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Beautiful. What was this shot with exactly? Negative? Transparency? Dare I say digital?[/QUOTE]Quote:
Originally Posted by manfrominternet
Thanks! 3 4x5" color negatives shot in camera using shift to record the entire cross section and then stitched in post.
Per the linked Gursky image, and how to simulate it : Not Velvia; too contrasty. Not Ektachrome, cause it's out of production in sheets. Provia might work. Ektar is color neg, but would work well IF you understand correct light balancing of it to avoid a cyan shift in the sky. Shoot digitally and stitch if you can stand that kind of tedious chore, and if things stay still long enough to begin with. If you want crisp big enlargements from sheet film, you need some method to keep the film truly flat in the holder.
Before fully turning to his digital Phase One IQ4/Alpa XY/Rodenstock setup, Gursky did use a lot of Fuji Provia and transparency. I heard from a photographer who knows another photographer who somehow knows Gursky say that Gursky indeed did shoot a lot of his greatest works primarily with Fuji Provia. From 1988 to 2008, Gursky did most of his work with his 4x5 camera and, likely later, used Provia as his go-to. His huge prints that were definitely taken with his Linhof 4x5 (you can tell because of the aspect ratio of the prints) are extremely sharp. (While he shot a lot of work with his 5x7 camera, Gursky mentioned that he never shoots 8x10, save for the one Polaroid he shot in the mid-80s.)
Anyway, how did he get 4x5 Provia transparencies so sharp, sharp enough to print so large, like 8ft by 10 ft, with little loss in resolution?! Does Provia tend to drum scan better than negatives like Ektar or something?
A properly exposed chrome will beat the same speed color negative in terms of less grain and more sharpness. I use color negative because it's lower contrast, way more dynamic range, way more forgiving with exposure. But chromes are sharper and nearly grainless.Quote:
Originally Posted by manfrominternet
I always thought that much of Gursky's earlier work was shot on negative, because for a while I think many were optical C-prints.
Some of those 10 foot wide prints don't look that hot when you get close. Ever see the 99 cent store print up close in person? grain clumps the size of pencil erasers.
This isn't the case either in theory or practice. Neg-pos always beats pos-pos quite definitively in granularity and sharpness. It's why cinema uses/ used a neg/ pos process - there is a large amount of heavy duty maths and science from Kodak etc from the 1950's onwards as to why neg/ pos is better for many, many reasons. If you're seeing less sharpness and more grain from colour negs compared to colour positives, it's because something is going wrong in your imaging chain - and it isn't the film. The sole reason colour transparency held on for so long was that it provided an easy reference for 4-colour repro in the days before ICC profiling etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by Chester McCheeserton
Gursky's prints are full of all sorts of oddities up close - artefacting etc - for a long time they were assembled on a Quantel system from the early 1990's.
Huh, my experience would lead me to disagree with that wholeheartedly. I'm not basing anything on heavy duty maths from kodak from the 1950s or the evolution of motion picture film, although I agree that that are many interesting parallels between the two mediums.Quote:
Originally Posted by interneg
I'm basing what I said on looking at drum scans and prints I've seen from 4x5 chromes that have way less grain then scans I've seen from color negatives. And are much sharper. Have you looked at and compared both? Scans and prints?
I know multiple people who have chosen to continue using chromes instead of negs for those reasons. But like I said, I don't use chrome, for me the sharpness isn't worth the trade off of way less dynamic range, unless you're shooting under controlled lighting.
And I've made lots of scans and inkjet/ darkroom prints from multiple source materials in all the main formats, seen innumerable different scans & darkroom prints & the Kodak research holds up in my experience. Aliasing & excessive sharpening can be a big problem with drum scans, as can inept operators. I've seen some horrid results off Heidelbergs, mainly thanks to the operator not knowing what they were doing with the unsharp mask and/ or doing the inversion in the scanner software rather than Photoshop. You'd be amazed how often doing inversions in the scanner software makes colour neg look awful compared to what it should look like.Quote:
Originally Posted by Chester McCheeserton
The only reason I'd choose transparency today is for specific colour rendering, not for sharpness or fineness of grain at a given speed. And I'd shoot it in the biggest format practical for the subject matter to negate these issues
Well you didn't choose interchrome for your name. Sounds like maybe you got a dog in this fight, I don't really.Quote:
Originally Posted by interneg
I know what I've seen and was just trying to answer the man from the internet's question. If someone who cares more than me wants to post an MTF chart for lets say, Provia 100 vs Portra 160 and those numbers back you up, I'll cheerfully admit I'm wrong. And to repeat, I do use negative film.
But I'd protest your insinuation that I'm saying what I'm saying because I don't know how to operate a scanner, or that doing the inversion in the scanner software is degrading the quality.
Not a chance.
Well, Andreas Gursky just released some new works, including a new version of his oh so famous Rhein II photo, aptly entitled Rhein III. What do you guys think?:
Attachment 207615
Here are some other interesting new works:
Cruise
Attachment 207616
Bauhaus
Attachment 207617
The highway/autobahn in the picture above is suspiciously similar to the highway/autobahn in his earlier work from 1999, Toys "R" Us:
Attachment 207618
I like them.Quote:
Originally Posted by manfrominternet