I've made all kinds of film scans with all kinds of scanners. I've owned and operated Imacon Scaners, Linocolor//Linotype Drum Scanners & Nikon Scanners. I feel that my camera scans are just as good as any of them in 1/10th the time. Even if they were not as good, they would still be good enough to outperform thje original film and lens. I can see the grain perfectly on the film, so more resolution doesn't change anything.. It's like a tweeter that goes to 40KHz when you can only hear to 20Khz. Mayber it is doning sopmething to the waves....but
Yes, technically scanners should be be better because of the lack of Bayer pattern,, but that doesn't help them enough to make up for other shortcomings. There's a whole lot of technical stuff to talk about in why the camera scans are just as good, I'm not wanting to go into it, because the proof is in the results.
What I like most about camera scans is the ability to quickly have a RAW file in Lightroom. It's a much better workflow.
Yes, technically scanners should be be better because of the lack of Bayer pattern,, but that doesn't help them enough to make up for other shortcomings. There's a whole lot of technical stuff to talk about in why the camera scans are just as good, I'm not wanting to go into it, because the proof is in the results.
What I like most about camera scans is the ability to quickly have a RAW file in Lightroom. It's a much better workflow.
I don’t think the optics on the flat bed scanners are as good as 13 element macro lens. Granted, the distance is much closer but it’s a long molded plastic cylinder lens if I recall seeing on consumer flat bed scanners.
The highest resolution lens ever was Nikkor 105mm f/4.5 macro UV. The were made for chip fab lines UV lithography to make tiny little mask resist at the nm scale. $4000 lens as I recall. We used them for planar laser induced fluorescence (PLIF) imaging of chemical species with a UV laser (250nm to 400nm). More for their ability to pass UV light rather than resolution as the imager was an image intensified CCD (std video TV res).
The highest resolution lens ever was Nikkor 105mm f/4.5 macro UV. The were made for chip fab lines UV lithography to make tiny little mask resist at the nm scale. $4000 lens as I recall. We used them for planar laser induced fluorescence (PLIF) imaging of chemical species with a UV laser (250nm to 400nm). More for their ability to pass UV light rather than resolution as the imager was an image intensified CCD (std video TV res).
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flat bed scanners are not the best, of course. Drum scanners can reach (nearly) any desired resolution. And the optics and sensors need to focus on just one point (or one line for flatbed).
Of course one scan may take very long!
Camera lenses have to be much more sophisticated to get acceptable results: lens must precisely focus across the whole sensor area, needs to handle lens aberration errors, vignetting, distortion ...
Thus a camera lens rather needs 13 stray light producing elements to get a (fairly) good image while scanners can produce high quality with rather simple optics.
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Actually, 150 mm on 4x5 is equivalent to 50 mm at 35mm, so it shouldn't be a big deal to get reasonable DOF at f/16.
Some may even argue that 150 mm is a "short normal" for 4x5 and push for a 210 mm instead. There's a lot of slop in 4x5.
Tom
I want to make this clearer and more in focus..LOL. There is a common misconception about crop factors. A 150mm is always a 150mm in most ways, including Depth Of Field and distortion. It's only the angle of view that changes. Often with the wider AOV you are moving the camera closer and that makes DOF very shallow when combined with the longer focal length.
If you had a 150mm lens on a Full Frame(35mm) camera and you needed f16 to get everything in focus, you would still need f16 if the camera was changed to a 4X5. The ONLY thing that would change is that you would have a wider AOV. That wider shot might make you want to move in closer and then you would need a smaller aperatures or a tilt to carry the DOF.
There's a book called Light Science and Magic that I highly recommend. This was the text for the photography lighting class I taught.
You should look in to Dutch ASML and German Carl Zeiss SMT. ASML (a spin off from royal Philips) is world leader in lithograph machines for chip fabrication with a market capitalization of about US$280 billion. Carl Zeiss SMT is the only optic fab in the world capable of fabricating the needed lenses. Prices for the most expensive machines are written with eight zeros.
Actually, phone camera right long edge was stuck focused at 1ft -- a tilted lens wide-angle! (Unfortunately the battery died today.)
EUV optics for 12nm processes with reflective grazing optics is a whole ‘nother ballgame. Huge and expensive like telescope assemblies on a satellite. Makes sense it in the tens of $M.
I do have a set of the Sigma DP1/2/3 Merrill cameras. When the light is good to use the bottom iso they are great! But... they use batteries like nothing else, raw files are huge, they are slow and when there is not much light and you have to up the iso the results are not very good (very bad sometimes). That combined with no stabilisation that could make up for having to use low iso and the lack of a viewfinder makes this a good weather camera (but not bright sun because then you see nothing on the LCD). And I would prefer to have had a 35mm field of view.
But the day they bring out a full frame Foveon I don't think I will be able to resist.
I like that idea, it seems Kodak tri-X and Ilford HP5 are still available. Might buy an oldie 35 mm camera for a few euro to play around with next summer.
I still have a roll of 120 Kodak Portra 160 that’s been exposed and undeveloped for 22 years and a roll of 135 Fuji 400. Can’t remember what’s on them. It would be like a time capsule to develop them.
I still have a few sealed packs of 120 rolls left. Not in a refrigerator unfortunately.
Did you guys see story about the oldest roll of film developed from a Kodak No. 1?
https://petapixel.com/2023/12/12/134-year-old-photo-is-the-oldest-to-ever-be-developed/
Wooden camera sent to Kodak for processing back in the day.
Developed 134 years later.
I still have a few sealed packs of 120 rolls left. Not in a refrigerator unfortunately.
Did you guys see story about the oldest roll of film developed from a Kodak No. 1?
https://petapixel.com/2023/12/12/134-year-old-photo-is-the-oldest-to-ever-be-developed/
Wooden camera sent to Kodak for processing back in the day.
Developed 134 years later.