Killing Peppergrain

I’m shooting tons of slide film. To be exact: Fuji Provia 100 F and Kodak Elitechrome (now discontinued). Using the Nikon Coolscan LS 5000 and LS 9000 to digitize the images, I am sometimes struggling with the well known ‘peppergrain’. Because the Nikon scanners use direct light, the light is very harsh and reveals even the smallest imperfections in a scan.

Though nobody knows the real reason for peppergrain, that means the very tiny, black particles in an image with a round or oval shape, it is sometimes very prominent in the medium and highlight areas. There is no chance to get rid of it, except by using a drum scanner. But who can (and will) afford a drum scan for each slide? You’ve got the point…

Just by coincidence I stumbled across an information about Ximagic in the PhotoLine forum (PhotoLine is a 48 bit image editor that rivals the Adobe product and in several aspects even surpasses its features). Usually I don’t need a denoiser or noise reduction, because I love film and particularly the look of film. However, I’m kind of a tech freak to play with some stuff if I have some time available.

So I downloaded free Ximagic denoiser plugin for PhotoLine on my Mac OS X and installed it. To be honest, Ximagic is a bit slow, even though it is a 64 bit app and really challenges the CPUs in my Mac, if I apply it to large, scanned images.

After playing with it for several weeks,  I’ve discovered a setting that eliminates the peppergrain from my Fuji film scans! Wow, I didn’t plan it, I just modified the sliders, tweaking the options here and there, and bingo – there it just happened. Without eliminating and ironing the grain in the image, it just killed the peppergrain!

Here are the settings for you. I’ve made this screenshot with the ‘Difference’ setting, which clearly shows that only the tiny black spots are removed:

(click the image for a larger version)

Enjoy!

PhotoLine v 17 – Adiós Photoshop

Just a couple of days ago PhotoLine version 17 for Mac and Windows had been released. Summary in one word: Wow. This time the focus had been on the image editing part of the package as well as the responsiveness and speed, which made PhotoLine even better then ever before.

Before you will aks: yes, PL does handle PS plug-ins, but not all of them. This is not the fault of the PL developers, it’s the lousy coding quality of the plug-in developers who are somewhat dependent from Adobe…

As you know, I am pretty straight forward and prefer to have a perfect image when I press the shutter. And I am pretty straight forward when it comes to tools in my box. I don’t want bloatware or monster apps on my Mac. PhotoLine is just a 30 MB download for the Mac and even smaller for Windows. It is a fully fledged 64 bit application without gimmicks. Very small footprint on the HD, very fast and responsive. In addition it gives you the freedom to configure the tool palettes the way you want them. Being a right handed person, I enjoy it to have my tools on the right side of the screen, which avoids long mouse travels to a fixed menu at the left side of the huge monitor.

While Adobe Photoshop forces you to learn their weird logic, PhotoLine features a more natural and logical approach. Example: Draw a selection and modify it, i.e. rotate it without being forced to ‘change tools’. Another indicator for the natural logic of the software: a small user forum. When I browse the net, very often I stumble upon Adobe forums with post starting like ‘How can I…’. This clearly shows how weird the Adobe products really are. On the other hand: if you happen to have a problem with PL, just join their forum and get all the help you need. But chances are high that you won’t need any help at all.

Last but not least Adobe’s current update policy is lousy. They try to squeeze as much money out of your pockets as they can. If you want CS 6 you need to update to CS 5 now, or you won’t be able to update from CS 4 to CS 6 anymore. That’s a bad rip off!

A Photoline update is just 29 Euro, for almost the same power as the (far too big and memory hungry) competitor. Rest assured, you will get much more with PhotoLine than what you pay for. I’ve had endless discussions with people who wanted to tell me that a TIFF created with an Adobe product is ‘better’ or ‘different’ than a TIFF created with PhotoLine. It is NOT. A TIFF is a TIFF is a TIFF. Don’t get fooled – with PhotoLine you can embed the same color profiles as with Adobes children. I’ve used PhotoLine for many commercial projects, even for high quality offset and large format printing. PL is stable, robust, fast and precise as you expect it from a professional tool. It just doesn’t have the expensive marketing department as the competitor

PhotoLine v 17 on a Mac featuring unlimited customization

The new features:

Simple Browse:

This allows you to open a tiny, customizable window to browse your files without having to open the standard image browser. Configure it to show just a film strip with one or more rows or columns.

