I came to LF from using a Hasselblad and Zeiss lenses. I was very happy with th e results but, like many people I think, I was lured by the LF promise of even s harper pictures and smoother gradation. I use AgfaPan 25 and Rodinal with the H assy and you would be hard pushed to see so much as a speck of grain even in lar ge enlargements.
Well, even though I love struggling with an upside down reversed groundglass und er a baking middle-eastern sky, I have to confess that my results haven't been b etter than the Hasselblad. The grain on T-Max 100 is bigger than Agfa25 and I d on't think the gradation is better What am I doing wrong? I have a Toyo 45CX with Sinaron 4.5 75mm, S-Angulon XL 9 0mm, Nikkor 150 f/5.6 and Nikkor f/8 300mm lenses. The glass is good. The came ra is adequate. Must be the operator ...
I don't think it's camera shake - Manfrotto 344b with 141c head. Not massive - but should be adequate. Also my negs don't look like they have shake. My results aren't dreadful - but they aren't earth shattering either. Maybe I should consider the heretical notion of returning to 6x6...? Any ideas? YA Sinclair
What developer do you use for the T-Max? BTW you may have better luck tying to get PAN F in sheets and use them. Or try FP4+ developed in a 1-60 concentration of ILFOSPEED print developer, for approximately 11 minutes, though it is worth experimenting to get your preferred time - this does work, I'm not pulling your leg.
I think you are mixing apples and oranges. The agfapan 25 is a much finer grained film than Tmax100. To do the comparison you would need to use agfapan 25 in sheet film(I don't know if it exists). If your looking for zero grain use sheet film versions of Technical Pan 25 by Kodak. I personally have not used it - I use only T-max 100 in XTOL. As well you can't do the whole movement thing with your 6x6 normal camera. My friend has a fancy Rollei and he gets awesome images with his medium format camera. I bet you do too. To outdo the medium format with LF I suppose you'll need to resort to finer grain film, very large prints, contact printing the neg, camera movements or the use of indivual sheet development with the zone system. I don't think your question is heretical but rather based on technical limits of the medium. I'd like to here other ideas on this intersting question. Keith
The only reason I use LF is for the camera movements and image control.
It's been my opinion since the introduction of T-grain emulsions that as far as pure sharpness is concerned, modern MF lenses and film are every bit the equal of certainly 5x4, and probably anything larger. IMHO there can be some improvement in tonality with LF, if you compare like with like, but trying to compare different techniques across different formats is like asking why your horse thrived on hay and oats, but your dog died.
I myself recently switched from using Hasselblad to view camera. No, the results aren't "earth-shatteringly more amazing", but.... a) using movements to straighten perspective and b) using movements to tilt the DOF plane make a BIG difference. For handheld photography, I continue to love my Hasselblad. If I go through the trouble of using a tripod though, I may as well use a view camera for the added flexibility of movements. Grain size and lppm I can put onto the negative are quite secondary!
Before you give up on your view camera, try TMX in XTOL developer. This combination (in my somewhat limited tests) gave grain rivaling Technical Pan (!!!) and finer than Agfa25 in Rodinal.
When you enlarge a negative you are 1) magnifying the grain size and 2) introducing another optical element, namely the enlargers lens, between the subject and the final image.
I have never been able to obtain the sharpness in, say, an 8 x 10 print, with an enlargement that I can get with a contact print from my Deardorff. This is independent of film/developer combinations.
This may be due to some inefficiency on my part in small/medium format processing. But, the physics intuitively tells me that actuance and resolution have an inverse relationship with enlargement.
Yes, shooting Techpan at ASA 25 and developing in a fine-grain developer is going to get very acceptable results on an 8x10 print with regard to sharpness. But, everything has a price. I can get as good or probably better results of the same subject with the Deardorff and I can do it with ASA 200 or even ASA 400. So I can stop down to f/45 and get great DOF and still not blur the clouds with a 20-second exposure. Plus, with lens tilt, I won't have to stop down to f/45. I can shoot at f/22.
Of course, the question has to be asked..."Who is going to be happier climbing out of the Grand Canyon, the guy with the 2 1/4 camera or the guy with the 8x10?" And the natural answer is: "The guy with the 8x10. He brought a mule."
Yaakov, I too am a committed APX 25 user in 120 roll film. IMHO there is nothing better as far as sharpness is concerned!! But when I began using LF (5x4) I did so in the knowledge that APX 25 was no longer available in 5x4 sheets. I recently visited Scotland with both outfits to shoot landscapes, and as a matter of interest I shot the same scene in 120 (APX 25) and in 5x4 (Ilford FP4 Plus) and dev'd both in PMK Pyro. The results as far as sharpness is concerned are identical!! (IMHO anyway) In fact the APX 25 in PMK is as sharp as I have ever got!! But despite the similarities the larger size of the 5x4 neg has resulted in unbelievable tonality that a smaller neg cannot give me. I am determined to stick with LF and am slowly getting to grips with all the movements I need for landscape work. The sheer amount of control that I have over my images is reason enough for me to use 5x4, and IMHO cannot be equalled in a camera without the benefits of a view camera's movements. Stick at it !! Regards Paul
I think one of the problems in obtaining absolute sharpness in LF is that not al l sheet film holders hold the film absolutely flat.Film can even buckle slightly in very humid conditions when the dark slide is initially removed,so one should allow time(how much?)for the film to equilibrate before making the exposure. With regard to sheet film I can only refer you to Tillman Crane's article(Viewca mera Mar./Apr.1996) on his review of Delta 100/400.It has been said that Delta 1 00 is the sharpest b/w film.But like others have already said LF is not always a bout sharpness but about tonal range,and it is this richness of tones for me tha t make LF work so worth while. Regards,Trevor.
Camera movements aside, I think the ability to contact print is the biggest advantage in terms of tonal range and sharpness of LF over MF. If you shoot 4x5" and enlarge, with today's films and Hasselblad lenses, indeed, there might be no inherent advantage to the larger film size per se (again, leaving aside the enormous advantages of camera movements and the ability to develop each sheet individually). I'd say, if 4x5" doesn't produce the results you want, try 8x10".
I know I've brought this issue up a number of times in various threads, but I still maintain that the importance of ground glass alignment should not be under estimated. Chances are if your Toyo is a stock model and has had no modifications done to its viewing system, it is most likely right on the money. It never hurts to check this and you can do it with a film test described in my ViewCamera article (Nov./ Dec., 1996).
That aside, I think another important reason to consider LF over MF is the ability to plan an exposure and develop each image one by one if necessary. In other words, it's a bit easier to employ the zone system with sheet film than with roll film. It's not impossible to do it with roll film, it just takes several magazines dedicated to different development times.
I don't believe the differences in various premium lenses are as critical to final print quality as many make them out to be, but that's just another opinion. I do feel strongly about using enlarging lenses at their optimum aperture. The degradation at small apertures was demonstrated to me at a printing workshop a couple of years ago and since I've started paying more attention to that (and enlarger alignment) I've seen dramatic improvement in sharpness in my prints.
One final comment I have is that toward the end of his career, Ansel Adams praised the Hasselblad as one of the most elegant high quality systems for photography ever developed. He adopted it as his standard outfit. I have to believe after as long a career as his, even the energetic Adams got a bit tired of schlepping view cameras around. But, take a look a "Moon Over Half Dome". Shot with a 500C and a 250mm Sonnar, no excuses need be made for this image. Could MF be used to make the sorts of negatives that require compound Scheimpflug movements to maximize DOF? Probably not, although there are now Hasselblads with limited movements. Maybe there is a place for of both these formats. I personally wouldn't give up either one.
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