Ektar Scans

[Bike Tourist]

Roger, forgive me for cluttering your area with a subject probably not of general interest. I find myself with a Nikon D700 although I would prefer to work with a rangefinder and film. Poor me. I'm not complaining, exactly, since the D700 is probably the best camera I've ever owned. But at my age, I like the simple RF concept for me.

I read your Kodak Ektar 100 review in Shutterbug with interest. You seemed to think it scanned well. As you probably know, the online stock agencies are no respecters of grain (along with almost everything else).

Do you think a 4000 dpi scan of Ektar gets one in the ballpark of acceptability with these people? I would like to shoot film and have the option of submitting to the stock agencies with reasonable expectations. It is, of course, no problem with the D700.

Maybe the thing to do is to aquire a cheap film camera, say a Nikkormat, and try a few rolls? Your thoughts, if any, are appreciated.

 

[charjohncarter]

I'm not Roger, but I have use many rolls and they do digitalize well. It is almost creamy, plus you colors that you somehow don't really get with digital. At least that is my opinion.

 

[Max Cooper]

As far as I'm concerned, Ektar is film with a "digital" look. I reviewed it on my blog:

http://darktopography.blogspot.com/2009/02/ektar-100-darktopo-film-test.html

You can find many more posts by searching for "Ektar." I posted almost the entirety of the first three rolls I shot.

 

[sojournerphoto]

Mmmm, I agree that Ektar is more 'digital' in look than Portra say (which is sometimes, but not always a plus). It has colours that I would describe as very clean, compared to the 'richer' pallette of Portra. I would still expect you to struggle with the grain police scanning at 4,000dpi though - too succeed you'll need to clean up with neat image or some such. here is a Nikon 5000 roll scan at 4,000dpi full frame, before and after photokit capture sharpening (medium edges). No noise reduction.

The scan isn't the best - it's just a roll scan and not that recent, but it gives an idea of the 100% look. Of course, the film makes nice prints anyway.

Mike


Full frame

Straight scan

Capure sharpened no noise reduction

Capture sharpening with ACR

 

[StaaleS]

I uploaded this for another thread today, but it may be of interest to you as well: A 100% scan off a Coolscan V, Ektar 100. About 25 megs, high quality JPG out of Lightroom with no capture or output sharpening.

http://rapidshare.com/files/283098905/Scantest_fullsize.jpg

 

[Roger Hicks]

Dear Dick,

Feel free to 'clutter'.

The short answer to your question is that I don't know, but the longer answer is that I can see no reason why not. Ektar has much the same capacity as a 35mm slide, viz. to capture around 20 megapixels, and a true 4000 dpi scan (not interpolated) will capture information down to grain level.

The longer answer still is that I'd be fairly astonished if the stock agencies gave a damn, as long as they were good pictures. I'm told by someone who owns a stock agency that quite a lot of the pics they get (or got, anyway) are up-sampled, and that even then, it surprisingly often didn't matter. Scanned Ektar should wipe the floor with an up-sampled 6 megapixel image, or even 10- or 12-megapixel, and a different 'look' may well be what sets your pictures apart from the others -- to your advantage. Buyers will buy what they like, without worrying about how it was shot, and the libraries know this.

Cheers,

Roger