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Digital v Film again

Hi Lynn,

I agree that a direct like for like shoot out would or should hlep to solve the dispute. I'm game. If there is a ND user in the UK who is willing to co-operate then I am prepared to travel to a suitable location.

Obviously the XA has a fixed focal length of 35mm so either that would have to be accomodated or I could use my wife's 90 Euro Leica Z2R zoom compact.

Failing this I am more than happy to send slides or scans from slides on CD from either camera to some neutral party.

Clive
 
Clive, Would you mind emailing me? I can never figure out how to send a private email through the forum. It's Lynn at turnkeydesign dot net. (I break it up in messages in case of spammers) Thanks! -Lynn
 
Clive Kenyon, I loaded a shot from the ND that I grabbed of my wife's flowers, and did some cropped details. Similar to the ones you up loaded on the regular gallery.

Take a look.
 
Mark,

You have not replied to my private e-mail, but I gather from the icy tone of your messages that maybe I was correct in assuming that Fotografz chose to go digital for financial reasons rather than in pursuit of better image quality. Certainly your posting of 6 April 2003 seemed to suggest that this may have been a consideration:
“Gareth, Up until now digital saved a bucket of money, but was a bit more labor intensive.”

You seem to have a lot to say on the ND and are stoutly defending it against my assertions that film still provides the best photographic image for any similar system. Yet, I also found these little gems in the archives;

“The images I've seen posted from the Contax Digital look awful, which concerns me a great deal given the price of this puppy.” Posted July 3rd 2002 while you were considering this model. By September 23rd your newly purchased Contax N Digital had already made a marked impression on you:
“I have been a faithful customer of Contax for decades. But this is the last Contax product I will ever buy.”

And later and on Oct. 3rd:
“But I'm not totally convinced of the image quality on this camera quite yet. The need to lift every image in PhotoShop so much concerns me because the more you have to screw around with digital images the more the danger of artifacts and degraded image. Also weak the blacks from this camera concern me a lot.”
And
“But I'm willing to put up with the short comings if I can get the shot and it looks great. Which I am desperately trying to arrive at with this camera.”
And by Nov 23rd only 4 months after buying the ND and having boasted about shooting several 4 Gigabyte shoots things seem to have got worse:

“Mehrdad, never this much this fast. I didn't just fall off the turnip truck. I've been in digital and computers for a while, and realize that technology marches on and prices go down. But never this fast and this much.
I haven't even got the darned thing operating to a good enough degree to make dime one from it. In this economy a $3,500. whack is nothing to sneeze at. I have to work my ass off to make that much profit.”

And, same date:
“Conversly, we still do not have decent software for the Contax ND. At ISO 400 the Canon G3 delivers better pictures at 1/10th the price (and I'm not kidding about that)."

In fact by the time that you have had the ND a mere five months you were in this position:
“My initial report on my wedding shoot was prematurely incorrect. Every image has a terrible moire' pattern and ended up being unprintable. There were a few images worth the PS work to save them. I ran a PS Noise reduction actions program I usually reserve for extreme blow-ups from my D1-X when shot on ISO 800. I posted one of the "saved" ND shots in the Gallery here. Even after running the noise reduction program at full power, the darks had to be selected and a blur tool applied.
Unless someone can point out an obvious mistake on my part, I am returning this camera to Contax' and/or sueing them. This is the last straw.” Dec 3rd 2002.

And on the 6th:
“Unfortunately, like Tino, I had also dumped my entire Canon Pro system to get the ND and a few lenses. A huge and costly mistake at a time when the economy makes it terribly hard to recoup such losses. My mistake for trusting a company that had always delivered the highest quality in the past. Who would have guessed it? Unfortunately I did not.

I fear I waited to long while trying to "fix/learn" the camera and waiting for the software upgrade. So I am probably stuck with a $6,500. Paperweight”


Yet Mark despite these negative findings after thousands of images had passed through your camera you started to defend the ND. In fact you are telling happy amateurs to stick with it:

“If you are putting the camera in a drawer unused, that is a shame. The more you use it the more it reveals it's secrets.”

