5 Megapixels vs Kodachrome 64 vs Velvia vs Portra 160NC vs 200 Gold
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Go to Page with Views of Slides Through a Microscope
Go to Page Showing the Effects of Upsampling the 4000 dpi Scans
Go to Page Showing How Many Megapixels = Velvia 35mm Slide Film


Camera #1: Nikon Coolpix 5000 Camera #2: Canon Elan Camera #3: Canon Rebel X Camera #4: Fujica AX-3 Camera #5: Yashica FX-3 Super
5 Megapixel CCD Fuji Velvia ISO 50 Slide Film Kodak Kodachrome ISO 64 Slide Film Kodak Portra NC ISO 160 Negative Film Kodak Gold ISO 200 Negative Film
Nikkor f2.8-f4.8 7.1-21.4mm Zoom Lens Canon EF f1.8 50mm Lens Canon EF f1.8 50mm Lens Fujinon DM f1.6 50mm Lens Yashica ML f1.7 50mm Lens


Using the cameras shown above, I took all the photographs shown below within a 30 minute time period, all of them from a tripod located at the same spot. I bracketed the shots and selected the best exposure from each film camera for scanning. I know that ideally I would have used a single camera and swapped rolls - but that was just too much of a PITA. My main concern was comparison of the 2 slide films to my digital camera, so the inclusion of the 2 negative films can be considered a side note. The Kodachrome and Velvia shots were taken with the exact same lens swapped between the Elan and the Rebel X. I used mirror lock-up mode on my Elan and on my FX-3 for the Velvia and Kodak Gold shots. The Rebel X and the AX-3 don't have mirror lock-up, so the Kodachrome shot and the Portra shot did not benefit from that feature.

The scans were done by http://www.digitalley.com , and I think they did a super job. Their customer service was excellent, and I got my scans back quickly - 8 days from the afternoon I mailed it until the day the post office notified me that I could pick them up. 25 slides and negatives were scanned at 4,000 dpi using a Nikon LS4000ED scanner and burned to 3 CDs for a total cost of $44.00.

Because I barely have enough web space to put up these images, I created .jpg copies of the original scans using Paint Shop Pro 7 and 35% compression. I assure you that the .jpg copies look VERY close to the .tif originals. Also, because the slide scans came out very dark, I increased their brightness and contrast slightly. The .tif crops, however, are completely unaltered from the original scans.


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5 Megapixels Velvia ISO 50 Kodachrome 64 Portra 160NC 200 Gold
f7.2 1/250 "M" Mode f11 1/90 "M" Mode f11 1/90 "M" Mode f11 1/250 "AE" Mode f11 1/500

1,515 K
1,843 K
1,861 K
2,744 K
2,998 K
Crop From the Digital Image:


208 K 		Crop From the Velvia Slide Scan:


869 K 		Crop From the Kodachrome Slide Scan:

895 K 		Crop From the Portra Negative Scan:

1,123 K 		Crop From the 200 Gold Negative Scan:

1,241K
Click on the thumbnail above to download this crop from the original digicam image. Click on the thumbnail above to download this unaltered crop from the original scan which was a 66,845 K .tif file. Click on the thumbnail above to download this unaltered crop from the original scan which was a 66,845 K .tif file. Click on the thumbnail above to download this unaltered crop from the original scan which was a 63,080 K .tif file. Click on the thumbnail above to download this unaltered crop from the original scan which was a 63,080 K .tif file.
Click Here to See Views of the Slides through a Microscope

These scans look MUCH better than others I've had done locally. Here are my personal conclusions from this comparison:

=====>The Following Text was Added 10/15/2003<=====

Phew - I've learned alot since I got these scans. Rather than state a conclusion here, I suggest that you download the images, compare them using your image editing program, and draw your own conclusions.

The films all have much greater resolution than 5 megapixels. There's no question about that. The negative scans definitely look sharper than the Velvia scan - they might have slightly more resolution. However, I think the graininess of the negatives detracts too much from their quality, and the slides look best. However, I found the scans from the negatives to be much easier to print well than the scans from the slides, and, as long as I didn't enlarge them to the point where the graininess became annoying, the prints from the negative scans had the best color - slightly better than the digicam prints. OTOH, I had great difficulty with printing the scans from the slides despite their looking so much better on the monitor.

I think the most important thing to point out, though, is that the 4000 dpi film scans may be misleading. They certainly are in the case of the Kodachrome slide. If you look at the following page:

Click Here to See Views of the Slides through a Microscope

you'll see that the scanner makes the Kodachrome slide look much worse than it really is. Apparently, the nature of Kodachrome renders it less suitable for scanning. Has the scanner also lied about the negatives? I don't know. I have taken only a few pictures of the negatives through the microscope because such pictures are much more difficult to create. It's difficult to see details in the negatives when viewing them through the microscope because everything is a shade of orange. So, I must create a positive image from the picture of the negative using Paint Shop Pro. It's not easy to do, and I'm not sure the results closely match what I'd get from a print.

• Fuji Velvia and Kodachrome 64 35mm slide films have significantly more resolution than 5 megapixels and very little grain.
• Kodak Portra 160NC 35mm film has even more resolution than the slide films, but it is much grainier. However, the grain is consistent and fairly unobtrusive.
• Kodak Gold 200 has more resolution than the slide films and 5 megapixels, but it is extremely grainy.
• It's expensive and time-consuming to obtain and manipulate these 64 megabyte scans. It would only be worth the effort and expense on rare occasions when you plan to make a very big enlargement or you need to crop out a very small portion of the image for printing.

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Notes:

• Major Change 11/16/2003 - I replaced all the crops with slightly larger crops that more closely match each other.