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Fun with MF images - ARCHIVED - FOR VIEWING ONLY

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Dale Allyn

New member
Lovely image, Eleanor. I really like the needle-like vegetation at right. And the way the canal draws my eye deeper.

Many good images added to the thread. Thank you, all, for sharing your work.
 

eleanorbrown

New member
thanks Dale and Guy....The detail in the very very dark grasses is not to visible in this jpg, but it's all there in the tif and RAW files....dark but all there. That's the great thing about medium format backs, you can just keep pulling the detail out of the seemingly blocked shadows forever. I was shooting at iso 50 so that gave the the best chance to get detail where scene was dark. eleanor
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
I was shooting at iso 50 so that gave the the best chance to get detail where scene was dark. eleanor
Excellent point --- I remain amazed at what you can pull out of the deepest shadows at base ISO while still maintaining a relatively noise-free capture...
 

kdphotography

Well-known member
Great image capture, Eleanor!

:) ken

p.s. I thought for sure you were going to say your husband was driving too fast, so you simply took this image through the car window using Sensor+....

:D
 

eleanorbrown

New member
Nooo, not on this one! but I have to tell you, my husband and yellow lab Dillon were sitting closed up in our SUV because the mosquitoes were thick as mud....they were everywhere...I had my long sleeve jacket on with the hood over my head. can't remember when I'd been in a swarm of mosquitoes like that!!! eleanor


Great image capture, Eleanor!

:) ken

p.s. I thought for sure you were going to say your husband was driving too fast, so you simply took this image through the car window using Sensor+....

:D
 

micek

Member
Don't mean to offend anyone, but having been through the whole thread one thing that stands out is how much nicer MF film images look, whether B&W or in colour, as opposed to MF digital images. I use a Leaf back for my commercial work, I am no film taliban, but I can't help feeling that photographic technological development hs moved sideways, towards convenience and speed, rather than forward, if you see what I mean.
 
D

DougDolde

Guest
Poppies are blooming. This shot is from Bartlett Lake, Arizona. Aptus 75S, 120mm Makro Planar.

 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
Don't mean to offend anyone, but having been through the whole thread one thing that stands out is how much nicer MF film images look, whether B&W or in colour, as opposed to MF digital images. I use a Leaf back for my commercial work, I am no film taliban, but I can't help feeling that photographic technological development hs moved sideways, towards convenience and speed, rather than forward, if you see what I mean.
I cannot agree or disagree until you clarify what you are seeing in the film images that you are not seeing in the digital (or vice-versa)... And no offense taken at all -- I think it is a good discussion topic as long as it doesn't dissolve into a "X is better" flame war :)

FTR, I liked shooting film and I like looking at film images. But now I like shooting digital and looking at digital images, so I'm probably not the guy to ask anyway! :D
 

micek

Member
Jack, it is difficult to put into words what is essentially a visual effect, and if I tried I would probably come up with platitudes, but if you just go back a couple of pages, emmawest72 amd ManuelGF's images seem much less smooth, less polished than S2 or DB images, and therefore somehow more real to me. For some reason, the same difference in depth that I have no difficulty in seeing when I compare DB to DSLR images, I also see when I compare MF film to MF digital images. Of course, this is just my perception, and it does not have to be this way, but it struck me that in a thread with photographs taken with the most advanced technology available today, I was drawn mostly to shots taken with a technology increasingly doomed to commercial marginality.
 

Paratom

Well-known member
finally got my Hy6 back from service and found some time to go shooting.
An industrial area at the river Rhine in Worms.
Hy6 and Artec with Sinar75LV.


 

PeterA

Well-known member
B&W film delivers 3Dimensionality at the grain level -whilst the beauty that good light for any medium is what photography is ultimately about ( sans pure documentary stuff) the difference between film and digital is the difference between noise and grain.

A lot of people want and wish for this dimensionality which traditional silver based meda delivered less apparent on screen and much more apparent in print. IF I coudl stil buy the quality of silver infused paper I had access to 30 years ago - I would still put up with the mess of a darkroom - maybe.

