What'll YOU Do When Big Dig. Sensors Are 'Cheap'?

[Scott Fleming]

No, not you artists with your own dark rooms, 8 x 10 or larger cameras and perhaps are fond of the more unique or arcane printing methods. Not to say you can't chime in if you wish too.

I'm more asking the folks who take their keeper trannies to the lab for Chromira/Lightjet prints or perhaps have their own LF printer, probably shoot mostly color, are not fully professional and have , say .... $10k or @20k invested in equipment but not $30k, $40k, or even more.

Will you be tempted to pick up a 22MP back when they come below $10k? Do you think you would continue to shoot LF if you had such a back? Or will it take more megapixels and or cheaper prices to entice you? Do you think about putting a digital back on a monorail camera or would a Hartblei tilt shift lens on a MF camera be enough?

Personally I can't say for sure what I will do. I certainly enjoy shooting film today and really see no reason to stop even if I had a Phase One 22MP back right now. However ... if I found I could be more creative, my images were sharper and I could get more tonal range into my prints with digital I'd be hard pressed to keep using film. Certain respected pros are making such claims right now.

I'm not asking this question of pros who shoot hundreds of images in a day when working. Really I'm talking to the fine art producer who is anything but high volume.

[Bruce Watson]

Until they can get the weight down (*way* down), get the dynamic range up to the 12 stops I can easily do with film, and get the price down where it can compete with my sub $2.00/shot cost (4x5 Tri-X in XTOL), I'm not really interested. And I think that day is a *long* way off, because all the digital back players seem to be after the 35mm tranny people, and the 645 fashion and advertising folks. After they get those markets, I suspect that R&D funds will begin to dwindle. Time will tell, but I'm not convinced they'll ever get around to the large format art market.

[bob carnie]

Hi Scott

I am one of those with large dollars invested in traditional and digital darkroom equipment, I have axcess to phase as well as Leica.
Your question is interesting as it seems that the equipment is paromount to good imagery, where as I do enjoy Man Ray's rayograms and Josef Sudek prints made under duress.
Equipment is only a tool , it is what is going on in ones head that produces good imagery. Micheal Torisan does hand pulled prints using 1800"s technology, I believe he is extremely busy and happy doing this.
I think I will always explore film as it is what I am personally use to and know well, but at the same time not (head in the sand) stubbourn to not try any new imaging device that will create images I enjoy.

A good friend of mine said that there is too many photographers out there trying to produce images.

The cream does rise to the top whether it is a analog, digital image. Let the masses follow the marketing wave of the manufactures and concentrate on making good images with material and equipment you like to use and are familiar with.

[Steve Hamley]

I'll be tempted when I can get 7 stop range or more in a gigapixel back that will hold at least 6 shots and cost less than $2,500 and weigh the same a 3 8x10 film holders.

Let me know when that gets here.

And as for 4x5 and roll film, in the future when 22 MP is small, I can rescan my film at a higher resolution!

Steve

[Ralph Barker]

(In your best Obiwan voice) Look beyond the megapixels, Scott. Look beyond the megapixels. ;-)

As the megapixel count goes up, I'm of the opinion that the importance of the physical construction of the array increases at least proportionally. In many cases, the large megapixel count is being generated in software, and doesn't actually include additional real image detail - just ditherings of the adjacent raw pixels to fill in the blanks. Remember, each individual pixel can only be one color, even if that color is being selected from a very large palette. Thus, to record real image detail, large numbers of physical pixels need to be present in the arrays.

So, for me, a 22mp camera that uses an APS-sized or even full-frame 35mm-sized sensors is much less interesting than one that has 120 (or so) pixel pairs per mm, runs for days on a couple of AA batteries, and has a transfer time of a second or so (about the time it takes me to advance a frame on my Leica M6). Heck, I'd even be satisfied with a transfer time of 5-6 seconds - the time needed to pull and flip a 4x5 film holder. Naturally, I want that array to measure 4"x5" then, too. ;-)

[Scott Fleming]

I did put cheap in quotation marks.

I only have what I hear form MF digital shooters to go on. I shouldn't mention names but there is one guy in particular over on robgalbraith.com who is a well known photog who does big mag layouts. He flat out claims he can uprez a 22MP file and surpass anything you can get out of 6 x 9 cm and even that 4 x 5 has only a tad of resolution over the sensor while DR is much greater with the sensor over any transparency film.

Maybe I'm just lazy and lord knows I don't fancy being glued to a chair in front of my computer all that much but I love the control I have when shooting with my little 10D. It's SO much better than scanning.

I think I detect a bit of unbridled prejudice here in these answeres so far rather than scientific analysis.

[Kirk Gittings]

I have been to the mat with a few "upresers" and I am not impressed with those who rely on a computer program to provide their fine detail. Yes there is a simulation of sharpness but detail and sharpness is something else again. For a 16 x 20 I like to start with a 1G file and scale down to somewhere around a 600MP file. I have tested it and downresing a large file gives much better detail than upresing a small file. It is only logical. A 22mp file is not even in the ballpark.

Besides that there is an issue with the "look" of digital capture. DC files don't have the same look as scanned film a good scan has the feel of the character of the original film. I grew up on film and I like the look of it. The next generation may have different standards.

The other issue is archiving. Give me film any day! There will always be scanners or as long as I will be alive.

[Andre Noble]

And give me film anyday too. The U.S. government should pay Kodak to re-engineer Kodachrome & the K-14, subsidize the new kodachrome film sizes from 8x10 down to 35mm and also the processing too, and make it the official government archiving medium for color imaging.

[Frank Petronio]

The larger, higher resolution sensors will never get "cheap" because the market isn't large enough. They can sell millions of APS sized 6-mp sensors, and in a year or two resell the same people on a 8-mp chip (EOS 10d to 20d). There are less than 30,000 serious large format photographers - if that - just ask how many $5000 Linhofs Bob S. sells - I bet he knows where each one is going...

Instead of lowering their prices, companies like Phase One are going to keep their prices as high as possible. Unless some crazy Chinese company knocks off the technology and makes the chips better - something they haven't done with PC chips (a much better market...) yet - so I'd imagine making imaging chips is low on the priority list. Unless some radical breakthrough allows a giant leap in low cost production, I think this will be the case for the forseeable future.

Some of us will shoot film because we haven't found a really bullet-proof archiving method. It may not exist. I also enjoy the immediate feedback of digital, but I actually like slowing down for large format.

[Scott Fleming]

Kirk,

Wow. Damn.

Your response is unlike anything I have ever heard. I've been trying to learn as much as I can in the past two years and I haunt a lot of websites trying to pick up as much as I can. I've read more than a few books as well.

But 600MB for a 16 x 20 print?!?! Would somebody else chime in on this....Please.

I agree with the achiving part though.