17. June 2003
Canon 1Ds vs. film - Medium Format
This is yet another article comparing digital and scanned film. Still a hot topic, although there seems to be a growing acceptance that digital belongs to the future while film is a thing of the past.
In this article I'll show you what I saw when comparing one of the newest D-SLR's - the Canon EOS 1Ds - with my scanned medium format film.
This article is the second in a small series of articles comparing a high-end D-SLR with scanned film.

The first article, comparing the to 35mm scanned film, can be found here.

[Update 11.07.2003] The third article, comparing prints from all three formats (digital, 35mm and medium format) can be found here.

Warning!
By the very nature of this article - exhibiting image quality and details - this document contains a large number of fairly big pictures and it will therefore take a while to load if you are on a modem connection. Please be patient.

Why and how?
So why actually bother with comparing film and digital? Can it be compared at all?
Well, I have to say, that my main reason for comparing digital with film is simple curiosity. Is digital really better than film as it is claimed around the net. And - very interesting for me at least - is digital also better than medium format?
When I say "better" I'm talking about image quality - there are a huge number of advantages using digital cameras than I won't bother to dig into here, but it's important that the image quality is high - as high as film at least. I'm mainly focusing on and interested in image details here.
So, since I've seen a lot of examples on-line that suggested that digital could outperform scanned film including scanned medium format - I wanted to test that myself!

Now, medium format are many things. I shoot with Rolleiflex TLR's which means, that my slides are 6x6cm (56mm x 56mm to be precise).
These are the slides I'm used to scan and from which I believe to get a very high quality file with a huge amount of detail.

A very reputable store in Copenhagen - Photografica - would let me shoot with a Canon EOS 1Ds and compare it to 35mm and medium format.
I simply shot out the window and a few items inside the store to get a basic feeling of the amount of details that would be visible in the 1Ds files.

So here is the list of cameras I used to conduct the test:
Canon EOS-1Ds with a Canon Zoom EF 28-70mm f2.8 L set to exactly 50mm.
Nikon F90x with a Nikkor 50mm f1.4 (See the results from 35mm film here)
Rolleiflex 2.8GX which has a Rollei Planar 80mm f2.8 HFT lens build in.

The Canon EOS 1Ds is a new 11Megapixel D-SLR from Canon. You can read all the specs here.





Expectations
When comparing the output from the 1Ds with my scanned medium format film I expect that my scans will show a little higher level of details than the 1Ds files.
Read on and see what I found.

The test
As detailed above, the test was conducted with three cameras - Canon 1Ds, Nikon F90x and Rolleiflex 2.8GX.
Settings on the Canon 1Ds
ISO : 100
Quality : RAW (plus jpeg).
White Balance : Auto
Color Matrix : 4 (AdobeRGB)
Sharpness : 0
Firmware : 1.0.1

The RAW files are converted to TIF using a 30 day trial version of Capture One DSLR 1.1.
I used Provia 100F for both film cameras. I know that Fuji Velvia is capable of resolving slightly more details, however I'm more used to the Provia and it's easier for my scanner to handle.
Remember that I wanted to see, how the 1Ds compared to the image quality I get from my usual "workflow" and although I do occasionally use Fuji Velvia, my preferred film is Fuji Provia 100F.
The medium format frames are scanned at 3200dpi using a Minolta Dimage Scan Multi Pro.
The 1Ds files are enlarged to match the size of the scanned film using Photoshop bicubic interpolation. The scanned film is untouched from the scanner, except changing of the color space.
I'll be showing you the scanned images at 100% magnification (the digital files are enlarged, as mentioned).
All pictures are converted from their respective color space and color depth to the sRGB colorspace in 24bit colors.

The results

The first example is this picture:



As in my first article I'm using this "beautiful" composition for the test. No, it's not great art, but there's a lot of details that can be compared. You might notice, that I'm shooting through a window which will degrade the image I'm showing. This is of little importance, since all the cameras in the test had the same "limitation".
The red circle above shows the approximate focus point.

1Ds versus Medium Format (6x6)

Canon 1Ds. 50mm f5.6 1/200sec. RAW file.

6x6 Provia 100F. 80mm f5.6 1/250sec.

Here it seems that the 1Ds has found it's match. Actually, it seems that there are even more details in the medium format scan than the 1Ds file can come up with.
It is an issue though, that the digital file is totally free of grain, while the scanned film shows grain or perhaps even more clear, the feared "Fuji Pepper Grain".
Color balance is not identical although very close. I assigned the Canon Daylight profile that came with the Capture One software which seemed to give the closest match to my Provia scans.

Here's another example from the same picture:

Canon 1Ds. 50mm f5.6 1/200sec. RAW file.

6x6 Provia 100F. 80mm f5.6 1/250sec.

Again the medium format scan does show more details, or at least edges are more clearly defined (no sharpening was applied here).

And yet another example:

Canon 1Ds. 50mm f5.6 1/200sec. RAW file.

6x6 Provia 100F. 80mm f5.6 1/250sec.

