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).

Testing the 6x9 - Bessa vs DSLR

I've been very keen to see if my new 6x9 folder will make an effective backup to my large format camera, and if its close to my Canon 10D DSLR.

Timing of arrival of the camera coincided with running out chemistry. I've finally got some developer but not any 120 film, so I decided to shove a sheet of cut down 4x5 ADOX into the camera and see what I see. I goofed on the first cut of the sheet, so the second 'slice' needed to go in at an angle to ensure the plate held it firmly. This is the over all view of the 'test shoot'.




The 'angle of view' is very slightly wide, more or less its 'standard' (the lens is a 105mm which on 6x9 gives 44° which is about the same as a 45mm lens on a 35mm camera).


This is an image taken with my 10D with an EF24 f2.8 which as you can see is a little wider. I should point out at this time is 'effectively' a 38mm due to the APS sized sensor recording only a segment of the image.

You can see the extra width here to the right of the chest of drawers, basically the ironing board is in the scene.

To get the image from film I've used an older Epson 3200 scanner. If you don't know them, they are not the hottest item on the shelf, and are regarded by many (including me) as running into their limits at about 1200 or 1800 dpi.

Well, to see as much as I could potentially see, I've scanned the film at 2400 dpi but then down sampled to 1200 for presentation here.

Anyway this is the image that I got from the film:



Quite surprising, certainly a little soft looking, but still one can see the marks on the ruler. The ruler in the picture is (as can bee seen) 1:75, which means that 1 full graduation ~= 1.25cm

The smallest marks are less than 1mm apart, but these aren't quite distinguishable. The next largest markers represent just over 1mm and are distinguishable.

However looking at the image closely , something doesn't quite look right.

Here is a segment from the original 2400 dpi scan. It seems to be showing signs of motion blur when you look carefully at the graduations on the ruler.

Since the camera did not mount securely to the tripod and the exposure time is 8 seconds its entirely possible that I introduced some vibration in the picture!

If so then this image could be significantly shaper than it is, perhaps nearly as sharp as that from my 'hypothetical full frame' image presented later.

Anyway, moving on, next is the 100% segment from the 10D using the EF24. You'll notice that the match box is oriented differently. I only thought of comparing to the 10D AFTER I had taken and developed this shot. (Dumb I know)



Not quite as large and certainly not as sharp. Yet this image was taken with the lens set to f11, I used a Manfrotto 190B tripod, cable release and mirror lockup using RAW (so no in-camera artifacts are working here to lessen the image potential). So its unlikely one would get a sharper image from the camera.

So for me this indicates that the trusty old Bessa is able to produce an image that can compete with that from a modern DSLR in terms of outright quality if nothing else. Not bad for a 50 year old technology.

The next question that comes to mind is, how would it stack up against a full frame DSLR? Well, I don't have one, but I do have a 50mm lens :-) While a 5D is not quite the same pixel dimensions as the 10D (so the density of recording for a given area is not as 'high' as the 10D) it is close! So, by putting my EF50 f1.8 onto the 10D I can take a segment from this to 'simulate' a hypothetical full frame camera with nearly the same angle of view as the 6x9 folder.

Taking the shot again (not moving anything this time ;-) I can get to see what a full frame digital would probably give in this segment.

Here is that image:



Definitely this is cleaner than what I was able to get from the Bessa and Epson 3200 and completely resolves the ruler,with the 1/2 graduations now clearly distinguishable (click on the image to see the full detail). The better depth of focus (and perhaps focus itself) shows the ruler to be clear.

Stop press

A friend of mine (who actually has a 5D and an EF50mm lens) has taken a picture of a similar ruler at 130cm just as in my test (with slightly different lighting).

This at left is a segment of that image.

So no doubt about it, actual 5D looks remarkably like that of my theoretical 5d (that is a 10D with the same lens mounted just therefore capturing less view) and very very sharp indeed.

So at $2500 will out perform a $100 1950's Voigtlander Bessa with a Vaskar lens in image clarity.

