Likely Very Naive Question, sheet film then scan to produce a digital print.

I mean, other people have said this, but it's nothing like using a digital camera. There are too many unique characteristics of LF film.

There is no digital camera made, except for large format scanbacks, which have their own problems, that will give you such shallow DoF at normal focal lengths and middling apertures. The ability to do blurred-background portraits in broad daylight with fast film is nice. This is especially true now that most consumer digital cameras are going to sensors even smaller than 35mm-equivalent, usually APS-C or M4/3rds, leading to a situation where you have to use very long lenses and very wide apertures to get good background blur for portraits and closeup photography.

No camera sensor will naturally produce any of the unique tonal responses that you can get from different combinations of B/W film and a developer/developers. A scanner can capture this, but if the digital element is the thing actually making the image, these unique qualities will be absent. And then don't get me started on color film!

Most digital sensors are emphatically not optimized for B/W, and with small sensor sizes like you have in digital cameras, the interlacing or whatever becomes noticeable in the loss of resolution. Not so with a scanner, especially given the area of large-format.

And let's be real--the size of large format is a huge boon. It is so much easier to get a usable enlargement out of a LF negative, photographically or scanning digitally, then out of a small format photo, film or digital.

So why LF+scan?

Because it's a cheap way to have some fantastic and desirable photographic characteristics unobtainable with most digital cameras.

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The vast majority of digital shooters would not be involved in photography at all if it wasn't for the instant gratification that digital offers.

Push a button and bingo there's a photograph on my LCD.

No skill required. Awesome.

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I don't even shoot digital and I know that that's completely untrue. There's still plenty of room for skill. Every DSLR I've ever seen has aperture priority and manual modes, plus a switch to disable autofocus--remember the last Canon film SLR's from the 90's and early 00's? Same thing. I could make art with one, just like I regularly make art (at least, I think it's art) with a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye that has fixed focus, fixed aperture and fixed speed. Composition is central to art photography--no one is going to care what aperture you were shooting at when they're in the gallery looking at your silver prints. They'll care that it's a crisp image that's well-composed.

Also, not all photography needs to be high art. Sometimes people just want to take snapshots of their family. Sometimes working photographers just need to take basic wedding photos without worrying about film stock and chemicals.

Lastly, what does that have to do with LF hybrid photography (film + digital scanner)?

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Originally Posted by Bernice Loui

Digital back on a digital specific view camera can easily achieve traditional view camera movements (perspective control, tilt-shift-swing-rise-drop and....) as needed.

Does not make rational sense to me to use a sheet film camera to produce a digital data file when high quality digital is easily available.

~I'm trying to understand this.~

Bernice

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My sentiments exactly! A good term for this is direct imaging (versus indirect imaging with scans), and it's what I've done.

I purchased a Phase One P45+ digital back from Digital Transitions for about twice the price of a good digital camera. Not the case with most refurbished backs, mine had less than 2500 activations, and it came with a year's factory warranty. The price was a bit steep, but it's about 8% of what they were new. Resolution is 39MP from a 24mmX48mm sensor. (That's twice the size of a "full-frame" sensor.) Enough resolution for what I will ever need, this will give me a 16x20 print with some room to spare.

I use it with an Arca Swiss 6x9 view camera and film lenses. I already had 47mm, 58mm, and 75mm lenses. For wide angle, I found a 35mm Rodenstock f4.5 lens for a quite reasonable price. This lens demonstrates some chromatic aberration, but not enough to worry about. And besides, it can be corrected in Capture One, free software that's available when processing files from Phase One digital backs. (Capture One corresponds to Adobe's Lightroom. It's first rate imaging software.) This lens has huge coverage for a digital back, so for super wide angle, stitching is an option. With lenses of this small focal length, one has to be careful that the back of the lens doesn't interfere with the rear standard of the camera. To avoid this, I have a special "N" standard, Arca ground glass and adapter.

I'd been working toward this capability for quite a while, so I already had the camera and all but one lens. Still, it was a tad bit expensive, but maybe not quite so bad, when one considers the cost of a good scanner, film, and all the time and frustration that can go into getting decent scans from color negatives.

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Originally Posted by neil poulsen

....I purchased a Phase One P45+ digital back...Resolution is 39MP from a 24mmX48mm sensor...

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The Capture Integration specs say this sensor is 49.1mm x 36.8mm.

Indeed, to Sal's point on page 1.

