Sean Esopenko

Famous Views of Honolulu

August 22, 2010

I’ve scanned some more 6×9′s and a fiew more 4×5′s from the Honolulu honeymoon. Here’s a view from our 12th floor hotel room of the golf course across the canal in Waikiki, Hawaii. This is a 6×9 crop that measures 4984×5577 pixels, or around 28 megapixels. I think 2400 dpi is the maximum resolution I can scan Kodak 160 colour negative film at. Beyond that and I’m limited by film grain.

Here’s a famous view of Honolulu from the top of Diamon Head mountain. I hiked up the mountain with about 45 pounds of camera gear and it was worth it. The view of the city below was spectacular! It’s a 1200 dpi scan of a 4×5 negative, taken with Ilford ISO 400 B&W negative film. I think 1200 dpi is the maximum resolution I can scan this high-grain film at but it still yields a 8444×10629 image, or about 89 megapixels. Not only is the film grain critical for sharp images but the photographic technique is important too. This image’s sharpness turned out good because I properly utilized lens tilt to bring the entire ground plane in focus from front to back. I have other 4×5 images where I didn’t do this and the sharpness is mediocre, despite stopping down the image to F45. This image was shot at about F22 which prevents diffraction from ruining the sharpness, too.

Here’s a 100% pixel-peep with an illustration at the top left demonstrating the resolution capable with large format film. It’s cropped down to a very tiny area of the image and the detail is astounding. I need to get myself a good focusing loupe, similar to a jeweler’s magnifier. My own eyes can’t see the ground glass clear enough to make a good decision on focus adjustments and a loupe will give me better consistency in image sharpness.

So the technical field camera’s been great, not only for the resolution capabilities of 4×5 film, but also for the creative capabilities of extra lens adjustments. Spending 10 minutes preparing for one photograph really forces me to concentrate on my subject, composition and technique. It’s great!

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