Tree Comparison

My earlier post (Oct 31, 2012), on “Slow Photography,” included a photo of an old oak tree taken with the Nikon P-300. I noted at the time I had also taken a photo of the same tree with the ZX-30 using Velvia 100, and would post it as soon as I finished the roll of film and had it processed. Above is the Velvia 100 photo scan.

 …and here is the original photo from the Nikon P-300 that I posted earlier.

As you can see the Velvia film produces a much more intense color rendition of the scene. Although I really liked the image produced by the P-300 the Velvia image almost makes it look washed out.

The resolution of the P-300 photo appears to actually be a little better than the Velvia image here, but that is due to the low res scan of the Velvia. The only way to get a “true” comparison of the two (analog vs digital) technologies would be to compare prints; one produced as an enlargement directly from the Velvia film negative, the other printed from the P-300’s digital file.

Since I am not going to set up a darkroom just to demonstrate this, you will just have to take my word for it. Besides, even if I did you wouldn’t be able to actually see the proof anyway because I would have to scan the images to post them here and then we would then be back to viewing digital scans again.

A high res scan of the Velvia image would provide a better comparison and that will be the next part of this experiment since I realize now that a low res scan is a waste of excellent film. Stay tuned!