Why do the contact prints look so good?

[Vaughn]

Michael.

Excellent points and I agree that no act of photographing is truely spontaneous. That is why I suggested that the spontaneous element in photography is the moment when one decides to take a photograph. Even the fastest camera (auto-everything) still requires an extra moment for framing/composing. So fast-working cameras allows one to have more moments of spontaneity, the camera use itself is not spontaneous...and LF cameras do allow for spontaneity, just not as quickly. Cameras are tools. Robert Frank used the tool that best fit his needs...though I have seen Richard Miserac use an 8x10 faster than a lot of people use their 35mms!

Excuse me for being less than clear about the 30 minute exposures. Under the redwoods (that is, when it's not it usual fog or rain!) only a limited amount of light can find its way down -- and as the sun moves, these spots of light move...and over 30 minutes the distance they move is considerable (relative to the angle of view of the lens). So I am capturing light as it is painted across the landscape.

Vaughn

[paulr]

I've never seen a traditional enlargement look quite like a contact print (though 8x10s from a 4x5 neg can come close). Part of it is the tactile edginess and smoothness of tones; part of it is some other quality that I can't quite put my finger on ... but I've recognized it even in mediocre reproductions of the contact prints in books. I could be imagining this, but it jumps out at me sometimes.

I have found that digital prints can rival or even excede contact prints in terms of sharpness and realism of textures. Some of my 4x5 inkjet prints look more like contact prints than the actual contact print from the same negative. I've made digital enlargements up to about 2.5X that have that hyper-real, contact print sense of texture. They have to be made really well, from sharp negatives, to look like this. It's also easy to make horrible looking digital prints if you don't have a good sharpening workflow and some patience.