Image Quality?

Hi Guy's. I certainly have a question. Right now I have a Mamiya 645 system worth a couple grand. I have been doing my own processing and developing for many years in my darkroom. I'm even in a couple galleries with a few Black and white landscapes that I took up in Glacier. But, I am totally burned out on the chemical darkroom . I have never used a Digital camera, but I am thinking of trading all of my Mamiya equipment for a new 8.0 Megapixel Canon powershot pro1 and a Canon i9900 inkjet printer. With that setup, I can print up to 13"x19", which more or less is what I have been doing for the last few years in my darkroom. I have a nice Dell computer , so I can ad all the photoshop stuff. I guess the question I have is about the image quality I can expect compared to the medium format film images that I am used to. I'm hoping that it would be comparable at this relative small size print. Will everything still have the sharpness that I am used to?. Can a digital setup such as this produce a professional looking print?. Any thoughts would be great! Thanks

Make sure that the camera will save photos in tif format which is uncompressed. An 8 megapixal photo in tif format will be huge(!) You'll have no problem printing large format prints. Many digital SLR cameras also save in raw format. You'll want a memory card with at least 512 megs of memory.

Also, consider a thermal printer rather than an inkjet as the colors are more colorfast and long lasting. Either printer however will give you prints as good as if not better than what you can do with film. There is now an array of photo papers to choose from as well.

Be sure that you have plenty of ram on your computer (preferrably 512 megs) and in your graphics card (128 megs is good). You could loose all your work if the computer runs out of memory while you're manipulating the photo.

Also consider that you can have your film/slides converted to digital files, so you don't necessarily have to sell the Mamiya. The advantage to digital is that you can see the shot right after you've taken it and if you don't like it, delete it from memory. This is also a good time to buy digital as the quality of the cameras keeps getting better and the cost keeps getting lower. I was comparing the price of compact flash cards and saw where the price of the Ritz camera 512 meg CF memory card dropped by nearly half in just four months!

Since one of your concerns is about the quality of the prints, you may want to take a look at "The Digital Printing Handbook: A Photographer's Guide to Creative Printing Techniques" by Tim Daly. It will give you a good idea of what to expect.

Hi Brian,

While I'm not anywhere near your level of photgraphic knowledge I can offer you a few opinions that pertain to your question. I have the 8mp Nikon Coolpix 8700 and the 6mp Canon Digital Rebel. Both cameras, to my eye, are capable of fantastic resolution and produce excellent results. However, the DSLR is the better choice, IMHO. It offers the ability to use much better lenses than the point and shoot cameras are equipped with and the auto focus performance of the Canon when equipped with their L series USM lenses is much, much faster than the Nikon Coolpix. The DSLR also allows you to image at a telescopes prime focus rather than use the EP projection method that you're stuck with in a point and shoot. For me, just these few things make the DSLR a more versatile choice and I don't think I really gave up any image quality, it might even be the opposite.

Clear Skies,

Steve

I saw a magazine a few weeks back, apparently you can get some very good digital backs for medium format, 12 - 15 megapixel as I recall.
I'll see if I can dig it out when I get home.
Big bucks though.. , and hard to know how well they would work for astro stuff, but for your everyday stuff it would be a clean break from film.