This is from a man who stated:
“Simply put, I am no longer a customer of Contax because I no longer trust them. Kodak has earned my trust. Nikon has earned my trust. Mac has earned it. Epson has earned it. Contax has lost it.”
And:
“Contax is a predatory company in my opinion. It no longer deserves the loyality of dedicated customers.” Nov. 23rd 2002.

Now these are strange statements to make for a person who is Patron of Contax Info!
Even stranger is the fact that between falling out with Contax and posting these defences of the ND you had purchased not one, but two high end Canon digital cameras to do the work that you originally purchased the ND to do. Very strange indeed!

Perhaps you advocate that we amateurs can simply dispense with expensive inappropriate equipment just as easily?

There are other ambiguities; Why for instance do you question my use of a loupe in viewing prints when you bench test high quality lenses against one another? Do you do this by naked eye alone or maybe enlarge the digital images on screen or print? If it is not the case that you have superhuman vision perhaps you might explain the subtle differences between magnifying with a loupe and other means?
If indeed you can tell the difference in image quality of a Canon L, Leica, Nikkor or Zeiss lens by naked eye please explain why you cannot spot a digital print from a conventional one?

Perhaps you may enlighten me?

Clive
 
Clive,

Let's not get into yet another personal war. If I may say so, you need to follow from the beginning what I consider the great ND soap opera in this forum to trully appreciate it.

What we have is Marc coping with and adapting to a tool that did not work to his expectations out of the box. Most people expect great shots from digital once you've pulled the shutter. For whatever reason, Contax images need some quick tweaking to bring out the full effect. It took some time for him (and many of us) to realize that once properly tweaked the images looked fantastic. It's not a matter of changing your opinion on the same output, it's a matter of changing the output over time as a result of acquired understanding of the tool.

Also I don't really think it is fair to judge and condemn somebody for trying to make a profitable business, which is the point of any business. Of course he's trying to optimize his profit! Nothing wrong with that, unless they're really misleading and deceiving their clients, which I truly believe Marc is not.

In fact as far as I can tell he's delivering the expected product with more options and better timetables than possible with film alone. The clients will complain and not buy if they don't get what they want, and as far as I know there is no worse antagonist than a newlywed bride with disappointing wedding pictures.

And that is one of the key ingredients of digital: not just cost, but convenience. That is why my darkroom is, well, dark all the time. I am getting images just about as good as my RTS II delivered with Reala, IMHO, for all practical purposes. With some caveats, yes, such as slow 3-4 second start-up from off condition, no RAW preview and getting only 110-120 shots per battery charge. Maybe my eyes are nowhere as good as yours, but that's what I have to go by.

Cheers,

DJ
 
Clive, you really need to understand one thing. From an absolutistic point of view film is of course the best medium at this point, but there is also a question of necessity. For instance, if you need a flawless photograph eight by ten feet in size, a view camera loaded with sheet film is the only option, really. No photographer in his right mind, however, would use an 8x11" view camera commercially for letter size portraits just because it is bloody inconvenient, slow and expensive. The reality is that Contax ND is capable of producing files that yield 12x18" prints that are indistinguishable from prints made from 645 negatives. I can tell this for a fact because on one of my shows I had twenty two people trying very hard to tell apart prints made from Contax ND and from 2820dpi scans of chromes shot with Rollei 6008.
Contax ND is not an easy camera to use and it has a rather steep learning curve. Kyocera is to blame for not creating high quality RAW converting software and for not writing an adequate manual for Contax RAW Developer. MArk and I had a lot to learn and a lot to get frustrated about, but at this point I know everything about this camera (and believe me, it is a lot to know), and can show you pictures taken in the rain, in low light, in a studio, in 95F heat and 100% humidity. This March I had a show opening next morning and one picture was missing. Since it was about seven thousand miles away from home, the only choice was to shoot something there. So, I shot a picture on JPEG at ISO400 and printed it 40x50cm with no digital noice reduction. It was that lady with wings wearing checkered stockings, which you can see in the gallery on this site.
 
Clive, I did answer you. In detail. Days ago.
So there was no iceiness intended. I even put a smilely face with my comment on your Gallery up-loads...including a positive score and glowing comment on your "Angler" photograph.

