Chucking it and going to DSLR?

[philipmorg]

Now think of printing digitally. Turn on the computer. Open Photoshop. Select the image. Edit, edit, edit, edit, edit until you have a print with which you're satisfied based on what you see on your monitor. Put the paper in the printer, start the printer. Out comes the print. Evaluate it. Edit, edit, edit some more. Reprint. See the difference? Yeah, the time may be the same as if you were in a darkroom but how that time is spent is vastly different. Darkroom = 90% or more drudge time. Digital = 90% or more creative time.

I don't print digital photographs, so I'm not speaking from personal experience here, but my understanding is that getting a perfect print from a digital file can be quite laborious! No less fastidious a worker than Ctein recently had the following to say about digital printing paper:

I've just finished printing up a bunch of "art quality" 11 x 14 prints for my Contributors, and I'm so frustrated I feel like tearing my hair out. (Yes, I have plenty to spare. What's your point?) The amount of time and money I waste because of shoddy inkjet paper manufacturing practices is appalling.

The full article is here: http://theonlinephotographer.typepad...rap-paper.html

Digital image making and printing offer many advantages, but it appears that there are drawbacks as well. And those drawbacks, at least for those who want to create an absolutely fine print, are just as annoying in the digital world as they are in the traditional world. I haven't even mentioned the frustration many digital workers experience with computer, printer, and software upgrades and compatibility issues...

My point is that for casual work, the distribution of time between creative effort and technical effort looks a lot like Brian Ellis depicts in his post, and not co-incidentally, it looks a lot like digital equipment marketing depicts it. All creativity, little or no effort! But when you start striving to make exceptional work, the distribution of time between creative and technical effort changes, and digital loses some of its advantages over traditional methods. IMHO. :-)

[Drew Wiley]

Just got in from the dkrm - relaxing there, even if just simple film work. Quiet, with no cell phones or other obnoxious adolescent gadgets. So now I'm momentarily back to the computer, back to eyestrain, backstrain, boredom, just like work. Not much tactile experience, except carpal tunnel syndrome. Hopefully mankind will evolve past the computer era soon, or else we'll all have about 90% of our body weight in our asses.

[Brian Ellis]

I don't print digital photographs, so I'm not speaking from personal experience here, but my understanding is that getting a perfect print from a digital file can be quite laborious! No less fastidious a worker than Ctein recently had the following to say about digital printing paper:


The full article is here: http://theonlinephotographer.typepad...rap-paper.html

Digital image making and printing offer many advantages, but it appears that there are drawbacks as well. And those drawbacks, at least for those who want to create an absolutely fine print, are just as annoying in the digital world as they are in the traditional world. I haven't even mentioned the frustration many digital workers experience with computer, printer, and software upgrades and compatibility issues...

My point is that for casual work, the distribution of time between creative effort and technical effort looks a lot like Brian Ellis depicts in his post, and not co-incidentally, it looks a lot like digital equipment marketing depicts it. All creativity, little or no effort! But when you start striving to make exceptional work, the distribution of time between creative and technical effort changes, and digital loses some of its advantages over traditional methods. IMHO. :-)

Oh I absolutely didn't say that printing digitally requires no effort. Quite the opposite - between learning and continuing to learn how to do it to one's satisfaction and then actually doing the work, it requires a massive amount of effort (at least it has for me). But the effort involved in actually making a fine digital print is of a different kind - and for me a much more satisfying kind - than the physical effort that takes up most of one's time in a darkroom.

Otherwise I agree with what you say. Between equipment occasionally malfunctioning for no apparent reason and software upgrades, digital printing has its own set of frustrations. But I was addressing only what goes into actually making a print in a darkroom vs making a print digitally, not peripheral frustrations (some of which of course are also present in a darkroom).

[philipmorg]

Oh I absolutely didn't say that printing digitally requires no effort. Quite the opposite - between learning and continuing to learn how to do it to one's satisfaction and then actually doing the work, it requires a massive amount of effort (at least it has for me). But the effort involved in actually making a fine digital print is of a different kind - and for me a much more satisfying kind - than the physical effort that takes up most of one's time in a darkroom.

