re:RE: A ?

I've been doing quite a bit of digital pinhole,
and digital zone plate, using my Nikon D80. I'm
not at all sure anymore that it's significantly
softer than with film - When I compare images done
with my D80, which is 10mp and an APS-sized
sensor, and compare it to what I get out of my
Nikon F100, I think the images are reasonably
comparable IF I downsize the 10mp file to 8mp,
which is about equivalent to film resolution. The
images I've gotten on my D2x look awfully blurry
on the screen, but when downsized to 8mp, they are
suddenly in the ballpark with 35mm.

All that said, they are SOMEWHAT less sharp, but
not consistently so. I've discovered a huge jump
in sharpness comes in camera stabilization - the
digital shows the effects of the tiniest amount of
vibration. I now use mirror pre-release or lock
up with shutter delay, and my images got a lot better.

There's also the problem of diffraction limits,
digital sensors, because they're smaller than
film, start showing diffraction blur at much lower
f-stops than a frame the size of film, and the
sensor sites are very small. Apologies for using
Nikon as my example, but it's the camera line I
know: A 12mp d2x with an APS-C sized sensor,
shows diffraction problems increasing as you get
above F11; the 12mp D3, which is a 35mm sized
sensor, doesn't show diffraction problems until
past f22, exactly like 35mm film. The D80, with
only 10mp on an APS-C sized sensor, seems to hold
up just a bit better past f11. The problem is all
compounded by each sensor having little lenses
over every sensor site, so you get funky
interactions between aperture and microlenses on
the sensor.

The craziness you'd expect at the edges of the
frame, based on the rules of lens design, are no
worse than with any film medium I've ever used.

Sadly, I sold my D100 body a couple years ago. It
made the best digital pinhole images of all, using
the same pinholes I have now. 6mp on the same
size sensor as the d80 10mp. (But, if you
downsize the d80 image to being a 6mp image,
they're very, very close, the difference seeming
to be the microlenses, but that's just a guess.)

All that said, I'm starting to get images that are
lovely and perfectly usable at very large (in
multiplications from sensor size) sizes. 12x18
looks really good with my best pinhole aperture,
and is creamy and romantic with my zone plates.
Not nearly as enlargeable and sharp as my images
made on 4x5 sheet film - but the difference in
sharpness is about the same proportionally as APS
sized film versus sheet film.

So, the laws of physics still seem to be
functioning as expected - size matters. But for
many subjects a pinhole or zone plate on a digital
body can produce lovely images.

Drop by F295.org and check out my digital pinhole
and digital zone plate images in the forums.
There's some learning involved - zone plates work
better at specific distance ranges, for example,
and the actual camera focal length for a nikon is
47.5mm - too precise to match.

The only downside: because pinhole has such
incredible depth of field, dust spots are a HUGE
problem - worse than shooting with a macro lens at
f64. I shot yesterday back to back with lenses
and pinhole - the lens images didn't require any
retouching, but the pinhole images showed a dozen
ugly dust spots.

Ed

---- Original Message ----

From: Adrien Arles <alterco@hotmail.fr>
To: <pinhole-discussion@spitbite.org>
Cc:
Subject: RE: [pinhole-discussion] A ?
Date: Wed, January 02, 2008, 17:07:00

Hi,

Just one thing, the digital pinhole can't be
better than with a film because
the sensor need to recieved parallel ray of light.
In fact the lens are
designed to rectifiy the light.
For exemple, Leica does not succeed in making good
digital camera because of
the old good lens come deep inside the camera so
the rays of light can't be
parallel.

So, with pinhole put on a digital camera, you can
make a photo but it will be
more blury thant with a film...

Adrien

> From: jamesromeo@mac.com
> Subject: [pinhole-discussion] A ?
> Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2008 11:42:39 -0500
> To: pinhole-discussion@spitbite.org
>
> Hi
> I have ben doing pinhole for years
> has any one done pinhole digital ?
> any
> info would be of interest
> The pinhole for the digital camera are all
around 50 mm
> Is there any way to get wider pinhole
> Yes I have used film and a scanner
> Thank You all
> James
> see my work www.pinholeformat.com
_______________________________________________
Post to the list as PLAIN TEXT only - no HTML
pinhole-discussion mailing list
pinhole-discussion@spitbite.org
FAQ at http://spitbite.org/pinhole-discussion/list.html
Received on Wed Jan 2 11:21:43 2008