Today, you have taken my early posts out of context to serve your argument. But I think everyone here knows that I was initially mad about the lack of support from Contax concerning poor power, RAW developer problems, pricing, and silence from Contax on tech support. Many people may also recall that Irakly tutored me in the use of the camera at my studio. I solved the power problem with 4 battery inserts, 2000 Mih batteries in place of the crappy ones from Contax, and purchased better rapid chargers. Plus Irakly showed me that the J-Peg files were as good as the RAW or better. Not to mention that the camera is quite fast when shooting J-pegs, so the small buffer is now a non-issue. Lastly, I "fixed" the price problem through my dealer.

I still do not think much of Contax support, for it wasn't them who helped me use their own product to greater effect. It was people like Irakly and others from this forum. (Thanks Dirk).

Since my fairly long private e-mail to you was lost or whatever, I'll post a short version here.

You claimed to be able to spot a digital shot in the flesh or in printed form from a mile away. This must drive you nuts as a vast majority of all editorial and commercial work is now digital capture, including automobile work here in Detroit, package goods from Chicago and NY, and fashion from NY and LA.

In your e-mail to me you assumed I was a wedding photographer by profession and that my clients would accept lesser digital quality. I am NOT in that profession. I am an Executive Creative Director for an ad agency doing package goods advertising for an international food giant; financial institution collateral work, and...blah, blah, blah. The point is that quality IS at issue, not just costs.

What I've learned in the ad profession is that talent and experience make a huge difference with digital post work. I am pretty good at PhotoShop, etc., but my Art Directors are wizards by comparison. Most everything I've learned I've gleened from them. Those Art Directors and our 30 year veteran Print Production Manager are the ones that approved digital capture for all of our work. Everything we have done for the last 2 years has been digital capture, including bill boards, posters, huge backlit Dura-trans, and on-screen movie house advertising. We have 8' laminated prints of our clients products lining the halls of our agency that were from digital shots. Fact is, because almost all printing is now digital, digital capture provides equal or better quality. Film gave us major problems with such huge digital enlargements due to grain. Perhaps because Interpolation programs work smoothly with digital files, while exaggerating the grain with film scans. We actually had to dumb down the film scans, or use grain reduction programs to lessen the hightened grain...at a loss of quality.

Now to the issue, YES I agree that digital images and film images differ in look and feel.
(Most of the time, but not always). I do not agree it is a quality issue, or a detail issue. Properly post processed, a digital file IS high quality. Yet there is a look and feel from film that touches an emotional cord. It's why movie makers are slow to go digital. It's why I still prefer to shoot B&W shots with a Leia M and film, (although, I must admit the Contax ND is a close second for that kind of work).

As to your other assertions, sorry, I don't get your point. The Canon is faster than any other DSLR available. It replaced the Nikon D1-X system, not the Contax. And I now also use the ND at weddings on occassion when AF speed isn't critical. As Irakly can confirm, I do not carry either Canon for street shooting...I ALWAYS use the Contax ND. It is also my camera of choice for travel when I do not want to carry a M7 and a bag of film through the x-ray hassel (see the bunch of Gallery shots from a recent trip to LA to shoot a TV commercial for Unilever-Best Foods).
 
> Clive, Cliive, Clive,

Your wrong, wrong, wrong. I am prepared to send a shot that I think has detail and tontal range to anybody that request the shot. I believe your review of my shots really were made with bias. We need somebody to independently take a look. (By the way ... your shot of the Shepherd was Great!). But .... still your claim that a point and shoot can out shoot any digital is just not so. And I still stand by my ND!

Michael.
 
> Lynn,

I did exactly that ... for a group shot. Set up my ND and my N1 side by side. One used the 24-85 and the other the 17-25. Both made excellant images. My brother choose the ND (digital) shot to print and send out as 6 x 12 shots to over 25 folks at the party.

Michael.
 
>=20 >=20 >=20 > [Thanks, I guessed that is the cause, thanks. I will try to use some hea= vier > UPS to see if that change things. Brgds/Kaisern] >=20 >=20 >=20
 
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