Thanks for the clarification Brian. I understand your point better now.

[Robert Hughes]

What good is a 4x5 negative if it's only enlarged to 8x10?

Huh? Do you have something against 8x10 prints?

[Brian C. Miller]

Huh? Do you have something against 8x10 prints?

Oh no, not at all. I simply consider not using movements and only making enlargements to 8x10 a bit of an exercise in photographic masochism. Really, if a smaller format is OK for the detail you want, why not use it?

I think that large format photography only gets started at 16x20. Why? Well, once upon a time I was mucking about with my Super Graphic after I had adjusted the GG, and I was trying to figure out how much detail I could see on Techpan. So I set up my camera, and snapped a picture. Well, using a 22x loupe I could see bicycle spokes about two blocks away. Clearly! Then I started enlarging the image. When the enlargement was at 16x20, I could see the spokes.

So: what's the point of throwing away all that wonderful detail in an image? It surely doesn't show up at 8x10. And if the camera is only used as a box camera, what is the point of lugging a beastly view camera around? Sure, some may enjoy the masochism factor. I do it because of what the view camera enables me to do.

I don't remember Jack mentioning what he can afford for digital equipment. A new Mamiya DM-22 back (usable with a 4x5 camera) runs $8,000 new. I'm guessing that what Jack is really asking is, should he ditch LF for cheap 35mm digital SLR? Otherwise he'd just snag a digital back and be happy.

So: if the max print size is 8x10, why bother?

[antinapple]

I personally want to make huge prints so no digital solution can compete with big analog film. However, if making a statement without the desire or need to make huge prints then I say go for it.

[dh003i]

I think smaller LF prints still have more tonality, right?

[Brian C. Miller]

But more tonality than what? And at what enlargement?

I'm not one who has a real opinion about tonality. Though Mamiya has (or had) a blurb on their website about the advantages of MF for tonality, I really think that tonality is usually confused with grain.

A while back I decided to do a little experiment between LF and 35mm. Outside my window (before an empty lot was developed) I could see buildings with brick walls, one and two blocks away. On the light table under 22x loupe, the comparison was a f***ing joke, 135mm Optar Wollensack beating Nikkor 50mm. Duh. But for an 8x10 enlargement, from normal viewing distance, there really wasn't that much of a difference. What I mean is, from a casual glance, could an average person tell the prints apart? No, not without trying to sniff the print. Of course with a 16x20 enlargement the difference was tremendous. The LF print showed bicycle spokes in the window at two blocks away, individual bricks in the wall at one block and two blocks, yadda yadda yadda. The 35mm print showed that there was a wall, but no detail in it.

Now, as for "tones," I think that has to do with printing technique. If the same film is used in both cameras, and a grey-scale test target verifies similar densiometer readings, then "tonality" is the same. The remaining factor is the film's grain. How does the grain hold together? If, at 8x10, there is no discernable grain, then there really isn't a difference between 35mm and 4x5. It's like saying that there is a difference between a coated and uncoated lens: given identical negatives (i.e., identical after processing), does it matter which one you use?

A lot of good photography has been done with 35mm film. I think that a lot of good photography will be done with 35mm-size digital cameras. Do the top-of-the-line 35mm-size digital cameras hold a candlelight to 645 MF? Not in my book. Yes, they are good, but there is also a good reason why Hasselblad, Mamiya, and now Pentax are selling 40Mp+ equipment.

Now, let's take a look at when something goes wrong. When I first got my Super Graphic, it didn't have the original ground glass in it. The replacement GG was not registered properly, so the resulting image was slightly out of focus. I photographed a catenary crane with both my Graphlex and Pentax 645. Then I scanned both of them at home. Guess which format still won? Yep, 4x5, even being out of focus. I could sharpen the 4x5 image until warning signs on the crane were legible. The 645, while tack sharp, just didn't have the information resident in the image, so the signs were never legible. But of course, the signs aren't readable in an 8x10 print.

Size matters when size does matter. But if the final print is "small" then size doesn't matter.

[antinapple]

if you we're to switch to DSLR, what camera would you buy and why?