Compare and contrast ...

[ellarien]

I've been looking at and printing photos this evening -- my own, and my father's. Here are a couple of side-by-side comparisons of similar shots taken with different cameras.

	Mam Tor from Lose Hill, September 1978 Scanned from a slide taken by my father; lightly photoshopped for dust and contrast.
	Mam Tor from Lose Hill, August 2007 Taken with a Sony Cybershot P-73, unaltered.

Things have changed along the Mam Tor ridge in thirty years; the road fell off the mountain for the last time in 1979, and Back Tor, (the bump on the right) lost two of its last three summit trees but gained a whole little wood lower down. (Also, the path along the ridge is paved for most of its length now, after becoming nearly impassable due to the erosion of so many walkers, but that's not so obvious in these shots.) Even with the film grain, I think I can tell when I look closely that my father's prized SLR (a solid 1960's Praktica with no electronics whatsoever, which is probably why it still works today) took slightly sharper pictures than my little Sony, at least for landscapes. I uploaded the full-resolution versions, so if you're really interested in the pixel-level detail and have bandwidth to burn you can click through a couple of times and judge for yourself.

	Barrel Cactus Flower 28/08/08, with the Sony
	Barrel Cactus Flower 29/07/08, with the Canon Cybershot S5 IS

Yesterday the light was a bit hazy and I had the Sony; today was crystal clear and I had the Canon. It's hard to tell how much of the difference is light and how much is the Canon's better lens and more pixels, but there is a difference. I'm still not entirely comfortable with the Canon; it's a two-handed job to use and a noticeable lump to carry about, so I don't bother with it every day and I haven't taken it anywhere yet. It would have been an embarrassment in rainy Sheffield these last weeks, anyway.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Interesting to compare the landscape shots!

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

It's interesting to compare the Mam Tor pictures. I have hundreds of slides to scan and many are scenic views of North Wales. They haven't changed much if at all either. I really wish I'd taken more around my old home in Manchester because that is completely unrecognisable now.

Just as a matter of interest, what type of scanner do you have? I'm still not sure whether to persevere with the 80-quid one I have or whether to invest in one of the better Nikon CoolScans. Some photos of mine have scanned well, but the ones with large dark areas are very disappointing.