Trim Image:

Sometimes you copy a part of an image and paste it into a blank document, which is slightly larger than the snippet you’ve pasted. Use Trim Image to remove the transparent space around the image without selecting and cropping the desired part. Neat!

Export Color Profile:

Sometimes it’s good to have it on hand, just in case you have to re-apply it later

Selective Color Correction:

A great tool for the print oriented users. It lets you correct colors of a CMYK image to fine tune images for the printing process.

Threshold:

Finally this feature found its way into PhotoLine. If you want to convert an image for graphical effects into (1 bit) line art, this is the way to go. Comes with a slider to define the threshold point.

Remove Brush and Remove Object:

Hell, these two are the ones I’ve been waiting for, really. Similar to the ‘healing’ in PS, but with the ‘Remove Object’ an absolut killer. No need to dig deep into the manuals, these tools are as natural and simple as you expect it from PhotoLine.

With the Remove Brush tool you can remove dirt spots, speckles, pimples, scratches, tiny disturbing birds in the sky, etc. Just select the tool, set the brush size with the up or down arrow so it is slightly larger than the object you want to iron out, brush over it and you are done.

The Remove Object is even more powerful. It allows you to remove large parts of an image after using the mask (lasso) tool first. It’s like magic. To get acquainted with this tool, you should read the release notes.

Note that this tool features a very powerful option as soon as you have selected the object or area to be removed: with a simple line you can select a different part of an image to replace the object:

Enhance Edge: modify the edge

Remove Object: delete it and let the app replace it

The crop tool at the lower left lets you define the neighborhood, the gradient lets you define the image structure which shall replace the object. Use each or both of them to your gusto and experiment with the options. The results are truly amazing.

Just one sample:

Before:

After:

Any questions?

I mean I don’t need it, but I know that many digital photographers want it.

Liquid Layer Scale:

Well, I really don’t know why any photographer should be in need for this tool, but now they’ll have it in PhotoLine as well. It lets you scale an image with a content aware algorithm, meaning that the ‘important’ and dominant parts in an image won’t be distorted if you want to squeeze the width or height of an image. The technique looks great, but as I said, I never needed to squeeze an image for any reason, but maybe it is a great tool for image editors in magazine production.

Quick Selection Tool:

Well, this one is not so simple, but extremely powerful. It lets you select an object in an image with a powerful fine tuning, giving you more precise control of the selection to ‘cut’ or ‘isolate’ an object from the background. Together with the

Border Matting Tool

you can define even the finest and tiniest parts of an image to be knocked out and selected. It’s like applying a feathering to the edges of fine detail like hair or branches of bushes and trees. The flexing muscle icon is an excellent depiction of its function…

Magnifier in the View Window:

Until now you only had some sort of navigation window if you’ve zoomed into your image. Now you can select Page Map, Magnifier, Documents or Pages, while the last two are for documents only. Assuming you are working with huge scans, zooming in and out can be a real pain. Selecting the Magnifier lets you exactly see (with a selectable magnification) the area you are working on. A real nice addition for the film enthusiasts among us.

Copy Without Colored Edge:

Well, to be honest, until today I simply couldn’t get what this function means, but I guess this is because I don’t need to copy image parts <sigh>.

Extract Selection:

Another great tool for people who need to copy or replace objects in images.

The edge of the selection always contains colors of the background, too. If you have selected an object, you’ll end up with tiny bits of the background included in your selection. These are disturbing if the selection is copied to another picture. Therefore they optionally can be removed with this tool, which features 3 tool options or subsets.

As always, the modification of the color depth is a snap:

A nice new feature is the clock icon, which shows the progress of longer operations:

The freely configurable tool box:

And of course the freely configurable palettes:

In short words: For 60 Euro (full version) or 30 Euro (update) you get the best tool currently available. Go for it and say ‘Adios Adobe’!

To test drive PhotoLine, visit their web site here, or go straight to the download page here. PhotoLine is available for Mac and Windows.

2012-01-16

Wow & geez, I just received a nice comment in the PhotoLine International forum: http://www.pl32.com/forum3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2984 - thanks guys for your kind words!

LightZone (from LightCrafts)

Dear visitor and LightZone user,

I wish I could give some good news, but unfortunately the development of LighZone had been discontinued without notice to the existing customers and users.

However, Tex and Doug are trying to set up a site with more information on how to activate the license, installation issues and all nine yards. Please cooperate and spread the good news about the new server and read on. If you want to receive updates and news, you can send me your e-mail address which I will collect and forward to Tex (Rest assured, I won’t use your e-mail address for any other purpose – I’ve got other things to do).

