Unusual Request

[Patrick_3610]

Hello All,

Over the years I've moved up from 35mm to 6x6 (Rolleiflex) to 4x5. Now, I'm looking to try 8x10.

My request is, before moving up to 8x10, I'd like to purchase a developed, color, 8x10 transparency and experiment with it by scanning it in, getting a feel for the file sizes I'll need for various projects, comparing the results to 4x5, etc.

Thus, would someone out there be willing to sell me a developed, color, 8x10 transparency (preferably of a landscape shot)? I just need something I can experiment with.

Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

-Patrick

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

If nobody responds, I have plenty of 8x10 B&W negatives that I dont use for one reason or another, let me know and I will be glad to send you one.

[tim atherton]

Patrick, where are you?

I some outtake 8x10 transparencies laying around if you want to eamil me your address I can pop one in the mail - might have a bit of a light leak or not the best exposure, but should be entirely usable.

tim

[Jim Galli]

Patrick, I'll play devil's advocate and say I don't think color makes much sense in 4X5 let alone 8X10. I'm afraid materials (ie. chrome films) won't be around much longer, and some have already vanished. Top quality 4X5 chromes drum scanned and output with a light jet 5000 onto Fuji Crystal Archive paper is better now than 8X10 xparency cibachromes and type R used to be. Now if you want to talk about ultimate things in monochrome contact prints, that's another thing. Jim

[michael waldron]

Just a response to Jim Galli and a thought-

I use 4x5 and 8x10 both. Really, I think that 8x10 makes a difference in really large C-prints (32x40+++) with negatives. It has an "unreal" look due to very high resolution. This has no scientific basis, but I think at most enlargements, 8x10 has more resolution than the eye, so they look oddly artificially sharp -- see recent German photography by Struth et al to see what I mean. Maybe it is my astigmatism, though. Misrach makes huge traditional prints that couldn't be done with 4x5.

I think with digital and lightjet prints, the limiting factor is the pixels given the printing size. While I have made up to 40" wide lightjets from 8x10, they don't look as "detailed" as big analog c-prints and are not really different from prints from 4x5. Of course, digital has better color control, unsharp mask sharpening etc. than analog and it depends how close you look. On the other hand, I have made perfectly nice 30x30 digital prints from 6x6 negs, so everything is relative.

[jantman]

I don't think that 8x10 transparency film is in any danger of disappearing.

However, it's SOOOOO expensive, why would you shoot 8x10 if you're just going to scan it? Stick with 4x5. Granted that I've never done much digital work, but at $30 per scan (or $10,000 for the scanner) plus between $5-10 per sheet of film, plus another $4 or 5 for processing, you might as well stick with 4x5.

I shoot 8x10 because I love contact prints and don't do any digital, it makes sense.