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Printing Big: Canon EOS 1Ds vs Bronica SQ scanned

by Shayok Mukhopadhyay

January 2006
A newer version of this article that compares the EOS 5D with the Bronica is available here.

Contents

Motivation and Scope

About a year ago, when a full-frame Digital SLR, the Canon EOS 1Ds was approaching affordability (about US$ 5000 used), I was faced with the question of whether to go fully digital or get a high-end desktop scanner, viz. the Nikon Coolscan 9000 (US$ 2000) for my medium format equipment, the Bronica SQ, soon to be discontinued but available for next-to-nothing on the used market. That full-frame DSLRs had already surpassed 35mm film was widely accepted, and claims were cropping up on the web that they'd also surpassed medium format.

With the recent launch of a much more affordable full-frame DSLR, the EOS 5D, which has specs similar to that of the 1Ds (12.7 MP vs 11MP), this question will likely trouble a whole new set of photographers, so I thought it worthwhile to post my comparison of the 1Ds with Bronica SQ scans. Further motivation for this was provided by the generous loan of a wet-mount tray for the Nikon Coolscan 9000 by Michael Grecco, which allowed me to make a fairly exhaustive comparison of scanning techniques. If nothing else, this article will hopefully act as a guide to testing methodology for others.

The article is focused on overall print quality and sharpness. It does not deal with color fidelity (as that would vary widely from film to film) and does not care to match color between digital and film exposures of the same scene. Also left out is the issue of Dynamic Range, an important issue that would require comparison with both positive and negative film. Neither of these issues is specific to big prints.


Part I. Bronica SQ (medium format transparency film) + Nikon Coolscan 9000 vs EOS 1Ds (full-frame DSLR)

Apples to Apples: Print Size

Any reasonable comparison has to settle on a target print-size. I love shooting square images with my Bronica SQ, printing them big, and framing them with a 3-inch overmat on all sides. Since 32"x40" is the largest matboard I'm man enough to handle, this restricts me to a 26"x26" print. I compared square as well as a 2:3 (35mm proportions) images from the two cameras, printed to 26" on the long side.

For a chart of equivalent focal-lengths across formats, see this.

Test Environment

Scene 1: Bronica SQ-A with 150/4 cropped to 2:3 vs EOS 1Ds with 100/2

Here is the scene we're dealing with, as captured on the 1Ds.

Each file was sized to 17.33"x26"; the Bronica file had to be cropped as well to get the 2:3 proportions. A roughly 3"x3" section of each image with no change except for some hue/saturation adjustment to give them a similar feel and resizing for convenience of presentation is shown below. Larger sections with no resizing are available here.

Bronica SQ EOS 1Ds

What are the important distinctions between the two files?

The Prints

To make the prints, unsharp masking was applied using Barry Haynes's "Sharpen Only Edges BH" Photoshop action (see Photoshop 7 Artistry); this creates a mask that selects the edges in the image and sharpens only these areas; the SQ file was sharpened to 400,1,0 (Amount, Radius, Threshold) whereas the 1Ds was sharpened to 100,1,0. Why use unsharp masking in a comparison of cameras? Because that's how the best prints are usually made.

Each file was left at its "native" resolution for this print-size, 330 DPI for the SQ scan and 156 DPI for the 1Ds; the printer driver was left to do its own up/down-sampling.

Here is a small scan of the prints, which are 3"x3" sections of a 17.33"x26" image. I doubt it's very useful for judging the quality of the prints, but anyway...



Here's a larger scan of the prints, but honestly, you need to use the source files, sharpen them to your taste, and print them yourself (or at least view them in an image editor) to get a real feel. My judgement is:

Scene 1: Bronica SQ-A with 250/5.6 full-frame vs EOS 1Ds with 100/2 cropped square

This seems like a comparison so patently tilted against the EOS 1Ds (cropping out a third of that puny sensor) that it's almost not worth doing, so I'll merely summarize the results: Needless to say that for one who shoots square images often, this is a relevant comparison.

Scene 2: Bronica SQ-A with 80/2.8 cropped to 2:3 vs EOS 1Ds with 50/1.4

Poor 1Ds performance on Traffic Signs

Here's the scene as captured on the Bronica, cropped to 2:3, with Levels applied to brighen it a bit.



Each file was sized to 17.33"x26"; the SQ file had to be cropped as well to get the 2:3 proportions. A roughly 3"x3" section of each image (circled above) with no change except for some hue/saturation adjustment to give them a similar feel and resizing of the SQ file for convenience of presentation is shown below. The actual SQ file with no resizing and minimum jpeg compression is available here.

Bronica SQ EOS 1Ds
It may or may not be obvious from the jpegs above (it is in the print), but something is not quite right with the traffic signs in the 1Ds files: in the Hamilton Ave sign, the white of the letters look "polluted" by the surrounding green, while the DO NOT ENTER sign is strangely garbled. Here are further magnified verisions of the above files to clarify the issue:
Bronica SQ EOS 1Ds

The Prints

The objective of these prints is to show that the 1Ds's poor performance on the signs is actually evident at the 17.33"x26" size; sharpening only makes the issue worse, therefore it was not applied here.

Here is a small scan of the prints, which are 3"x3" sections of the 17.33"x26" image.

The defects should be obvious here, but here's a bigger scan anyway.

Conclusion

At the 17.33"x26" print size, the EOS 1Ds files have a subjectively better feel (which could translate to better prints), but come up short against some objective "hard" measures: high-frequency lines, traffic signs, etc. I would say that such features may well be absent from a lot of landscape scenes, so if one can avoid them, this may be a non-issue. It is obvious that as the print size increases to 26"x26", the 1Ds will be outperformed by the Bronica scans.
Bristlecone Pine
Bales
Florida Bay
This, coupled with the fact that a pair of 1Ds cameras (one for backup) is several times more expensive than a pair of Bronicas plus a Nikon Coolscan 9000, made me go the Bronica way. The next part of the article is devoted to getting the best scans from the Bronica. And more square images here.


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I admit to being pleasantly surprised at how good a modern digital camera can be. (I thought the Bronica images would have blown away the 1Ds). It would be very interesting to see how a 1Ds Mk11 compares with the Bronica images - and more importantly, how a conventional silver image color print (i.e, ordinary optical darkroom enlargement) compares with the scanned image and the 1Ds Mk11.

Anyway, thanks for this brilliant test, which clearly shows the excellence of modern digital cameras. (But I have to say that, on a purely aesthetic level, I prefer the overall feel of the Bronica images).

Ian Rivlin     Tue, 2 Jan 2007 05:04:02 -0500