Here is what Tex just sent me today (2011-11-08):

Hello to all of you, around the world.

First off, let me immediately state 3 things:  We will not be spamming you with a bunch of emails (see below).  And, If you do not want to be on this list, just let me know and I will remove you right away.

This list has been created mainly from direct emails I have received from you recently or in the past year or so.  A few of you are on this list because I mined your names from DPR, either because you had messaged me there or had responded to recent threads about the demise of LZ.  A smaller few of you were mined from DPR post from the last 12 months because you mentioned you had used/are using LZ in your workflow.  That is how I got this current group.  As you all should know by now, Lightcrafts the company is dead.  LightZone and Aurora, its products, are now ….in limbo of some kind. Orphans?  Properties being shopped around?  We don’t know for sure.

So, here is our news, which I think is great.  In a nutshell, Doug Pardee has been doing really sterling work on finding out how we can keep LZ alive, both in terms of activations issues, downloading possibilities, now possibly lost license # recovery, and–fanfare, please—the creation of new raw files (4 so far!).  Any of us who care owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude.  I copy pertinent bits of his emails to me below.  We are not attempting a full hack at this time, and we are trying to be careful not to get illegal or tread into murky ethical waters with copyright and IPR issues.  Our aim is survival of our beloved software and support of the user community, which should be mutual, I might add.  But we’ve got links to the install-file downloads, including the Mac 3.9.2 install for Java SE6 and Lion (OS X 10.7), and that we’ve got (mostly untested at this point) updates to allow LightZone to work with Raw files from newer camera models.

See what Doug’s been doing here (and get your download links, etc):  

https://github.com/Doug-Pardee/LightZombie

He and I have also been discussing starting up a new website for the purpose of LZ support.  I have purchased the following domain name (Doug’s witty suggestion):  www.lightzombie.org – plus several others so there is a little protection.  It is on this site that we will create, well, whatever we have to, and we are certainly open to suggestions.  We’ll start on that later this week, and by that I mean I’ll start investigating what it is we’ll need for a forum and blog, and whether that’s going to be a WordPress thing or etc. 

Hosting has not been determined, but one of you has made a kind offer of free hosting which we will be happy to accept if it works out at your end (separate email coming just to you on that one).  We are also now on twitter (oh, gawd…..): @LightZombie , and we’ll see if Facebook is necessary.  Once we get this stuff up and properly running, then we won’t need to email you directly, you’ll just go to the website or Github or the tweets, or etc. yourselves.

So, think of Doug as our CTW (Chief Technical Wizard—not sure what order wizard he is, because I’m technically retarded)  and me as CCH (Chief Comms Hobbit).  And we are not the zombies, btw, the software is.

Any and all technical and/or other assistance is most welcome!  Tech stuff goes to Doug, website and forum  stuff to me for the most part.  Send questions about your problems to me for now, so as not to bog down Doug who is working on fascinating stuff.  I’ll be acting as ticketmaster.

Best wishes from us to you!

tex andrews

Now, for the real interesting part, excerpts from Doug’s emails to me:

Here’s where I am on the technical side:

• The github site is all set up.
• The github site has Wayback Machine links to all of the original install packages.
• I have the dcraw.c source code updated with the three differences that I found.
• I’ve set up github so that whenever Dave Coffin releases a new version of dcraw.c, we have a computerized merge process that will produce the LightZone variant without any brain-work needed.
• I have initial builds of the updated dcraw for Windows, Mac, and Linux! I hope they all work.
• I’ve created custom Raw Tone Curve templates for four cameras, based on interest expressed by DPReview members: — Canon EOS 60D for Frischnetz — Olympus E-5 for Skaarungen — Pentax K-r for jok1000 — Panasonic LX5 for solsang LZ logs over 200 error messages about EXIF metadata every time it looks at an E-5 Raw file, but if you don’t look at the log file everything seems to work fine. I’ve opened an issue on github about this.
• I’ve created some additional Canon EOS Raw Tone Curve templates by copying from other templates. Unfortunately, Fabio seems to have gotten really sloppy with raw tone curves.
• I’ve uploaded the “classic tools” templates. I think that tech-wise, we’re at a point where we can do some real good for current LZ users, and for those who’ve reluctantly shelved LZ because it didn’t handle their camera models. I need some feedback from users on how well the new dcraw builds work for them, and what problems they run into. We can also start collecting requests for Raw Tone Curve templates from LZ users. I’m really not inclined to produce custom tone curves for every possible camera model — just the ones that LZ users have. In other words, I’m ready to “go public” and see what the users think.

github: Over the past year or two, github has become pretty much “the” site for hosting open-source development projects. 

