Monday 14 April 2008

Bessa testing part 2

To further answer my questions about the usefulness of my Bessa 6x9 camera I took another couple of images and compared them to the theoretical 5D (actually my 10D with a similar angle of view lens to what the Bessa actually sees).

The image at left was taken today with some slight sleet happening (to obscure the distance) and generally dreadful dull lighting conditions.

I've scanned the film on my Epson scanner and presented the results here.

Firstly lets have an overview of the image taken with the 10D.


As you can see it represents a much smaller segment, and the target area is not in direct sunlight (making the overall contrast similar to what I took with the Bessa above).

S0, lets get to the details:


This (above)is a 100% crop of the image taken from the 10D, while the image below is a 100% crop taken from a 2400dpi scan from the film (ADOX CHM 120 roll). Exposure was 1/10th of a second at f8


Please click on this to see the full detail (as this is sized down by the blogger software, you can even see some of the snow fall in better detail).

Quite stunning if you ask me, but I'll leave you to make your own conclusions.

From the same roll (but no digitals taken for comparison) is this image. I took this propped on a log lying around (no tripod) for support at 1/25th of a second @ f22.


Please click on it for a larger preview. I've then taken a 100% crop from a 2400dpi scan of one of the logs poking out of the stack there. Again this is resized by blogger, so please click on it for a the full 100% view.


Amazing stuff. Using this camera it is important to keep the aperture small. Even though this lens is rated to open up to f4.5 it is nowhere near good at the edges at this. I consider that f16 is the maximum working aperture for clear images (and f22 its best).

So I am now comfortable that the combination of my 10D and the Bessa for images on my trips will give me the combination of versatility and ease (the 10D) and high quality images if I so desire or need (the Bessa).

2 comments:

Rusty1024 said...

Good tests. I'm not familar with the film used in the Bessa, however it looks great. You should be ready for anything now.

obakesan said...

Rusty

I've added a link to ADOX now so you can find more about this film :-)

thanks for your comments