Just bought a Nikon Coolscan 5000 to save my old negatives and to make the viewing easier. And the idea came up: "Now that I have the scanner that makes about the same size digital files as the Canon EOS-5DII, why not make some comparable shots with a Canon film camera, using the same lens, same location and settings?".

After viewing the scans from my old negatives, I was just curious to see the difference. My old pictures were made using a pretty bad lens compared to what I have today, so they are not representative to make a comparison. Got a good deal on a Canon EOS-1v from e-bay to be able to make similar pictures.

Well, here are the results. Tried to make the images as similar as possible. Couldn't find a ISO-100 film, so all images are set to ISO-160 on the 5DII as for the Fuji Pro-160S film. No post processing (except for a few of the film images). The 5DII files were converted from RAW using DPP and converted to jpg in Photoshop. The film images were scanned with 2-pass 16bit and converted to jpg in Photoshop.I had to use ICE Normal to get rid of all the dust and scratches (from a new film!). The ICE works excellent by the way.

Click on the images to view the full 21Mp files. Average size of the 21Mp files are around 2.5Mb each. Saved with quality 9 in Photoshop CS4. Full Exif data for all images.

IMG_0001 - Canon EOS-5DII

IMG_001 - Canon EOS-1v

135mm, f/8, 1/125sec, studio flash, tripod, remote release. I took this picture many years ago, so this is also to compare the quality to that picture (more or less).
Click here to view a 100% crop of the two images.

IMG_0002 - Canon EOS-5DII

IMG_002 - Canon EOS-1v

90mm, f/16, 1/125sec, TS-E full tilt, studio flash, tripod, remote release.
Click here to view a 100% crop of the two images. It's a bit surprising to see that the purple fringing is a lot more visible in the film image.

IMG_0003 - Canon EOS-5DII

IMG_003 - Canon EOS-1v

65mm, f/11, 1/100sec, MT-24EX Macro flash, Monopod. Of course not the same image, but the spider moved after taking the 5DII shot! Anyway, same place, same time.
But, the picture is off in many ways. Motion blur, bad colors (Auto Exposure in the scanning program). Just terrible!

IMG_0004 - Canon EOS-5DII

IMG_004 - Canon EOS-1v

16mm, f/8, 1/160 sec for 5DII and 1/200sec for 1v plus Polarizer.
If I didn't know it myself that this was from the same position, same lens and settings, I would have had trouble beleiving the difference was real.
Click here to view a 100% crop of the two images.

IMG_0005 - Canon EOS-5DII

IMG_005 - Canon EOS-1v

70mm, f/11, 1/80 sec, tripode and remote release. A test to see the highlights and the graduated colors on the sky.
I have heard about the smooth colors especially in the sky for digital. Looks pretty good in this small size, but it's true...
Click here to view a 100% crop of the two images.

IMG_0006 - Canon EOS-5DII

IMG_006 - Canon EOS-1v

14mm, f/16, 1/60 sec. Highlights and deep shadows test. A bit overexposed in the film image, but nothing to see really!

IMG_0007 - Canon EOS-5DII

IMG_007 - Canon EOS-1v

24mm, f/8, 1/320 sec. Used a Polarizer here for another high contrast test.
Again, it looks pretty good in this size, but the grains are pretty bad in the 100% crop.
Click here to view a 100% crop of the two images.

IMG_0008 - Canon EOS-5DII

IMG_008 - Canon EOS-1v

35mm, f/8, 1/250 sec. The boat to the left is for sale....
Kind of like the view in this size, but you would definately see the difference in large print.
Click here to view a 100% crop of the two images.

IMG_0009 - Canon EOS-5DII

IMG_009 - Canon EOS-1v

14mm, f/8, 1/320 sec. Overexposed at least on step. The 5DII changed to Manual mode (forgot to check), and I used the same settings on the 1v.
Actually, all the highlights recovered fine from the 16bit file with no burned pixels. And a lot of details because the "ETTR".
This one is actually not too bad (remember this is a 100% crop of a 21Mp file in the link below).
Click here to view a 100% crop of the two images.

IMG_0010 - Canon EOS-5DII

IMG_010 - Canon EOS-1v

14mm, f/11, 1/500 sec. Plaza de Toros just before the fight!

IMG_0011 - Canon EOS-5DII

IMG_011 - Canon EOS-1v

135mm, f/2, 1/1000 sec. Flamenco dresses for sale.
I think this one is also pretty good in the film image (with some adjustments of the colors).
Click here to view a 100% crop of the two images.

IMG_0012 - Canon EOS-5DII

IMG_012 - Canon EOS-1v

135mm, f/8, 1/800 sec. Casa Museo.
Had to adjust the colors a bit in this one, and more is needed. Very good details in the film image, but the digital is superior when it comes to details.
Click here to view a 100% crop of the two images.

IMG_0013 - Canon EOS-5DII

IMG_013 - Canon EOS-1v

35mm, f/8, 1/60 sec. A very photographed street, but not the right light today.
Again, very good details in the film image for a pretty large print. But no comparison if you are looking for the best quality.
Click here to view a 100% crop of the two images.

Well, thats it! I planned to do 36 pictures to use the full film, but was too curious to see the result and compare the two different formats.
If you have any comments or questions to this series, please click here to send me an e-mail.

And, please don't look at the composition or the lens qualities. This is a simple digital vs. film test for myself. I tried to use a lot of different lights and situations to be able to do a close study of both formats. If anybody find any interest in the results, fine. The 5DII RAW files are 25-25Mb each, and the 16bit scanned tiff-files are around 134Mb each, so they are not available here to download (that would be appr. 2Gb for all the 26 files!).

All images are straight out of the camera/scanner with some small adjustments on the film images because of the autoexposure in the scanning software put some of the images off a bit in some situations.

I was hoping for some good experience with film images for use in some special situations. But I can't really see where I would prefer film to digital except for some black and white pictures. But even then you would be able to adjust the digital output to you liking. I think the scanner makes some noise and grains (that do not really exist in the film negative), but this is one of the best film scanner available today (in the "normal" price range), so I can't see any better way to convert film to digital.

A lot of work for nothing? No, I hear a lot of discussions about the "film look". Now I know what film gives (in this format), and I can show some examples. Also, resizing the full 21Mp images to 8 or 12Mp with a small noise reduction is very acceptable. Printing the two images from film and digital in 30 x 20cm, you would probably not be able to see any difference at all.