There are still some on the older big sites like SourceForge and Google Code, but many of the projects there now say, “moved to github.” 

As an indication of github’s stature, THE Linux project is hosted there: https://github.com/torvalds/linux

At its heart, github is a repository for storing and sharing programming code where the project is being updated by multiple programmers. 

It allows the code to be kept private, for a fee, but for public code like ours github’s free. Anyone can download files from a public github project. Point your browser at the project, select the “code” button — which probably should be called “files” — and you’ll see the file/folder tree. Each folder can have a file called README (perhaps with an extension indicating what kind of markup it’s using), and github will automatically display that file at the bottom of the folder listing. There is an optional “issue tracker” that can be used for, um, tracking issues. It’s very simplistic, but I think it’ll do for us — at least for now — so I’ve got it turned on.

 

 

 

The github site, where Doug and Tex keep LightZone alive.

48 bit or 16 bit per channel image editing for the rest of us

Wherever I go, I hear people screaming ‘Photoshop’. As if a good photograph couldn’t be done without this software. Besides the bare fact that Adobe’s image editor is the most illegally copied and used software, most people do not need such a dinosaur (in terms of footprint on your HD and in terms of investment) to work on their images. The latest version – CS5 – occupies around 1 GB on your HD. Most people want PS because they want to show off and to be classified as a ‘pro’. 95% of the PS users use only 5% of its features, 5% need some more features for a few specific reasons (but not to achieve what they want, not really), i.e. in ad agencies or in a corporate environment. In short words: most PS users drag around tons of useless code, eating up their RAM and stealing it from other applications!

Just look over the rim of your coffee cup. If you are a professional photographer or just a hobbyist, all you need is rock solid 16 bit per channel = 48 bit image editing. Most people are convinced this can only be accomplished with a product from the self promoted ‘industry leader’, because they can’t find any other software that will handle 16/48 bit image editing.

Wrong!

A small developer team in south Germany, for more than 10 years on the market now, constantly develops and improves an extremely powerful and full blown 16/48 bit image editor: PhotoLine.

PhotoLine is just a small 30 MB download and installs with only 72 MB on your HD. The tiny size of the program makes it fast. Incredibly fast compared to Photoshop, which I had installed once and abandoned immediately. PhotoLine runs natively in 64 bit OS environments – and already did when Photoshop was still running with 32 bit on 64 bit operating systems. PhotoLine is available for Mac and Windows. You can download an evaluation copy here. Don’t be mislead by the web site design – they are great coders, but not so great in web site design

If you think it’s not worth a try, just compare the prices: Photoshop carves a deep hole into your pocket with US$ 699.00, while PhotoLine is just a fraction of it: Euro 59.00 or US$ 84.00.

You won’t lose anything, but you can win a lot, even if you currently use PS Elements. PS Elements is loaded with unnecessary gimmicks and doesn’t support 16/48 bit image editing, whereas PhotoLine doesn’t bother you with gimmicks but delivers full and smooth 16/48 bit image editing at a professional level.

What’s in the package? Just to name a few features:

• A fast image browser
• An excellent RAW converter
• An abundant array of professional tools
• Non destructive editing
• Unlimited layers
• Unlimited plug-ins (the same you can use in PS)
• A fantastic print engine for any paper size
• Multiple page documents
• Vector graphics for text and shapes
• Several localizations (AFAIK German, English, Italian, maybe even more)

The main window for image editing (Mac version)

The image browser (Mac version)

PhotoLine offers you almost unlimited options to customize your workplace. Show/Hide grid either in dots, crosses or lines, define the grid size, specify the color of the grid. Batch conversions, task automator, lens correction for the most popular cameras, specific tools to edit images from digital cameras, color management, color profiles and conversions, retouching tools like repairing brush, clone tools, a powerful masking tool and filter layers to enhance your images, 100% support for your graphic tablet, perspective correction, etc.

Chances are high that you won’t outgrow this software. Uncertain to exchange files with PS users? There is no reason for this, because PhotoLine can open and save many file formats.

Just select the open/save options in the Preferences or while you are saving the file.