The scanned film clearly shows more details, but is it the resolving power of the lens or of the imaging chip we are seeing here?
Many factors comes into the play when making these comparisons; the exact point of focus, the quality of the lenses used etc.
Normally medium format lenses aren't resolving quite as many details as their 35mm counterparts, but this is compensated for in film size.
Let's stop the lenses down to f8 and see what happens.

Canon 1Ds. 50mm f8 1/100sec. RAW file.

6x6 Provia 100F. 80mm f8 1/125sec.

Canon 1Ds. 50mm f8 1/100sec. RAW file.

6x6 Provia 100F. 80mm f8 1/125sec.

The 1Ds pictures got sharper, showing more details, but so did the medium format scans.
Please also observe that the 1Ds are exposed slightly longer than the medium format pictures. This might influence the way we perceive the pictures.
Let's stop all the way down to f22:

Canon 1Ds. 50mm f22 1/13sec. RAW file.

6x6 Provia 100F. 80mm f22 1/15sec.

Canon 1Ds. 50mm f22 1/13sec. RAW file.

6x6 Provia 100F. 80mm f22 1/15sec.

No details gained on the medium format scans, but the 1Ds pictures actually got a bit better yet. Still, I'd say that the medium format scans exhibit slighlty more details than the 1Ds pictures although it's hard to say for sure.

The shadows
So, it seems that my film scans does show a bit more details than the Canon 1Ds is capable of resolving in the areas of the image that are correctly exposed - but what about the underexposed areas? The shadows in other words? Will the Canon 1Ds show a larger exposure latitude, thereby maybe revealing more shadow details?
Let's take a look at the f8 picture again. I've taken a crop of a shadow area and brightened it up heavily to reveal details:

Canon 1Ds. 50mm f8 1/100sec. RAW file.

6x6 Provia 100F. 80mm f8 1/125sec.

Differences in colors becomes apparent here and the slight differences in exposure will also play a role. Besides this, it is obvious that we see the limits of my scanned film here. The transparency can probably not capture details in such shadow and the scanner is showing noise (this crop is a very dark section and it is close to black in the transparency).

No, we are not done yet. Let's look at another picture taken in lower light (inside the shop) with lot's of small, dark areas:



At half a second we are at pretty long exposures here:

Canon 1Ds. 50mm f16 1/2sec. RAW file.

6x6 Provia 100F. 80mm f16 1/2sec.

Canon 1Ds. 50mm f16 1/2sec. RAW file.

6x6 Provia 100F. 80mm f16 1/2sec.

Canon 1Ds. 50mm f16 1/2sec. RAW file.

6x6 Provia 100F. 80mm f16 1/2sec.

Although the medium format scans might show ever so little more details, they look muddy compared to the clean 1Ds files. Colors are a bit too green on the Provia as well. It is really amazing to see the cleanness of the Canon 1Ds files here - it'll be interesting to see the prints.

Trying really hard
There is software that can help you to get a smoother looking picture. This is noise reduction software. I've used the Neat Image software to try to reduce the amount of grain in the scanned film and I've also altered the colors a bit to match the 1Ds picture. Here's the result:

Canon 1Ds. 50mm f16 1/2sec. RAW file.

6x6 Provia 100F. 80mm f16 1/2sec.

Any slightly superiority in amount of details is now completely gone from the scanned film and it is still showing a bit of grain.

Jpeg artefacts?
What about jpeg artefacts in the pictures here?
Well, although I didn't compress the pictures here too hard, the quality is of course reduced due to compression.
However, all the crops from this page, plus a few more, including the 35mm crops, in TIFF-format (uncompressed) can be downloaded from here (6.7MB).

Filename explanation:
35mm_56_n.tif = 35mm f5.6 (Nikon F90x)
mf_16_n.tif = Medium Format f16 (Rolleiflex 2.8GX)
1ds_8_n.tif = Canon EOS 1Ds f8

Conclusion
This is a hard one.
At the very optimally exposed area in a picture, a medium format scan seems to show more details. When it comes to slightly dark areas, the 1Ds takes over - it has far more shadow details than my scanned transparencies are showing.
The total lack of grain in the digital files, makes them suitable for both enlargement and sharpness.
Now I'm getting curious to see prints.

Notes
The 1Ds files here are scaled to match the scanned 6x6 frames in the horizontal size. However, since the medium format frames here are square they do offer quite a bit more to "crop" from, compared to the 1Ds files.
Other medium format size, such as 6x7 or 6x9 will offer even more resolution.

Stay tuned, to see the next article in which I'll compare prints from all formats.

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Links
[Update 11.07.2003]:
• Canon 1Ds vs. film - Prints - the third article is now ready.

• Photografica Visit Photografica in Copenhagen
• Luminous-Landscape The first of a number of articles about the Canon 1Ds
• DPReview Read a review of the Canon 1Ds by Phil Askey
• Phase One Visit Phase One - the company behind the Capture One software.
• Neat Image Noise reduction software.