My photo gear was stolen, some time back, and haven’t been able to replace it yet. But when I do, I’m still leaning twards film. (not set in stone) One thing I heard bad about digital (even on the high end ones) is that when shooting time exposures they make alot of “noise”.(pixle crud) Is this true? If I were to go to digital gear I’d want at least 5meg or more with a zoom compareable to 200mm or more. It would be nice not to have to change lenses, but would like the option. 99.99% of my shots are with 100 slide film.
Digital is more convenient and cheaper (in the long run-no film or developing cost). However, if you are serious about hi-res images, film is still is by far the best. Perhaps if you can afford one of the new 20MP cameras available you could compete with film, but today’s 6-8MP cameras are no match for film.
What you plan to do with your images is, for me, the determining factor on media choice. I do not plan on enlarging any of my images beyond 11x14 with digital…maybe 16x20 if I have an exceptional shot. Up to 11x14, a good 6-8MP camera will be sufficient if you shoot at the maximum size, highest quality, and lowest ISO. If you just want to submit photos to web sites, or view them on your computer, then any decent 5+MP camera would be more than sufficient. So when I go out to shoot trains, I use my (Nikon D70) digital. When I go out to shoot nature (my ‘pro’ stuff), I use my film (Nikon F100) camera and use only either Kodak VS100 or Fugi Provia 100film.
I read once on a pro photographer site that in order to match the image quality of today’s best 35mm films, you would need at least a 30MP digital image. Of course, in digital as well as film, the image quality of the image will be dependent on the quality of the equipment you have. If you go with Nikon or Cannon, you will have excellent stuff. Hasselblad has a 39MP camera, but to get one you need to shell out $29, 995 (body only).
In order to not have to change lenses, you would need a zoom lens with a large magnification range. While convenient, these lenses suffer from having many elements inside, causing a theoretical degradation of image quality. In this case, buy the best single lens you can afford, and stay away from the off-brands like Tamron or Tokina. Nikon just came out with a nifty 18-200 vibration-reducing zoon lens. And it is selling for “only” $900.
Of course, with all the above having been said, the most important piece of
Thanks! Before my loss, I was shooting an average of 1 roll a week per year. I know if I had digital I’d be shooting more. I don’t think I can ever get away from film so I would be having both. I know one thing’s for sure. my camera bags won’t be so nice looking or not look like camera bags at all. Right now I’m using (not very often) an Olympus OM2S with a standard 50mm lens. Boy, I miss my old 80-200 zoom. (I’m thinking, meth tweakers are almost the lowest lifeform on earth.) I had a regular Olympus OM2 (worked good enough for me) and compared to the S model its batterys lasted longer.
Don’t forget to get an extra storage card for your Digital camera to store more Photos.
And make sure you’ve got a reader for those cards. I find it much easier to pop the card out and slide it into a reader - it’s just like adding another drive to your computer.
Don’t forget extra batteries, too, especially if your camera has a unique battery.
I have three batteries and two 1 Gig cards for my Digital Rebel. If I shoot best quality JPGs, I can get over 500 images before I run out of room… Shooting RAW (for the true pros) knocks that down to just 120 images on the two cards, but oh, the editing you can do…
I held a digital Rebel a while back and wasn’t sure what to think of it. It felt really light as if the linses are made of plastic. Or am I just too used to 35mm stuff?
As to your original question, the answer is going to be “It depends.” Some cameras deal with noise in long exposures better than others. It’s roughly similar to noise issues in relation to ISO used. Some cameras are better than others. It has a lot to do with the sensor used (CMOS sensors are much better than CCD’s, larger sensors with larger individual photosites are better than smaller sensors with smaller pixel pitches). I routinely shoot up to 30 second exposures with my humble D60. They generally turn out looking like this:
All were shot at ISO 100, and there is no apparent noise in any (if you want 100% crops I can get those to you). As I said, these were all shot with a D60, which is ancient in digital terms. Canon’s improved their CMOS sensors so much since then that if you got a 5D or a 30D, I’d doubt you’d have any problems with noise, even if the shutter was open for 30 minutes. Additionally, many new cameras feature noise reduction for long exposures. The camera will shoot the scene for whatever length you’ve determined, and then shoot another short exposure to compare existing conditions.
