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

[Joe Smigiel]

I'll still be using film.

I've dabbled in digital, but I'm left affectively flat by it. As marvelous as the digital camera and output technology can be, it really doesn't produce a true photograph and I guess I'm just a photographer and always will be. I even get annoyed when videographers on local news programs are referred to as "photographers." They are videographers/camera operators to me and that's different than being a photographer. I get the same feeling when thinking about digital camera images and inkjet prints. For that reason, I don't think I'll ever truly embrace digital imaging no matter how inexpensive or accessible it becomes. I'd rather take up wetplate collodian and salted paper printing if commercial LF film resources dry up.

[Brian Ellis]

If "cheap" means $3000 or less I'll buy it in a heart beat.

[Spencer Cliss]

Anyone know what the outlook is? We can soon have 22 MP in the 645 format for 10'000 dollars, but what comes next? Is there a market for larger files? These files are plenty big for advertising, magazine publication and billboards. The only applications that I can see requiring more is fine art and science. We'll count obsessed amateurs to the fine art category :-).

A friend of mine sells his 13x18 cm transparencies to calendar companies. Some of them scan his film at 400 dpi on flatbed scanners. Yes, 400 dpi on-film resolution. These are 17 MB files. That's a factor 100 below this film size's purported potential.

I predict an incremental improvent in form of a 32 MPixel sensor that has smaller pixels and fills the 645 format fully - 56 x 42 mm.

What bothers me most about the current crop of medium format backs is the unavailability of shift and tilt lenses. For example, Hasselblad just came with a new autofocus line priced semi-astronomically. Why not include a line of tilt-shift lenses for crying out loud?

I could imagine we will sometime soon see 44 MP 6x8 cm sensors for the small view cameras, twice the size of the current 645 chips. The view camera companies will drive this because they want to continue selling cameras. Not everyone will stick a 645 back to their cameras just to have tilt and shift. I predict that more often than not, you will focus looking at the computer screen - yes, with your head under a dark cloth. The dark cloth will still be with us :-). The 6x9 ground glass is very small to compose and properly focus. Get prepared to buy all new lenses though, the old stuff doesn't cut it.

Film is such a pain in terms of handling, especially loading and unloading. Cost too, especially when you exposure bracket. I work in the desert with the 13x18 cm format. I don't use the 4x5 inch format because I think the increment in film size from 6x7 isn't worth the bother. I'll cheer when I'll go on a trip for the first time without film.

The other major issue with film is that it takes a 30'000 to 100'000 dollar scanner to unlock its potential. You have a choice: scan at home with compromises or spend a lot of money.

I do not see digital sensors in the 4x5, 5x7 and 8x10 formats in the near future, say within 10 to 20 years. I predict that a very long time will pass until we see a 4x5 inch full frame sensor. I could imagine that such a sensor will not be made of silicon, but of polymers. Demand for this sensor would be driven by amateurs who would like to keep using their old LF gear with digital. Yes that's right, the market for very large format digital sensors will be driven by amateurs. No one else wants these big files.

[Frank Petronio]

Have you ever tried using tilts on a 645 SLR? It has to be really hard to see what is happening...

Most architectural photographers seem to go directly to the full-frame Canons so they can use wide angle lenses - the 645 wides just aren't wide enough for everything.

[Dave Moeller]

The other major issue with film is that it takes a 30'000 to 100'000 dollar scanner to unlock its potential.

Nah...all that it takes is an enlarger that costs one heck of a lot less than $30,000. Or if you're shooting 8x10 B&W, all it takes is about $0.75 worth of Azo, $0.10 worth of chemicals, a light bulb (which most of us already have) and a contact printing frame (which, if you try really,really hard you can pay upwards of $200 for...or you can pay $28 for one like I did on eBay.

Don't forget the true joy of film...you don't have to handle it digitally if you don't want to.

