Wow, great link! Hadn't seen thos thread! Thank you!Originally Posted by Eric Leppanen
Wow, great link! Hadn't seen thos thread! Thank you!
They are really fun
8x10, used, less than 1500 dollars for camera, lens, filmholders, and tripod. You can certainly go much higher by getting a decent camera. The camera, however, matters very little. (by the way, this is real world pricing for me, with the most money sunk into the lens).
Scanners vary, and the best are very expensive.
For color film, figure 15 for e6 plus developing. B&W is much less.
I'm not at all sure this is a discussion with a conclusion. Be aware that LL also said a 10mp Canon DSLR surpassed a Mamiya 6x7 (pure baloney that I'm sure MR regrets) in the "old" days, a few years ago. Very few people who buy prints look at them with a loupe.
If you're photographing for a client, the client will dictate the quality (or chose another photographer if yours is insufficient); if your working for yourself, the sky is the limit and your bank account determines how high you can fly. People who photograph for themselves also can determine what they enjoy doing. Some love the darkroom, some hate it; some actually enjoy the incredible control available in Photoshop. I recently had the privilege of watching John Sexton make a print in the wet darkroom. The man is a magician. If I could come close, I'd still be working in the darkroom. I cannot and actually enjoy the computer so am having a ball with Photoshop and digital files.
Good luck sorting this one out. It's way more than the math.
Eric
Pano adapter for the Betterlight is a *lot* of fun.
Here's a color IR image from Garapatta Beach, south of Carmel, Ca.
original 6000x58000
Cambodia
original 6000x14000
Cambodia
original 6000x26000
I print with Epson wide format inkjets at Epsons native 360 res.It doesn't seem to matter if it was scanned 8x10, 4x5, or stitched 5DmkII (hell even stitched A640) As long as nothing is uprezzed or interpolated, all my color prints look the same, like Epson inkjet prints.A couple weeks ago down at Crysta Cove state beach, for giggles I snatched my wifes 6mp hundred dollar p&s and shot this rock.When I got home I printed it on the 4800, Harman FB AI, 12"x15", and the end result made me wonder why the hell I'm breaking my back lugging around my C-1 and A-100 to make inkjet prints.
I think the point is made: so long as it has enough pixels to begin with, it is fine.
The trouble begins when someone says that a full frame 35mm dSLR has the same number of pixels as a 4x5. I can see that the P65 might have enough for many prints, but you can squeeze twice/eight times as much out of 4x5 (depending on the film / scan back).
True, even with my 5DmkII I still have to either uprez the file or let the printer interpolate just to even get a 16x20.Of course its just so ridiculously easy to shoot several frames and stitch these days it seems pointless to spend for a P65+ unless your rich or can justify it in a professional workflow.
PaulSchneider,
as a working(starting) assistant here in LA, most working pros are digital-only now. But if you're looking at shooting for art, or for personal work, you most likely won't have a deadline to meet time-wise. so IIWY, I'd still look at film, especially LF, as a viable source of base capture.
I've seen plenty of p45+, p65+, leaf digital 56mp files, hell, even 10 shots stitched from p65+ files, to make 1 shot after plenty of PS work.
personally, I still think that film(8x10 in this case) is still the best way to go if you want the best quality if you're planning on printing big(over 30x40 really). especially if you're dealing with a single-shot situation(like with people, portraits, etc....)
but in the end, the technology for both 4x5, 8x10 or digital MF, you'll be looking to spend a nice bit of cash to get the best image quality out of the film or digital sensor.
this will involve most likely a GEARED camera, a heavy/super stable tripod, and the best glass(most modern to maximize the film's potential). this combined with a great drum scan will insure you terrific quality.
-Dan
Hmmm. I've stitched images on a number of occasions. In the most recent attempt, I scanned both ends of a 6x12 transparency in a Nikon scanner. It took me an hour to align those images, and the Photoshop tool for doing so could not deal with the image size on my computer (which is admittedly a bit long in the tooth, though it still has 2 GB of RAM and no shortage of space for a scratch disk).
At sample spacings of about 6 microns, the negative holder for the Nikon is nowhere near precise enough to even make sure both images are aligned in rotation, making the stitching process more than just lateral translation. And if I'm not going to align it to the pixel level, what's the point of scanning at high resolution? Photomerge had errors noticeable even in a full-screen image, and I had to downsample the scan files to 2400 just to get the software to run. Based on how difficult it is to scan two ends of the same transparency, where the images are truly identical on the stitch line, I'm thinking that stitching images that will vary in details will certainly not be any easier. Maybe there's a software tool that makes it easier.
And as much as I am a card-carrying member of the Pretty Rocks school, things change from one image to the next in a stitch. Clouds move, trees sway, even the Sun moves. The lens performs variably across the image--there is vignetting, varying patterns of out-of-focus rendering (or even in-focus rendering), and maybe even distortion. Making all the repairs necessary to make those stitch lines look natural is a lot of work, and I admire those who get good results doing it. Given the importance of timing in much of photography, or the importance of how a lens renders a scene variably across the frame, I can hardly defend stitching as THE answer.
I once used Panoview to stitch a dozen or so images of the ridge line visible from the Mount Ranier visitor center. It worked, but I had to engage in quite a bit of "computer art" to blend the clouds. (Not linked here because it wasn't made with a large-format camera). That one took a couple of hours, too.
On the Betterlight scanning back: For some reason, images made using that device seem so obviously made with it that even screen displays of them draw the immediate response, "that was made using a Betterlight scanning back". There is something about the way it renders color that is characteristic. The images are still pretty amazing, but if things move in the image, the results are nearly surrealistic. The waves in the example above illustrate this--I've never seen waves that look like that. That in no way diminishes how striking that panorama is, of course. But it's a characteristic look that is different than one would get with a frame-wide exposure, and that difference may or may not align with one's artistic objectives. So, a scanning back also seems not to be THE answer.
The problem with the medium-format backs is their size. I love wide-angle lenses, but finding a lens with a focal length less than half the image diagonal when using those reduced-size digital backs is no mean feat. Finding one at a third of the image diameter is impossible without custom fabrication. That has been an issue with small cameras, too. The typical medium-format sensor might be 33x44, which has a diameter of 55mm. The only lens I can think of with sufficient coverage for that sensor that is less than half the diameter is the Canon 24mm TSE lens, which would be a challenge to mount and use with a sensor like that. Canon users stitch with that lens, but then we are back to that problem again. (I once stitched two images made by shifting a Canon 24mm TSE lens, and even that was a challenge when working at the pixel level--Photoshop couldn't do that one accurately, either, though the distortion of the earlier Canon lens didn't help.)
The shortest large-format lens I can currently afford is a 47mm Super Angulon, and that's adequately wide on the 6x9 format, though not as wide as I would like in some cases. I'll be all ears when there is an affordable 6x9 non-scanning digital back. But if they can make that affordable, could 4x5 be that far behind? I suspect the market would be pretty limited, making it a real challenge to justify the investment required for such a sensor.
The 35mm Grandagon digital, or whatever (I don't keep up with these unobtanium lenses), might be sufficiently wide for the largest current digital backs, but we are just getting to the point where it's even an option, and it still limits us to a focal length of half the image diameter.
So, if we define quality in terms of what sorts of photographs we can make in addition to image performance, then I would say that medium-format digital backs still do not accomplish my goals as a photographer, even without considering the expense. I have nothing against digital photography--when the technology is there and I can afford it, I'll go that way. And I'm looking forward to it. But it's not there yet.
Rick "thinking one has to define one's photographic goals before answering this question" Denney
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