aerial photography at night

Beautiful pictures :-)

I have used Provia 400 too, but not for anything quite so spectacular.

I would agree with Greg too about film over digital, it would take a
very very good digital to match film quality, and when your talking
slide film, I'm not sure even the best digitals are there yet, but
correct me if I'm wrong.

Regards

Ice blonde wrote:

I would agree with Greg too about film over digital, it would take a
very very good digital to match film quality, and when your talking
slide film, I'm not sure even the best digitals are there yet, but
correct me if I'm wrong.

According to tests run by Popular Photography magazine, both the latest Canon
and Nikon digital 35mm SLRs beat out film, but we're talking better than $5,000
for the body. I've not seen anything to indicate that the mid-size format camera
manufacturers can beat film with digital yet, but I could easily have missed an
article.

George Patterson
Drink is the curse of the land. It makes you quarrel with your neighbor.
It makes you shoot at your landlord. And it makes you miss him.

Aerial photography differs from other types of photography in significant
ways.

Without even getting into the question of atmospheric conditions, and the uses
of infrared imaging materials, we can say that, generally speaking, aerial
photography has a very high information-gathering value. If you're doing
pictorial photography on the ground, you may not need or even want very high
pixel counts, as this only produces gigantic files, that you then have to
reduce to publish on the web, or send as e-mail. In aerial photography though,
even if you're doing oblique, pictorial work, you very often want to crop your
subject to get to the essential matter. Sometimes, in a plane or helicopter,
you cannot get as close as you'd like to your subject, so you end up cropping,
sometimes drastically, which of course digital photos cannot support.

Now, look at technical applications, such as wildlife, geological and
environmental surveys, and it becomes obvious that almost no amount of
information could be "too much". For such uses, film is a great medium,
because it is fast, and very high resolution. The digital vs film "shootouts"
being published today generally concern high-end 6-10MP cameras, compared to
24x36mm film. But most aerial photographers don't use 24x36mm much. The 6x7cm
frames that the ultra-famous Arthus-Bertrand (and, I suspect, the contributor
of these fantastic London shots) uses have 5X the resolution of "standard"
35mm shots. So, something like 30-50MP equivalent. The 5"x5" format of the K20
camera (the Linhof 45EL being the most recent, and most beautiful iteration of
this format) have 17X standard 35mm resolution (100-170MP) and the 9"x9"
format still standard for vertical photogrammetry (used by geological survey
for map-making) is 60X 35mm resolution, which is getting into the GigaPixel
order of magnitude!

As an example of file size, when I take 4X5-inch transparencies or negatives
to the drum scanner, a 20MB file is considered a low-resolution, "dirty" scan,
just to get an idea of what the thing looks like, and is not even scratching
the surface of the information available in the 4X5.

G Faris

Recently, George Patterson posted:

Ice blonde wrote:

I would agree with Greg too about film over digital, it would take a
very very good digital to match film quality, and when your talking
slide film, I'm not sure even the best digitals are there yet, but
correct me if I'm wrong.

According to tests run by Popular Photography magazine, both the
latest Canon and Nikon digital 35mm SLRs beat out film, but we're
talking better than $5,000 for the body. I've not seen anything to
indicate that the mid-size format camera manufacturers can beat film
with digital yet, but I could easily have missed an article.

While many agree that, for the same physical area, digital sensors can
compete well against film -- e.g. a full-frame 35mm digital camera can
produce images competive with 35mm film as in a Popular Photography type
of comparison -- there are other factors to consider. For one, as yet
there are no full-frame (56x56mm) medium format digital sensors, so a
typical medium format camera will still outperform the best 35mm format
digital cameras.

For the kind of images that Jason presented in this thread (very nice
shots, btw!), the higher ISO range (1600-3200) of a pro digital camera
could allow higher shutter speeds and/or smaller apertures than one could
use with ISO 400 film, but at the cost of less image area than with 120
film, and consequently less subtle gradations and detail. IMO, the bottom
line is that film and digital are just two imaging media, each with their
own 'look', advantages and limitations.

Regards,

Neil

In article ,
says...

