Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/02/16

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Subject: Re: digital lenses was: Re: [Leica] Digital Bessa RF
From: Jonathan Borden <jonathan@openhealth.org>
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2004 17:29:51 -0500
References: <005101c3f4d4$f995bd10$6401a8c0@CCA4A5EF37E11E>

B. D. Colen wrote:

>Actually, someone has done such film to mgp approximations and come up
>with, among other things, the fact that at between 5-6 mgp you get
>results equal to that of 35 mm tri-x. Which is all I care about. ;-)
>  
>
That would be about right. Just curious, what is the big attraction for 
Leica glass given Tri-X film? Is is the large maximal aperatures? 
Relatively small sizes of the lenses? Trophy factor?

The supposed high "local contrast" can be *easily* mimicked using 
Photoshop USM btw, e.g. use 20 radii at ~ 20%.

For me, the large maximal aperature at a given lens weight is a big 
factor. I mainly shoot Delta 100 and consequently I'd need a very 
expensive camera to equal the film. On the other hand my Minolta 5400 
scanner allows me to make 40 megapixel 16 bit scans which I find a great 
way to let digital darkroom techniques and traditional photography co-exist.

Remember to be careful about believing such tests -- again the folks who 
told us that 44khz CD quality was "perfect" are now touting 96 khz for 
consumer audio recordings and 196 khz for professional recordings. 
Extrapolating suggests that one might *actually* need a 4x factor 
increase in the number of pixels to equal a theoretically equal number 
of analog pixels (i.e. film).

Jonathan
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In reply to: Message from "B. D. Colen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net> (RE: digital lenses was: Re: [Leica] Digital Bessa RF)