Here is the rub - the 3dimensional aspects of silver had a sweet spot in terms of print size - above which it turns ugly and in the large print is exactly where the strength of the digi file shows its better utility.

there are a bunch of other outocmes of film versu sdigi shooting which add a tad to my general conclusions above - including lower resolution and less clarity for a given ISO - which collude to deliver in certain situations the happy accident of the hint of movement in still shots.

our eyes are trained to see movement and prefer its dynamism to still - our nrains are hard coded in this way - hence the importance of clouds in landscapes ( a hint of motion) or th epreference for focus and out of focus for portraits and still life..

just my 2c.
 

fotografz

Well-known member
"Jack, it is difficult to put into words what is essentially a visual effect, and if I tried I would probably come up with platitudes, but if you just go back a couple of pages, emmawest72 amd ManuelGF's images seem much less smooth, less polished than S2 or DB images, and therefore somehow more real to me. For some reason, the same difference in depth that I have no difficulty in seeing when I compare DB to DSLR images, I also see when I compare MF film to MF digital images. Of course, this is just my perception, and it does not have to be this way, but it struck me that in a thread with photographs taken with the most advanced technology available today, I was drawn mostly to shots taken with a technology increasingly doomed to commercial marginality."

Okay, I get it, but intangibles make for difficult discussion points ;).
Okay, let's try to get it to discussion level content. Forgive the ambling preamble ... :p

For a quicker read skip down to the "Jack Asks Why" part. :ROTFL:

I've recently gone through the last agony of surrendering to digital. I sold of all my film cameras and my beloved Imacon 949 scanner... my darkroom is covered with cobwebs.

I freely admit that it was all sacrificed on the altar of ease and convenience ... and to add a third element, there is speed ... based on selling work as opposed to doing work. That the OP uses a Leaf back at "work" indicates a grasp of this concept.

To ease, convenience and speed, we can add internet criteria like "pixel peeping" where film fares poorly compared to digital ... "pixelized" grain is just plain ugly when "peeped".

We photographers are more obsessed with these aesthetic nuances than most viewers are. Content tends to rule supreme there. Instant digital review, ability to freely shoot, and all that, favors content. IMO, digital has advanced content in general ... where more shooters are improving at a general level. This has nothing to do with the highly talented souls who would produce great content with either medium.

IF I were a more relaxed personality, IF I had more patience, IF I did not do work for money, I would probably still prefer shooting film. But I am none of the above.

I know this to be true because I am editing work for my new website, and an awful lot of the key shots were done on film. They please me more ... please my eye more, not someone else's.

Jack asks "Why"?

IMO (as unscientific as it may be), it has to do with how each medium renders light. Digital seems to regiment light to fit it's unwaveringly uniform element of recording ... the pixel. Film is plastic in it's way of flexibly conforming to light with its variable "grain".

In essence, there is a clinical aspect to digital that can either be pleasing to those so inclined, or lamented as a backward aesthetic step by those questioning it with their preconditioned eye.

However, I think the "clinical" or more antiseptic reputation of digital amongst film lovers is magnified by digital shooters obsessed with that pristine technical quality, and striving to squeezing even more "technical perfection" out of their shots. IMO, this is more the rule than the exception these days just because of the more controlled, less vague nature of it compared to answering why something please your eye more than something else does. It's quantifiable. We prove our point that something is better than something else by demanding a 100% crop of a shot. We view work at the molecular level to prove our point. The only time I EVER viewed film stuff like that was to focus the enlarger.

I think there are those who've embraced digital capture that have dodged that bullet. Their choice of medium, lenses and technique of understanding how to ply pixels to render light have yielded a third aesthetic that seemingly has the attributes of both film and digital ... at least to my eye.

Of Medium Format shooters on this forum that have accomplished that, my personal favorite is Jim Collum with his Leaf Aptus 75s (that used to be mine : -( It is all about how Jim has mastered the rendering of light that seemingly surrenders very little to the relentless regimentation of the ubiquitous pixel.

Your thoughts?


-Marc.

(attached: a film portrait, flatbed scanned in 2 pieces from an 11 X 14 print)
 
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Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
Hi Marc:

Excellent response, but to my thinking the salient point was prior to the "Jack asks why" part:

To ease, convenience and speed, we can add internet criteria like "pixel peeping" where film fares poorly compared to digital ... "pixelized" grain is just plain ugly when "peeped".
Earlier Pete said,

[B&W] film delivers 3Dimensionality at the grain level -whilst the beauty that good light for any medium is what photography is ultimately about ( sans pure documentary stuff) the difference between film and digital is the difference between noise and grain.
"Just plain ugly when peeped," and "film delivers 3Dimensionality at the grain level" ... To me, this sums the issue up perfectly -- it's both ugly and beautiful... If we compare a W>W (wet>wet) print to a W>D (wet>digital) print to a D>D (digital>digital) print, they ALL look different. But IMO the latter two look a lot more similar than the first, and then if one compares the latter two closely, usually the D>D option beats out the W>D option because of the "ugly" noise in vast, even-toned areas like sky.