PhotoLine gives you many choices to convert an image with any profile on the market. From sRGB to AdobeWide, CMYK, US Webcoated (SWOP) v2 or Coated FOGRA27, etc:

If you need additional profiles, you can download them from many sources on the iNet, or you can ask your printer to send the color profile he needs for printing (I have cut the top part of the list which contains my scanner and printer profiles).

As a photographer working with images is my profession. PhotoLine is one of the tools in my box (the other one is LightZone). I’ve never missed anything for high quality prints. However, I’ve invested into PTLens and use it as a 64bit plug-in for lens- & perspective correction if I get files from customers. This combo beats PS hands down when it comes to speed and precision.

PhotoLine with PTLens for lens correction, CA correction, barrel & pincushion correction, perspective correction

You are still scanning? PhotoLine seamlessly integrates any scanner you connect to your system (if you have the correct drivers of course). Just select your scanner and off you go. I’ve connected an old Canon Lide 20, a HP B109n Wireless, a Nikon LS 5000 and a Nikon LS 9000 to my system and can use any one of them without problems. However, I use the Nikon via VueScan, which is used from PhotoLine like a plug-in.

The basic print options dialog with a multitude of settings for perfect prints

So what is the catch with 48 bit image editing? Short answer: seamless and smoother color transitions, more information in the dark and light areas, cleaner colors. Just open a 24 bit image in PhotoLine and modify the contrast or apply a curve to the image. Watch the histogram: it will look like a comb after you have finished editing. Now load a true 48 bit image into PhotoLine and repeat your modifications. Look at the histogram again: it still shows smooth curves as before.

The lines that look like a comb in the first image might cause a banding effect while printing an image. For more details about color depth and banding check this post (scroll down a bit to the English version). 24 bit image editing can handle 16.777.216 colors, whereas 48 bit image editing handles 281.474.976.710.656 colors. I guess it’s obvious what your goal should be. Don’t let yourself get distracted by gimmicks like face detection or boring border effects. Bloody amateurs want these outdated and rubbed off features, but not you (otherwise you wouldn’t read this article!).

Long story cut short: if you want or need a fast, high quality and reasonably priced 48 bit image editor, PhotoLine should be your choice. Don’t mess around with anything else that limits you to 8/24 bit editing or something that costs a fortune. And don’t let Adobe mess with your Registry or operating system!

BTW, the PhotoLine support is excellent. Just join the forum or send a short e-mail to the developers, and they will reply in most cases in less than 6 hours (office hours in Europe).

Additional information about color depth is located here and here.

2011-04-06

center filter with LightZone

Note: Lightcrafts, the company that developed LightZone, went out of business. Their web site is down, the owner works for Apple. Owners of LighZone can’t re-install LightZone because the registration server is not available anymore.

However, some very ambitious users could manage to update the current LZ version, provide some license server information, etc. Read all about the progress here

Because wide angle lenses for Rangefinder cameras and wide angle lenses for large format cameras have a light fall off from the center to the edges, it is necessary to use a center filter.

Due to the physical and optical construction, the light fall off of distortion free lenses is around 2 or 2.5 f-stops. Center filters correct this fall off: they feature a circular grey gradient, with the highest density in the center and zero density at the edges.

The advantage: Evenly exposed images.

The disadvantage: They swallow 2 to 2.5 f-stops light, which translates into increasing the exposure time by the factor 2 to 2.5. Even worse: they are going to ruin your bank account. Depending on the lens angle and mount size, they cost around 400 to 500 Euros per filter. If you have several wide angle lenses, you need a specific filter for each lens, so 3 filters sum up to 1.500 Euros in a worst case scenario.

There are situations where you can’t use a center filter, because the light situation won’t allow it. So far, so bad. The problem: how to iron out the light fall off. Alpa of Switzerland offers a software package to handle this, but – of course – only for the large format lenses they offer for their cameras.

So, after having spent almost 1.000 Euro on circular pol, grey and gradient grey filters, I needed a solution for two of my wide angle lenses. Then I had a vision and idea how to simulate a filter with LightZone, and it worked like a charm:

Load the image into LZ. Add one instance of the Zone Mapper tool. Activate Region Mode, select the Bezier Region tool and draw an ellipsoid by placing 4 points at the edges:

Resize the margin to approximately ¾ width of the image (see above).

Now comes the most important part: Invert the mask.

Adjust the dark areas by moving them up, so that the light fall off disappears. Done!