Hmmm ... I would love to see how a Fuji GW690 would do.

What does this mean?

So for me at this point I'm happy with my purchase. I am comfortable that by using my 10D for most of my trip photograpy and using the Bessa for a 4x5 replacement that I can get a good combination of lower costs and higher quality images. I can't justify the money for a 5D at this point, as well I'm sure that the digital cameras will improve (we've all been waiting for a 5D replacement for some years now). With film at about $3 a roll, and developing around the same I'm sure this will 'get me by' for at least another 2 years. Perhaps then a full frame DSLR will be affordable for me.

Lastly, I am sure that taking 2 or 3 images with the Bessa and stitching them together will give me results as good as my 4x5 :-)

Close up with 4x5

As surprising as it may seem I have not yet done any close up work with my large format camera. Perhaps all the 'bellows factor' calculation has put me off at a subconscious level.

Well, I had some fresh flowers handy last weekend, and thought "why not".

So with the digital camera as a light meter and Bob Wheelers VadeMecum as my guide for correcting for bellows factor I took this image.

I used my 90mm lens and the image is nearly 1:1 (meaning that 1cm of flower will appear as 1cm of negative). I am really quite surprised how well the 90mm (a wide angle) performs in close up. Not only is the angle of view better than what I get using a smaller format (such as the digital) but the depth of field is good too. All in all its come up rather well I think.

As well as the wonderful tonality seen here, there was significant detail available from the image too.

I thought I'd include a segment of a scan from the film done at only 600 dpi (click it to see that sized on your screen properly) to give you an idea what's visible in the image. I've inspected the negative at x10 and found that its quite sharp, probably supporting scans at 3000 dpi. Sadly my scanner runs out of grunt at about 1800dpi so I'd need to pay for that ;-)



This would allow you to make a print about 1.2 m high if one wanted to print something as big as that! You can click on either of these images to see them a little bigger :-)

Experiments in 6x9 cameras

Today I got my latest addition to my image making tool set. Its a Voigtlander Bessa I.

For those who aren't familiar with it, this is a 120 roll film camera, which is essentially the same paper backed roll film from the good old box brownie (minor changes).

This film is still popular with professionals today, and has been in use for since around 1900. Unlike 35mm (more or less killed off or at least badly wounded) by digital the larger image area provided by this film means that you can comfortably get 12Megapixels from even a modest flat bed scanner, or as much as 26 Megapixels from higher quality film scanners (like the Nikon LS 9000).

Of course its the lens which makes the image, and while all the other bits of the camera help as well you just can't get a good image with a crappy lens or poor focus.

The lens on mine is the Vaskar, which I'm told is no "killer".



However looking at the image on a ground glass (pressed against the film rails) seems to show images that are quite sharp (as long as you have them in focus that is) but a quite narrow DoF.

This last point (focus) is where this camera suffers in use. Focus is by adjusting the lens with nothing more than some markers on it for predicting the distance.

You can see the distance scale on the black ring around the lens (white numbers), as well as the black arrow just visible over there on the left side.

With no way to preview or confirm your focus this is all you have. I've checked it by making a bit of ground glass and putting it on the film area at back of the camera, and its not very accurate. But what you can see is that when its focused, its quite sharp. Nearly as sharp as anything else in my camera outfit (which includes 90 and 180mm Fujinon large format lenses, as well as Canon EF series lenses).

Worse the depth of field focusing guides (black on the chrome) suggest that when focused on infinity that things as close as 20 feet (6 meters) will be in focus too. Sadly this is quite optimistic, and I'm sure lends to the reasons why these older cameras were dismissed as being rubbish by a generation.

The shutter is a bit sticky on the example I have, so I'm not confident that it will operate consistently at shutter speeds of longer than 1/10th of a second. However, for daylight use I think this will be fine.

Anyway, no pictures yet as I've got no developer at home just now, but watch this space for some soon :-)