Which leaves the W>W option. IMO, the W>W option still carries more "luminous depth" than the others -- a trait I can see and a trait I like. However, the moment I move in closer to a well-printed printed print off a good wet darkroom, I start to see the "ugly" grain. Granted, it's even uglier when scanned and then printed, but it's still ugly in W>W when viewed close.

I guess I see it as a tradeoff with no clear winner as respects the ultimate image appreciation experience. View it from normal distances, I prefer the luminosity in the W>W print. Viewed close up, I prefer the cleanliness in the D>D version.

Somewhat ironically, the worst combination seems to be W>D, not winning at either viewing distance. Yet from the home-darkroom, cost-convenience standpoint, that is the easiest option and the option most current "film" shooters use. The most dedicated film shooters -- and my hat's off to them -- maintain a traditional wet darkroom for output. And their results show off that effort, at least if we compare head-to-head with a comparable D>D capture. But...

Take those same folks sit them at a table with similar images from a current higher-end D>D print and a similar higher-end W>W print and guess what? Even the wet guys are impressed. As soon as you factor in the time and repeatability components, the number of the traditional W>W folks that <have> become D>D converts, while not answering the question definitively at least confirms a reality...

IMO only,
 

Dale Allyn

New member
I see advantages and aesthetics in both, but I wonder what our perception of film rendering would be if in 1850 the P65+ made its debut? In other words, if our exposure (no pun intended) to photographic imagery was first of images with razor sharp resolution and high DR, what would be our feeling about analogue images? Is romance and nostalgia a part of it? Is tradition? Snobbery? Would have embraced the "imperfection" or disorder of analogue capture in comparison to the relative sterility of modern digital? Maybe our brains would have preferred the "disorder" of film. (?)

I do see things that I really like in certain film-captured images, but I wonder if I'm affected by the points in the above paragraph.
 

Stuart Richardson

Active member
The first photographic processes WERE more like a P65+ than they were like 35mm film. They were generally ultra large format and all prints were contact prints. The lenses were not nearly as sharp as modern lenses, but when you are making an 11x14 print from an 11x14 negative, you have very high resolution and tonality even if your films are grainy and your lenses soft. Photography became lower and lower resolution for most of the 20th century as speed and convenience trumped image quality. And it happened again with digital, though by now it has either started to catch up or surpassed film, depending on how much of a film or digital proponent you are.

Anyway, I have to disagree with Jack though about the wet to wet, wet to digital and digital to digital. I print all three on a regular basis and I find the nicest prints are always fully wet. The next nicest are digital from a film shot, and finally all digital comes in last. But I am probably looking at different things than the rest of you when I decide what looks best to me. It is rarely resolution.
 

Dale Allyn

New member
There is no doubt that large contact prints do exhibit something special.

In my case, convenience is definitely a major factor. But I also see plenty of film proponents, adamant about the superiority of film-based capture, presenting work that simply doesn't illustrate a "superiority". Some samples of such are simply so-so captures that to me, really wouldn't matter if they were shot with film or a 5D. The point being that the discussion gets fragmented a bit when one considers other elements of image beyond just the medium. :)

Which suggests (perhaps obviously) that the comparison must always be between best-case from each.
 

fotografz

Well-known member
I think there are certain categories of images and when we discuss this topic, we are often thinking of different categories. For example, I think those that shot slide film are most comfortable with the digital aesthetic ... and those that shot B&W films may be less so.

RE: comparisons ... I think that is more personal. Meaning it's not really a publicly debatable issue due to the wide range of variables Dale mentioned. I've formed my opinion based on my own experiences doing all three processes W>W, W>D and D>D. The variables were lessened by what I used, and lots of practice. W>W was practiced like a religion. I did W>D by securing a 949 scanner which uses a light source more akin to my enlarger, and striving to preserve the film look familiar from the darkroom, straight through the printing process. D>D was approached on its own terms, but still wrangled to meet my aesthetic demands using the best tools I could afford.

So the opinion is formed over time, even if not done side-by-side in the scientific manner so prevalent. You know your work, and probably can form an opinion based on experience.

BTW ... IMO, and without a doubt in my mind, "so-so" captures are the overwhelming domain of digital capture. It is the nature of the prolific and ubiquitous beast.


-Marc
 
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