The effect is quite nice and (almost) perfect:

Original scan:

Corrected version (in addition to the center filter effect I’ve also adjusted the white balance):

Original scan:

Corrected version:

– all photographs © 1999-2010 by jens g.r. benthien –

LightZone and Large Format

Note: Lightcrafts, the company that developed LightZone, went out of business. Their web site is down, the owner works for Apple. Owners of LighZone can’t re-install LightZone because the registration server is not available anymore.

However, some very ambitious users could manage to update the current LZ version, provide some license server information, etc. Read all about the progress here

Post processing in ‘modern’ [= digital] photography usually is a snap with modern software like Aperture, Lightroom, et al. However, when it comes to real photography [= analog], most of the modern programs start to fail as soon as they have to deal with high resolution scanned images. But there is one notable exception: LightZone from Light Crafts. It’s a Java based piece of brilliant software which indeed does handle monster images like no other app on the market. Even with 130 MP [ MegaPixel ] images LightZone doesn’t slow down considerably, and best of all: it never crashes.

I had compared Aperture and Lightroom, loaded some of my monster images and they either didn’t respond anymore or crashed – and this on a stable iMac!

Just to give you an impression on how huge the images are, I’ve loaded a 12.600 x 8.400 pixel image into LightZone on my 24″ iMac:

The original image displayed @ ‘Fit’

Same image displayed @ 1:1. The plate is the one on the wall above the door on the right front side of the ermita.

Same image displayed @ 2:1

Same image displayed @ 4:1

In the lower right corner you will notice the tiny red rectangle [ dot ], which renders the part of the original image. You can grab the rectangle and move the image around the screen [something you shouldn't try with any other image editing software, unless you are prepared to walk to the next café and return in 30 minutes...]

I should mention that the 24″ iMac features a 24″ screen (diagonal), that means the base of the screen without any margins or the aluminium case measures 52 centimeters or 20,5 inches. Now imagine how big you can print this image. Oh no, no guesswork here, you can print it at a size of 6 x 4 meters @ 60 dpi – without having to enlarge it! 60 dpi is more than sufficient for this size.

OK, I think this should answer some questions of some newbies in the LightZone forum who want to know if LZ can handle ‘large’ images. The answer: Yes, definitely!

By the way: the last image resembles the same resolution as a 6×4 meter print, staying just 50 cm away from it – which is kind of very close for this image size.

Just today I’ve read the good news about Java on the Mac: though Apple won’t continue with the Java development, Oracle will do it. Which is the best news I’ve heard for a long time, because it means that LightZone will continue to run on my iMac.

But we need TIFF…

A few weeks ago a prospective customer requested an offer for a solar energy project. Because she liked my ‘visual language’. Great! However, a couple of days later she called me and asked: No, sorry, you are an analog photographer. We need TIFF or JPEG files.

Oooooops? After digging deeper it turned out she is around 30. A child of the digital ‘automatic-everything’ generation. She had some weird associations in her mind: if the buzzword ‘digital’ is not mentioned, it is not photography. That knocked me off.

So I explained her what I am doing and how the process is. Talked about the advantages of having a slide for archival purposes, about high resolution scanning, technical advantages and all the nine yards. Until she said: Well, but you can’t control what you have shot on location. Bingo! Can you imagine that she really believed you can control an image on a lousy and shabby cigarette pack size display, control the color transitions in the sun under bright daylight conditions?

I continued to inform her about a ground glass [ which has the size of 9x12 centimeters (4x5 inch) or 6x9 centimeters (2 ½x 3 ½ inch), depending on the film format you'll use ]. Told her that this is a ‘display’ that’s far superior to a monitor in terms of resolution, detail and light conditions. She listened. Then I talked about the size of a sensor compared to the size of a medium and large format slide — the ‘analog sensor’. Compared resolutions of the capturing media (see my article – currently only in German, but with excellent visuals – here). It was a completely new world for her…

As sad as it is, I’ve learned my lesson as well. Now I include the buzzwords ‘digital’, ‘MegaPixels’, TIFF and JPEG in my offers. The result: some people call me and ask if I’ve made a typo: there is no digital camera with a 120 MegaPixel sensor! And an image size of 12.900 x 8.600 pixels definitely doesn’t exist.

True, not on the digital side, but a scanned slide delivers this image size @ 48bit color depth.

Amazing how the marketing of the Asian manufacturers changed the perception of a whole generation, craft and industry. Amazing how they declassify other [ proven! ] imaging processes by calling ‘sensors glued to a plastic japanese rice bowl’ a camera.

[ black beauty: one of my precision tools from Arca Swiss ]

– photograph © 1999-2010 by jens g.r. benthien –