For one, as yet
there are no full-frame (56x56mm) medium format digital sensors, so a
typical medium format camera will still outperform the best 35mm format
digital cameras.

For the kind of images that Jason presented in this thread (very nice
shots, btw!), the higher ISO range (1600-3200) of a pro digital camera
could allow higher shutter speeds and/or smaller apertures than one could
use with ISO 400 film,


As a matter of fact, there are 6X6cm chips (Dicomed BigShot, others) and
even 4X5" backs (Dicomed, Leaf, others). These have been around for some
years now, but as yet have not captured their intended markets, partly, of
course, because of their exorbitant cost, but also, in contrast to what
you state, because of their SLOWNESS. Some of the large format digital
backs require three separate exposures to do color, others do it in one,
slow go. Add to this the fact that you need to transport a huge computer
to store the image output, and suddenly film is starting to look like it
has more future than was once postulated!

G Faris

Recently, Greg Farris posted:

In article ,
says...

For one, as yet
there are no full-frame (56x56mm) medium format digital sensors, so a
typical medium format camera will still outperform the best 35mm
format digital cameras.

For the kind of images that Jason presented in this thread (very nice
shots, btw!), the higher ISO range (1600-3200) of a pro digital
camera could allow higher shutter speeds and/or smaller apertures
than one could use with ISO 400 film,


As a matter of fact, there are 6X6cm chips (Dicomed BigShot, others)

Oh? I couldn't find any such information on Dicomed's site. I'd be
interested in a pointer to some info about this one or other 6x6cm sensor
products, since the largest that I've seen are in the neighborhood of 36mm
x 49mm (e.g. Imacon).

and even 4X5" backs (Dicomed, Leaf, others).

These are _scanning_ backs, not single-shot sensors. They'd be fairly
useless for aerial photography. ;-)

Regards,

Neil

Greg Farris wrote:

The digital vs film "shootouts"
being published today generally concern high-end 6-10MP cameras, compared to
24x36mm film. But most aerial photographers don't use 24x36mm much.

The cameras to which I referred are upwards of 12 MP. And, yes, they're being
compared to 35mm film.

George Patterson
Drink is the curse of the land. It makes you quarrel with your neighbor.
It makes you shoot at your landlord. And it makes you miss him.

Ok, ok, she runs head held under hands away from the weight of
photographic knowledge bearing down......

That is obviously no longer the case, I stand well and truly corrected.

Regards

In article ,
says...

Oh? I couldn't find any such information on Dicomed's site. I'd be
interested in a pointer to some info about this one or other 6x6cm sensor
products, since the largest that I've seen are in the neighborhood of 36mm
x 49mm (e.g. Imacon).


Here's some older info :

http://www.epi-centre.com/reports/9604cs.html

and more recently, they introduced a single-shot color back :

http://www.epi-centre.com/reports/9610ecs.html

One has to look for historical articles on these items, as they did not
capture their intended markets at the time of their introduction. The $55K+
price tag certainly had something to do with that.


These are _scanning_ backs, not single-shot sensors. They'd be fairly
useless for aerial photography. ;-)

Agreed!!


G Faris

Recently, Greg Farris posted:

In article ,
says...

Oh? I couldn't find any such information on Dicomed's site. I'd be
interested in a pointer to some info about this one or other 6x6cm
sensor products, since the largest that I've seen are in the
neighborhood of 36mm x 49mm (e.g. Imacon).

Here's some older info :

http://www.epi-centre.com/reports/9604cs.html

and more recently, they introduced a single-shot color back :

http://www.epi-centre.com/reports/9610ecs.html

Interesting, and thanks for the links.

One has to look for historical articles on these items, as they did
not capture their intended markets at the time of their introduction.
The $55K+ price tag certainly had something to do with that.

I wonder if this Dicomed product ever made it beyond the prototype stage?
Other MF digital backs are selling, and they are neither full frame nor
all that much cheaper, even today. If the technology was what it was
supposed to be, a full-frame 6x6cm sensor would be attractive, even at its
comparatively low 16 mp resolution.

Regards,

Neil