Originally Posted by
John Layton
We all have our own thresholds...and indeed, depending upon the nature of light, subject, logistics, etc. etc., medium format is often a better choice than LF.
Personally, I typically do not print smaller than 16x20 these days...and while my Fuji/Voigtlander 6x7's (and to some degree my Hasselblad) can indeed often stand up to and even exceed what I could obtain with LF at this print size (again, depending on light/subject/logistics), its when I go to 20x30, 30x40 and 40x60 that I truly appreciate the qualities offered by LF.
Then again, some of these qualities relate to the inherent flexibility offered by LF - and I would find it very difficult to give up various movements, particularly axial and off-axial rotations, for most of my landscape work. But for tramping up into the mountains and hoping to create some broad, distant views, a simple, lightweight, fixed focus LF camera could be perfect, assuming sufficient light if handheld, and that a significantly closer foreground is not important or if, for whatever reason, DOF is not that important or even distracting.
But even on those days which would be bright enough to use LF hand held, I often find myself reaching for something like an orange filter...and the two stop sacrifice that this entails often eliminates the possibility of hand held LF, excepting in cases when I can compensate (at least somewhat) for the lack of this filter through selective processing.
Horses for courses here - knowing that lots of folks like handheld LF for the specific qualities offered even at very small print sizes, and even (thinking of Nicholas Nixon) contact prints.
Bookmarks