Now, before people start castigating me: I shoot film and develop and print in a wet darkroom. I shoot film, scan it, and print it digitally. I shoot digital and print digitally. I have no particular axe to grind, except with those who feel that digital beats film because scanning film is such a losing proposition. For over a century we got away without scanning film...a little more attention in history class may have lead some of you to realize this, but others seem convinced that "The One True Path Must Include Digital"...and it just ain't so.

[Darin Cozine]

Just to chime in here: I dont think there will ever be such a thing as a cheap AND big sensor. If you look at the CPU/memory chip industry, these items get cheaper because A: they are mass-produced to a large market and B: advances manufacturing process allow the chip to be smaller, thereby producing more chips on each silicon wafer.

So very few pros need a chip larger than 35mm, and large chips will allways be extremely expensive to manufacture.

That said, I think there is a future for LF scanning backs, which use a relatively small chip which moves through the focal plane.

[Donald Hutton]

Frank

Most photographers go to full fame Canons because they can buy tilt/shift lenses for them and the image quality is OK for a lot of their work. You can get some pretty amazing wide angle lenses for 645 (the 35mm lens for the H1 comes to mind). Using basic movements on a digital SLR body is actually really easy - you use a laptop and the screen is pretty big... You can also overlay a grid of any form etc. You basically use a little trial and error - it's very fast and you know if you have the shot the way you want it. It would not be any more difficult to use a digital back equipped 645 and do exactly the same thing. The problem is, as has been pointed out, there are not exactly an array of tilt/shift enses available for any system.

[Glenn Kroeger]

I doubt we will ever see a digital sensor much larger than 37x49mm (currently the size used by most MF high end backs). As someone else pointed out, the resolution will evolve to at least 35MB to match the pixel densities of the latest 35mm sized chips. Tilts and movements aren't a problem since one can do this on a wirelessly connected laptop screen showing real time data from the sensor. Not sure I want to backpack with all of the required batteries!

Sinar, Plaubel, Linhof, Cambo and Arca Swiss are making small view cameras and Schneider and Rodenstock are responding with appropriate focal length lenses optimized for smaller image circles and higher resolutions.

This is the configuration currently being used in high end digital architecture, but it won't replace scanned 8x10 for fine art work.

[Scott Fleming]

Gee I'm glad I asked this question here.

I've gotten a wholly different perspective than I get on luminous-landscape or robgalbraith.

Everyone has to find his own way in this game. It all depends on what you love. There are those who claim to be fine art shooters yet are actually gear heads who love cameras much more than they love creating images. There are money making pros who are at the mercy of the forces of competition and volume. There is a lot of mixing up of these and other genres amoungst the beginners. One has to figure out if you want to be a photographer because you like the sound of it or you actually believe you have something to say.

I'm glad I'm just a simple obsessesed fine art wannabee who has a chance to perhaps come close to the grail once or twice maybe before I kick it.

[Ralph Barker]

All of this stuff is a series of trade-offs, Scott. Plus, there is a lot of digital Kool Aid drinking among the digital zealots, and maybe some pyro drinking among the film zealots. But, I don't hear the digital-only gurus asking the critical questions about real image detail, hence my previous comment. There is a huge difference between making a large print that looks good, and making a large print that displays additional fine image detail that simply wasn't seen in a smaller print. If, for example, I take a 22MP digital image of a model standing across the room, filling 3/4 or so of the frame, I can probably tell she's wearing a watch when I enlarge the image. If I shoot the same thing on 8x10, as I enlarge the image to its limits, I can not only tell what time it was, but read the brand of the watch, as well.

Ultimately, however, the whole question boils down to individual preferences mixed in with the real science (not the marketing).

The real camera of the future will likely be more like a 22PP digital device. That's peta-pixel - none of this girlie-man mega-pixel, or even giga-pixel stuff. The image file will also include ranging and surface contour data, so elements in the image can be extracted, manipulated and digitally rotated in 3-D, as well as being animated in software for use in interactive holograms. (Remember the "feelies" from "1984"?) It will run on a small atomic power source about the size of a hearing-aid battery, and will use molecular-level data storage technology.