Here is another shot taken many years ago. I bring it out now because I just had the original slide converted to digital. This railway had been shut down for quite a while but yet it is still,(well was back then) very picture worthy. Another one of my favorites. It seems like my old (slide) shots always came out better then my new digital one. Maybe it is due to the learning curve
@rrt Hi Richard! I haven't vanished - just been very busy and haven't found the time to restart 365. I will soon though!
The reason your old slides seem better than digital today is twofold (at least). DSLR cameras provide around 7 stops from black to white, compared to Velvia's roughly 12 stops (other slide film is/was similar). Medium format digital is the next best thing with around 10 stops. The other thing is resolution, combined with circles of confusion and the inability for lenses to overcome this problem - a 35mm slide frame is about equivalent to 60 megapixels! And due to there being no array of sensor sites, the old lenses, though on the whole inferior to today's lenses, did not have to overcome the sensor array issue. So, DOF was as good as you could get by closing down your aperture. With digital APS-C SLR cameras (crop-frame DSLR) there is no point going past about f/8 for DOF purposes, and with 35mm DSLR cameras f/11 is about the limit, before circles of confusion make a mess of things and outweigh the benefits of a smaller aperture for DOF.
Beyond the technical aspect of sensor arrays versus film, you have the processing. Slide film was, by nature, quite saturated. And as it was essentially the same as a negative (albeit a positive) it was already as sharp as the lens shot it. With digital, due to those high pass filters and sensor arrays, your images are not sharp straight out of camera. If you shoot JPEG, your camera adds software sharpening upon creating the file (sharpening over which you have no control), but if you shoot RAW formats, you have to add your own sharpening. Also, with JPEG, the camera adds a curves adjustment based on your chosen camera settings (landscape, portrait, etc) which increases saturation (though, again, you don't have any control over it once you've pressed the shutter). With RAW files, you have to add that adjustment in post-processing to give the photo some colour and depth (contrast). Shooting slide film was a lot like shooting digital with a high level of sharpening, saturation and contrast already applied, which is the reason why you had to nail your exposures so much more accurately than with regular negative film - if you didn't, that saturation and contrast would either blow out the shot or leave you with mush.
In many ways slide film is far superior to digital, though far less versatile.
In relation to the crit of your shot - it is quite lovely! The intersecting lines create excellent interest, and the main lin leading from upper left to lower right naturally leads the eye through the frame. I suspect that the digital conversion doesn't really do it justice, and certainly not at the resolution available here. Well done!
@jinximages Thank you very much for the explanation, I really see the difference in shooting (raw) now. I just have to pay attention and read the instruction book, and trytrytry. thanks again
April 17th, 2011
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The reason your old slides seem better than digital today is twofold (at least). DSLR cameras provide around 7 stops from black to white, compared to Velvia's roughly 12 stops (other slide film is/was similar). Medium format digital is the next best thing with around 10 stops. The other thing is resolution, combined with circles of confusion and the inability for lenses to overcome this problem - a 35mm slide frame is about equivalent to 60 megapixels! And due to there being no array of sensor sites, the old lenses, though on the whole inferior to today's lenses, did not have to overcome the sensor array issue. So, DOF was as good as you could get by closing down your aperture. With digital APS-C SLR cameras (crop-frame DSLR) there is no point going past about f/8 for DOF purposes, and with 35mm DSLR cameras f/11 is about the limit, before circles of confusion make a mess of things and outweigh the benefits of a smaller aperture for DOF.
Beyond the technical aspect of sensor arrays versus film, you have the processing. Slide film was, by nature, quite saturated. And as it was essentially the same as a negative (albeit a positive) it was already as sharp as the lens shot it. With digital, due to those high pass filters and sensor arrays, your images are not sharp straight out of camera. If you shoot JPEG, your camera adds software sharpening upon creating the file (sharpening over which you have no control), but if you shoot RAW formats, you have to add your own sharpening. Also, with JPEG, the camera adds a curves adjustment based on your chosen camera settings (landscape, portrait, etc) which increases saturation (though, again, you don't have any control over it once you've pressed the shutter). With RAW files, you have to add that adjustment in post-processing to give the photo some colour and depth (contrast). Shooting slide film was a lot like shooting digital with a high level of sharpening, saturation and contrast already applied, which is the reason why you had to nail your exposures so much more accurately than with regular negative film - if you didn't, that saturation and contrast would either blow out the shot or leave you with mush.
In many ways slide film is far superior to digital, though far less versatile.
In relation to the crit of your shot - it is quite lovely! The intersecting lines create excellent interest, and the main lin leading from upper left to lower right naturally leads the eye through the frame. I suspect that the digital conversion doesn't really do it justice, and certainly not at the resolution available here. Well done!