Would a "test shot" page make sense?

[John Camp]

This idea is derived from a discussion on the R-D1 forum...

It might be nice if a few very good photographers on this forum could post their best full-sized scanned or raw shots so that others could download them and print them, to try out a certain camera or camera-lens combo. When I say "best," I don't necessarily mean in terms of marketable shots, but as in shots that demonstrate high sharpness, subtle shading, high detail...so that an interested person could see with his/her own workflow and printer what a particular camera-lens combo will do, without actually buying it.

I know a lot of people would be reluctant to have others processing their shots, but if the shots were deliberately made as a "test facility," so they would never be mistaken as marketable, or theft-worthy...maybe even with a copyright printed right across the face of it...it might be a pretty useful feature on the forum. And would go some way toward answering questions like, "Is the R-D1 as good as scanned Tri-X from an M6?"

JC

 

[kaiyen]

Wow. That's a lot of combinations of film/developer/camera/lens/etc to consider.

It might be worthwhile to literally shoot test shots, with test patterns, graphs, charts, etc.

allan

 

[Honus]

I like this idea. I wouldn't mind processing a R-D1 RAW file made with a Summicron through my normal workflow for comparative purposes.

Robert

 

[wtl]

Would a "test shot" page make sense?

No, it wouldn't. Why would anyone send you a big file of their "best" shot for printing without you purchase it?

But then again, maybe someone would...

 

[dnk512]

wtl, 'best' does NOT refer to a sale-able image. 'Best' here refers to a technicaly sound shot that is made for TEST (sharpness, contrast, bokeh) purposes. Could be a shot of a teddy-bear with front, side and back-lighing, with some foliage and tiny reflections in the background. No one on the right mind wil buy such image to post on their walls.

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

When I say "best," I don't necessarily mean in terms of marketable shots

I am beginning to connect the dots on why using some words here and there throw some people off into another direction...

Anyway, I think it's a good idea. But then again, everybody has a different opinion as to what a "good" and "best" test shot would look like, consist of, etc. I think it would be a project that would need an active manager. Hey: we're already getting a different interpretation of "best test shots" here already.

I think it would consume too much space on a server too quickly (depending on the participation), if you get a dedicated folder on the Gallery, for example.

But keep brainstorming... 😎

 

[ErnestoJL]

IMO a good way to test a lens camera combination would be a specialized set of patterns with different shades of grey and of course black and white.

It could be made by either dots or full solid lines with different basic design so as to allow anyone to compare or measure lens resolution, sharpness, field flatness, center/edge lens characteristics, etc.

A good shot in technical terms is IMO something slightly (or not) different for different people, so judgement of lens quality based upon this would not add to solve the problem.

A very simple thing to do to make a rough check of lens quality is to open any classified ads page of any newspaper, stick it to a piece of flat wood or a wall and shoot it with different apertures holding the camera steady on a tripod 1 m or so away from the target.
Once the negs or slides are scanned, it´s possible to check lens performance with the computer.

Ernesto

 

[sf]

I have around 200 full size scans. All taken with the Bronica RF645 and 45mm lens, all scanned on the Konica Minolta Dimage Scan Multi Pro, all around 70MB for B&W and 200MB for color. . . . for someone to really see the power of hte camera/scanner combination, it would be mighty difficult.