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Originally Posted by Sal Santamaura

For black and white, there's only one possible reason, namely, to take advantage of the extremely long life expectancy exhibited by polyester-based, properly processed and stored negatives. That's why HABS/HAER/HALS is willing to accept inkjet "contact prints" but still requires such negatives.

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I do HABS/HAER/HALS and digital scanning is in the guidelines. So those (few) HABS photographers have a choice of contact prints or scans and "digital print cards" but both are a required part of the HABS workflow. As such, profit/loss/time come into the equation differently than if the photographer is choosing the process based on his/her own finances/time/aesthetics. I have seen/made some shockingly bad analog prints and seen/made some stunning digital prints (and wiza/werza). I continue to make prints for myself in the darkroom and will continue to make scanned negs for $. I'm just lucky that people are paying me to use the big heavy camera instead of the little camera.

That said, I would RATHER spend my time in the darkroom getting my tongs wet, but the most profitable way to deliver the products my clients need, is digital camera scans of the 5x7 and 4x5 negatives and printing on an Epson desktop printer. But that's a pretty unusual case study knowing how many people are doing HABS work vs. how many people are doing large format for art and fun.

There's a reason the term "expensive hobby" is redundant ;-) ... digital or analog, our aesthetic makes us do it anyway, for the most part nobody NEEDS a photo to live. Maybe an associated question in this day of Covid-19 is: "Is photography essential?" and for this group: "Is large format photography essential?"

~Discuss ;-)

I haven't read all the comments to this thread, but wanted to add my two cents worth.

I think technology of full frame cameras are improving rapidly, and can rival what is obtainable with LF cameras. Perspective correction 35 mm lenses are still somewhat limited and not as capable as movements of a LD camera, but affordable. Nikon introduced in-camera focus stacking for DOF and improved density range. Sony a7r4 has a pixel shift merge in camera function that can increase resolution comparable to 4x5 film. For architecture and large prints of landscapes the digital technology cannot meet the resolution of a 4x5, or larger, film negative. Resolution is the ability to distinguish two points from each other. Thus,, if I were to photograph a cathedral (which I have done) I would want to capture as much detail as possible to produce an expressive print.


The other case for a LF camera is for making portraits. I have seen very impressive portraits of people that demonstrate to relationship of distance between the subject and the camera, Coupled with brass portrait lenses there is no comparison to capturing with a digital camera.

Mechanics aside, there are many aesthetic reasons for using LF cameras/film.

Mike

I have to admit I'm thinking seriously about getting a 30 - 40 MP back for my Hasselblad V, I really like the results I get with the 645 but in the end I prefer looking at an IMAGE on a ground glass to looking through a camera at the real world - I find myself working so much differently with the Hassy, or the RB67 or a TLR than with any digicam or DSLR or rangefinder. The image looks different when it's bounded.

I recently just unearthed (so to speak) a few 5 x 7 negatives from the early 70's and ran them through the IQsmart last night. The sensation of working with them is so much different than working with the images from my Digicams. Are the photos less crisp/sharp? Probably, but there's a much greater sense of texture with the big negatives - the images just feel different to me, particularly for B&W. Less clinical if you will. Could be just me but it feels so much different working with the scans than with the direct capture.
Having said that, I think the reason I like the 645 digicam better than the Canons is due to the larger pixel size - I think the pixel count is interesting, but bigger pixels feel better to me.

Rationalization really is a powerful thing, and this thread is a prime example of people rationalizing their biases. You want something to be true, and, by darned, you'll find something to justify it. Consider confabulation. Psychologists discovered that people come up with reasons for their behavior, and when they don't have one, their subconscious will make a false one up, and the person will consciously think that's why they did so and so. Jonathan Haidt, a research psychological, likens the conscious mind to a lawyer the subconscious hires, and the subconscious doesn't care how its desires are satisfied, just as long as they are.

Consider x and y. If they are two different things, then there will always be something different about them. That's a necessary truth. One can always point to that difference and say, "That's why I prefer it!"

Bigger pixels are better? That's bull. I had a D200, and now I have a D600. The D600 has smaller pixels than the D200, but the D600 takes higher quality photos.

The reason people use a hybrid workflow is that, for their purposes, they find something better about it. Some serious people, people who print for a living, including people who printed both in a darkroom at the highest level, feel that they make better prints with a hybrid workflow than they did in the darkroom. Perhaps they are just rationalizing, but I've seen some of their prints, and they are terrific.

Why not avoid all the BS. If you want to do something, and it doesn't hurt others, and the opportunity costs are not too great, well, just do it. Wanting to do it, or not do it, is reason enough.