Can I apply PL4 lens corrections when I use a "known" lens on a film camera

Hi Mike. I’m going to share my opinion on this film vs digital topic - feel free to take it, leave it, or ignore it :sunglasses:

As you know, I have a 5" x 4" film camera, but I also have a Mamiya RZ67 “brick” for studio shots and a Mamiya 7 II rangefinder for walkabout.

When I started with digital photography, I swapped in my Pentax ME Super for a Nikon D100 (6Mpx). The resolution and image quality were acceptable and I found I could get better colour images, easier, than with a film camera. OK for displaying on a monitor but, for larger prints, not that good. Nonetheless, I did make a stunning panoramic by stitching 5 shots and printing it at just over 6ft long using Genuine Fractals to multiply the pixel count. here’s a very small export…

As time passed and the resolution of digital cameras grew, I acquired my present camera - a Nikon D810 (36Mpx)

This was a revelation! All of a sudden, I could make digital images with a resolution that wasn’t far off what I could achieve with my 6cm x 7cm cameras. If I crop the 2:3 framing to 6:7, I get a 28Mpx image, which will easily match anything I can get (in colour) from the Mamiyas, when printed to 24" x 20". Finer grain B & W film would possibly yield more detail than the equivalent digital capture but, so far, even with pixel doubling to print, we send files to Ilford in the UK for them to laser print on silver halide paper to 40" x 32" and the results are nothing short of breathtaking.

In summary, I no longer bother with my 6x7 cameras unless I want to wallow in nostalgia - processing and scanning them is just too much “faff”.

As for “look and feel”, I always shoot Fuji Neopan Acros 100 film and I find that the PhotoLab emulation gives the same tonality and grain structure, well enough to convince me I don’t need to go back to shooting film, scanning it and applying the preset anyway.

I take it you have a lot of 35mm film you would like digitise and archive. I’m not sure why you would bother archiving digital scans; that is so much more difficult than real film, what with having to make backups of backups and facing the possibility of disk failures, file corruption and possible technology change making disks unreadable. I would digitise only the film you want to put online or share and, then, only at 2,400 ppi. More than that really isn’t worthwhile unless you are planning on printing really big for an exhibition.

In summary, my opinion, if you really want to do anything serious with film, don’t bother with 35mm, you’ll be hard pressed to get better results than a digital camera with the same resolution as a medium format film camera. Get a view camera! :crazy_face: Otherwise, get a high-res digital and save the cost and hassle of developing, scanning and de-spotting images to end up with a result that nobody else could tell the difference.

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