Re: fine art reproduction questions
Re: fine art reproduction questions
- Subject: Re: fine art reproduction questions
- From: Ben Goren <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 2 May 2010 13:01:41 -0700
On 2010 May 2, at 12:37 PM, neil snape wrote:
> on 2/05/10 21:16, Ben Goren wrote :
>
>> Unless I'm missing something, even theoretically, the only difference between
>> medium format cameras and high-end DSLRs is the size of the sensor. The
>> sensors themselves are made with the same processes by the same manufacturers.
>> Indeed, it's often the second-tier manufacturers, such as Kodak, making the
>> medium format sensors.
>
> Stitching will have a slight bit of corner fall off, but that you can
> correct for so yes stitching is a very good way to come up with a great
> resolution for large prints.
I agree that peripheral illumination is a problem with stitching -- and even when not stitching, for that matter. I deal with it by avoiding it. If the work is small enough and if I don't need the highest resolution possible, I simply frame it so that the art is well within the sweet spot of the lens.
If I need to stitch, I use lots of overlap -- perhaps even half the frame -- and let Photoshop do its autocorrection magic when creating the panorama. Frankly, it's scary how well it does.
> There are some pretty major differences though with a MF. There is no anti
> alias filter and often the photo-site sizes is bigger than the a DSLR
> counterpart, and 16 bit capture makes for highly modifiable files.
I think I'm gonna stick with the ``theory that doesn't apply to practice in this case'' for all three of those differences.
For really, really critical work, I just shoot close enough or with a long enough lens to get the capture ppi into the 600+ ppi range. At that point, the presence or absence of an AA filter becomes moot. For not-so-critical work, a very little bit of very careful sharpening does the trick quite nicely. (And, to be honest, I'd do the same sharpening for the critical work, even though it's redundant in the print.)
Photosite size is one of those great religious wars, but it's one that I firmly believe is entirely misguided.
Larger photosites have a better SN ratio per site, but they need to be enlarged more in the final print.
For a given format size, assuming you trust the engineers, more megapickles (and thus smaller photosites) are always better. At 100% pixel view, the higher density camera will be noisier, yes. But, at the same size print, the SN ratio will be exactly the same (assuming the same quality of engineering). The kicker, though, is that the higher density camera will have noise that's much finer-grained -- making it much less objectionable -- and it'll capture much more fine detail as well. Personally, I expect the megapickle wars to continue until 135 format DSLRs are in the 200+ megapickle range, since that's about when diffraction starts to be the worst offender at fast apertures.
And I'm all for more bits per pickle...erm...``pixel,'' but the modifications needed for copy work are (or should be) as gentle as they get. Just as I've never actually seen shadow noise in a print when doing copy work, I've never seen posterization, either.
(For landscape or studio work? Oh, yeah. I'd be all over replacing my current gear with MF...if only I could afford blowing more than my remaining mortgage balance on it....)
> The only thing that might be a bit better is use
> a more oblique angle for the flash like 30ยบ, you might get a bit more
> saturation depending on the type of paper of the painting.
Thanks for the tip. Sounds like I need to add more experiments to the list -- curse you!
Cheers,
b&
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