Digital Wonder

Is digital as good as film yet?

6th December- 2001
By Ian Burley

Update 7th December - Alternative (more comparable?) sample images - click here.

One of the perennial hot topics concerning digital photography is how well the pictures produced by digital cameras compare to those of film cameras. Is film dead? One thing is for sure, film is in the intensive care unit. Sales, by value, of digital cameras already exceed film cameras in the UK and most other developed countries. Unit sales are expected to follow-suit in the next 12 months in the UK.

Adding fuel to the fire

There are all sorts of angles at which the digital vs film question can be tackled. In this short article we’re only intending to add fuel to the fire - not answer the question once and for all.

Olympus E10 head to head with Canon EOS 100

Below, we compare exactly the same scene, taken at exactly the same time, with corresponding exposure settings (ISO 180 on the Olympus and ISO 200 on the Canon), taken with a) an Olympus E10 and b) a Canon EOS 100 fitted with a Canon 28-80mm f/3.5 USM2 zoom. The view is approximately 50mm standard lens ‘wide’. Both cameras were tripod mounted.

The Fuji 200 ISO negative film used in the Canon was scanned using a Nikon Super Coolscan 4000ED set to 4000 pixels per inch. The Olympus E10 image was re-sampled up using bicubic interpolation in Adobe Photoshop to match the scene size to pixel size of the Nikon scanned film image. Both images were lightly sharpened:
 

Above is the full scene.

Moving closer, here is the magnified portion of the image identified as reproduced below:

Here is the magnified view through the Canon EOS film camera.

And here is the same view, but this time through the Olympus E10

Nobody is going to justifiably claim that the 4 megapixel Olympus is going to match the Canon’s theoretical 19 megapixel scanned result. We’re comparing originals represented by a little under 1800ppi (Olympus E10) and 4000ppi in relative terms. The film camera delivers an undeniably sharper result. There is more true image detail, but look at all that grain!

But both these images will print to 10x8 and I’d bet you’d be hard pressed to tell which was film and which was digital without looking for tell tales like the characteristic grain of film or the smooth uniformity of digital.

What’s your view?

We’d welcome your comments on this mini-experiment and the debate in general. Click here to tell us what you think and we’ll publish a selection of your views.

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