The original Rebel, while a capable picture taker, was a bit on the flimsy side, and was also feature limited. The Rebel XT is a much nicer camera, and one that I have absolutely no reservations about recommending (except perhaps that’s it’s almost too small…but I like big cameras…they balance large lenses better).
As for Zardoz’s comments on film and digital, I’m not sure I personally buy into the 6-8MP not being equal to film. I’ve blown this shot up to 20x20 (which would be 20x30 if it wasn’t a square crop):
Granted, that was with a $3800 le
Well there is that old saying about a good lens on a cheap camera being better than a cheap lens on a good camera.
I’m actually shooting with an “ancient” 300D, the first Digital Rebel. I routinely shoot 30 second exposures and they come out looking crisp and clean. The 30D and 5D will, of course, do even better. As for enlargements, I get great results up to 20X30 inch poster size prints, one of which is prominently displayed above the desk in my living room. There is no reason why the current crop of digital SLRs from Canon and Nikon can’t compete with equivalent film cameras… and win in most cases.
Joe H.
Lancaster, SC
Oh pooh. Digital cameras can take outstanding night photos. Just not the really cheap ones. I will match my Fuji S3 against any of the time exposures taken with my Nikon F4. My Epson R2400 ink jet means I can do this all at home, get it right the first time and not have to deal with sending out anything smaller than 13"x19". Far mor convenient to me than sending film out and hoping they get it right the first time.
The comment about needing 30mpix to match 35mm film quality was a theoretical number. The reality is that up to about 16"x20" a good 6 mpix camera with a quality lens will do just as good or even better. Digital just prints differently than film and digital wins. The 10mpix to 16mpix digital cameras will exceed 35mm film quality at about any print size you can come up with.
The only thing holding digital back for the moment is the lack of digital projectors that are affordable and can project images in the 5000+ pixel width. When that product becomes affordable digital will beat out 35mm in about all markets.
Check out the camera reviews at www.dpreview.com before you buy into digital.
arbfbe,
What are your experiences with the S3? Have you noticed a big improvement in dynamic range like Fuji advertised? And if you shoot RAW, do you notice better performance using different convertors as Phil at DPReview did when he tested the camera?
Thanks in advance.
I guess you’re referring to CCD dark current noise, which is manifested in long exposures. By long exposure how long? If it’s for only several seconds, most people would hardly notice in digital nowadays, whereas film suffers from reciprocity error, especially color film. I’d say, from my experience, the latter is much, much worse. Maybe long exposures with digital cameras did have a lot of noise a few years ago, but the CCDs and analog to digital circuitry have improved a lot since then.
Astronomers, who take exposures requiring minutes to hours, on the other hand, employ Peltier cooling on the CCDs to reduce dark current noise. You might Google on that.
I am constantly shooting timed sxposures usually at 30 seconds and unless I forget to reset my ISO they look Excellent with my 20D. Always pretty clean until I start to mess with them in photoshop 
Some of my stuff. (You guys have probably seen them)
Miniwyo,
The more I see the stuff coming out of that 20D, the more I’m impressed. You’ve really learned how to use that thing since you picked it up!
Those are some really great shots RJ.
Chris,
Yes, the improved dynamic range is real with the S3. It shows up in the clouds in railfan shots though you can still blow out the highlights there with the S3 trying to keep the shadows from blocking out. I tend to use the Fuji Hyperview Utility to convert from RAW to tiff and then do most of the editing in Photoshop CS2 since I am pretty comfortable with the PSCS2 workflow. Some users on the dpreview.com Fuji DSLR forum like the S7RAW program and I do not hear much about Bibble these days over there.
I like the camera but would not recommend it to everyone. If you have experience with medium format or view cameras then you will be at home with the S3. If you like 35mm motordrive movies or lots of jpeg action sequences from a D70 or DRebel you will find the S3 ‘limiting’. The S3 is no longer in production and is being closed out for about $1200 and is in limited supply. Try, of all places, Radio Shack.com. The new S4 rumors are slowly being confirmed by sales reps and may be available in early to mid 2007. Specs are all conjecture for now but it is certain to be another Super CCD sensor, either a phase II, phase III or maybe even a phase IV. Perhaps a Nikon F100 based body like the D200. I think I will stick with the S3 and see how the new model works out. I may upgrade later and keep the S3 as a back up body or one with a second lens attached.
