Originally Posted by
Bruce Watson
Short answer is "yes."
Long answer is that for what you are doing, making a digital negative that you use to contact print in the wet darkroom, you'll probably be pleasantly surprised. If, of course, you are willing to put the work into it to climb the learning curve. If instead you think that you'll just be able to "push a button" and out pops a perfect digital negative, then you'll probably be (very) unpleasantly surprised. It will take time and effort on your behalf to learn how to do this well. But if you do it well you'll end up with a digital negative that prints really easily with all your corrections already in place. Which makes it much easier to get the print to do exactly what you want.
If instead of making a digital negative you just make an inkjet print, you might be even more pleasantly surprised. Again, there are learning curves, especially with B&W. But the best looking B&W prints I've ever seen, and I've held a number of excellent master prints in my hands (silver, platinum, etc.) have been inkjet prints. If you are really into black however, or really into glossy papers, then contact printing is still the way to go IMHO.
Close? We equaled or exceeded about eight or ten years ago IMHO.
There's no print quality reason to go to the larger camera, again IMHO. However, there are some aesthetic reasons -- like you want the bigger ground glass or you like the decrease in DOF, etc.
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