projector, then a low resolution projector and then claiming that the original image source was the cause in the difference is so absurd as to be funny. Only a fool or an idiot would think that this was a legitimate test. So it was stacked in favour of the digital. What's new? It was stacked *against* digital. -- Mark Roberts Photography and writing www.robertstech.com
Re: Digital vs. film cave test
What's the resolution of the Canon projector? Can it utilise the full resolution of the digital files, or are they resized, perhaps downwards, to fit the projectors LCD? Also, if LCD monitors can't be calibrated like a CRT can be, it may be that the LCDs in these projectors are equally 'wild'. Side by side comparisons of the best possible prints might be more illustrative. Just playing the Devil's Advocate };-) regards, Anthony Farr - Original Message - From: Caveman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Well, I just did it. I mean, *my* very *own* and first test of digital vs. film. I had to give some presentations this week and got a Canon LV-7350 multimedia projector to play with until Friday. So why not do some real life testing... I burned the wires and downloaded a couple of full res images from Canon 1Ds, 10D and Nikon D100. Then I put the Canon projector side by side with my old Leitz Pradovit slide projector (which costs ten times less than the canon), and adjusted projector distance as to get similar image size on the wall. Here it goes, pull the blinds, turn off the light and BWAHAHAHAHA! slide wins hands down. From a longer distance, you can notice that the slide images are brighter with obviously more contrast, dynamic range and rich color gradations, and a much more natural look. The digital looks flat, without details, and with cartoon colors. Getting closer, you notice that the digital is obviously pixelated, while the slide image shows you more and more details as you get closer to it. Enough for me. cheers, caveman
Re: Digital vs. film cave test
D'OH Should've read through the thread first. Apologies for being serious, i think I need to lighten up. regards, Anthony Farr - Original Message - From: Anthony Farr [EMAIL PROTECTED] What's the resolution of ..
Re: Digital vs. film cave test
On Sat, 7 Jun 2003 02:09:15 +1000 Anthony Farr [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What's the resolution of the Canon projector? Can it utilise the full resolution of the digital files, or are they resized, perhaps downwards, to fit the projectors LCD? Also, if LCD monitors can't be calibrated like a CRT can be, it may be that the LCDs in these projectors are equally 'wild'. Side by side comparisons of the best possible prints might be more illustrative. Just playing the Devil's Advocate };-) Actually, I think caveman's test is reasonably fair. I did something similar, and came to the same conclusion. Since I like to project my work wall-size, it's either slides+slide-projector or digital+digital-projector. Slides wins hands-down for that, at least if I am to stay within a reasonable budget of projectors. Notice, that the test is specifically for the whole production chain towards one specific output media. Comparing best possible prints is not useful if the desired output media is projection :) If the output media is prints then comparing projected images makes no sense either. Digital has other merits, to be sure, which I wouldn't be without. --thomas
Re: Digital vs. film cave test
KT Takeshita wrote: On reflective models, there are CCD like element or millions of tiny mirrors etc to create images which will then be projected (reflected) by a strong light source. IIRC Texas Instruments was into that. You're speaking 6 figures prices. 1. Caveman said he used a Canon LV-7350 multimedia projector and the canon site does say it has a Native XGA Resolution (1024 X 768 Pixels). But I suppose it is like seeing a computer monitor. Where is the resolution of the original downloaded file come into equation? Now you're hitting on the nail. No matter what high resolution your image has, you still can't project but 1024x768 pixels. (if you have some spare $20,000 in your pocket, you may enhance that to 1600x1200) 3. I also use one of those LCD projectors but I thought that the laptop monitor resolution should match that of the projector. It is true? Not necessarily, but recommended. Otherwise you're into ugly interpolation. 4. Caveman said that he observed pixelation from the LCD projector. What was he seeing? Was the projector merely projecting the laptop monitor image?(I do not think so), No, there's some low-pass filter somewhere (maybe just the lens) to blur the pixel edges, but you still can detect them. Anyone can tell that this was an apple to orange comparison but at this size of projection, It seems funny, but *this* is the real comparison, as in pure digital versus pure film. I didn't mix them anywhere. I didn't scan the film nor did I print the digital on (bad ugly grainy old ancient environmental hazardous) photo film or paper. I used about the best technologies available for each category (withing a reasonable budget; if you put into question some $680.000 digital projector, then please kindly compare it to IMAX, and not to my $300 pradovit). cheers, caveman
Re: Digital vs. film cave test
On 5 Jun 2003 at 20:51, Nick Zentena wrote: So it was stacked in favour of the digital. What's new? Read again. It was nicely highlighting the inadequacies of mainstream digital projection options. Rob Studdert HURSTVILLE AUSTRALIA Tel +61-2-9554-4110 UTC(GMT) +10 Hours [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://members.ozemail.com.au/~distudio/publications/ Pentax user since 1986, PDMLer since 1998