Alan
Miniwyo’s images illustrate my point: noise in digital imaging, for all practical purposes, not a problem. If not visible, it is present and detectable through enhancement, however:
You would start to see noise if your image requires substantial adjustment in your image editor.
Notes: this is not a criticism! Since I don’t have access to the source, some of the “noise” may be JPG artifacts.
Egads…talk about a sensor torture test! By their nature, sensors don’t do well in darker areas. This is actually visible in shadow areas of a a regular shot as well. This is why Michael Reichmann wrote his article on “exposing to the right” (towards the highlight end of one’s histogram). A night shot is usually comprised of a lot of shadow areas, so it’s naturally going to have a lot of background noise, if it’s pushed in post-processing as you’ve done here.
I’ve never been a fan of “exposing to the right.” While the results are better (look at the highlight areas in this image…even when brought out more dramatically than one ever would in PP, the highlights and mid-tones are essentially clean), I find it too easy to miss the mark and over-expose. And, like slide film, once high-lights are blown, they’re gone.
Instead I try to get as much information as possible from a scene, and try not to clip either side of the histogram (erring on the shadow side if I need to clip sue to excessive Dynamic Range). Shooting in RAW helps too, and I’ve found that another 1-2 stops of DR can be had with good RAW processing.
When it comes to long exposures, I’m still a fan of digital to keep good exposures. With film, it would have taken a lot of bracketing to get this right.
Thankks Guys!
The Raw image does infact have just about this much noise, Some of it though is Jpg degredation. I think it may have been that I shot it at 3200 ISO, as I hadn’t had the camera long and was experimenting, this is the one that happened to come out the best in my opinion. Also it was the way I was taught when I had my film photo classes, He told us that if you want to shoot night, that you should use the highest ISO that you can. I have since changed my thinking on this one, and I still use a low ISO now. I have a picture (althought I have added some filters on it just to mess around and experiment) that show the regular occouring noise very well.
This was Literally a shot in the dark. Couldnt see it at all.
I love to play with light, so I am usually willing to sacrifice Quality over a good learning experience. Although I am getting better at getting both[:P]
Try this one on for size…
That is one of those moving searchlights. Actually got stopped and had my Driver’s Liscence ran becaseu we were stopped off the side of the road in an area where they are planning to build.
Some of the shots posted here really have me impressed with what newer cameras and dSLRs can do with regard to noise.
My only digital is a several year old point and shoot Toshiba that gets used mostly for Ebay shots, quick forum posts, and the like. The last few days, I’ve been setting up some Ebay auctions, and currently have it stuck on a tripod.
Although I hate on-camera flash, there isn’t a way to get enough light inside to satisfy the camera. What I’ve had to resort to doing is gelling the flash for tungsten, and then adding tungten lights to fill in the shadows, and using the camera in “night” mode since it lacks any real manual controls. Anyway, doing so, it fires the flash and defaults to its lowest timed shutter speed of 1/4 second. At its native ISO of 100 with speeds this low, I still can’t tolerate the noise and have to use a full strength noise reduction in CS2 just to get results that don’t look like they were taken with a cell phone camera. ISO 400 is unusable under any circumstances.
It can also do a “bulb” exposure of either 1 or 2 seconds. After using the healing brush to spot out the hot pixels, I often still try to do a noise reduction. This usually ends up looking like I’ve done a gausian blur because there’s so much noise.
Until I can afford a dSLR(or win the Trains.com sweepstakes 
), I have quite a sizeable collection of Canon FD equipment which I’ve picked up cheaply off of Ebay and from KEH. At the moment, I have 6 bodies and 13 lenses. What they’ve cost me wouldn’t have bought a Digital Rebel, and I have some pretty darn nice stuff too, from ultrawide to fairly long telephoto to superfast to macro.