Just look at what 8x10 is used for in the commercial world: cars, food furniture, and Playboy centerfolds. Situations where detail carries the message. Does it make a difference? You bet... Follow the money.
Just look at what 8x10 is used for in the commercial world: cars, food furniture, and Playboy centerfolds. Situations where detail carries the message. Does it make a difference? You bet... Follow the money.
If people really noticed "sharpness" they would have stopped looking at paintings soon after the invention of photography. It's about ART.
If the detail carries the message in those examples, then why are playboy centrefolds taken through a soft-focus filter, and car ads airbrushed to death? In the commercial world, I think you'll find 10x8 is mainly chosen to impress the client or art director, not for the final quality in print at 133dpi.
8x10 is often used, for no other reason, than to impress clients (been there,done that). The question is: can you make a living wasting time and resouuces when you are in competition with people who are not (so wasteful). Sooner or later money will talk and you will start doing what makes sense which, in this scenario, would be: using a smaller format, when a smaller format will do the job.
The business of print media has been around for a long time. It's a huge business that attracts some very smart people. To these people image quality is everything. And, believe me, there is still a demand for 8x10, especially for the fold-outs.
Well, here's my somewhat rambling reaction to large format and sharpness:
About a year ago I came across an exhibit by Charles Cramer (www.charlescramer.com) at a cafe in Menlo Park, California. They were landscapes shot 4x5 and then printed to LightJet, many 30" x 40". What attracted me to the prints first was the power of the image, composition, beauty, and color. As I got closer to the pictures, I found myself scrutinizing them close-up for sharpness and grain, probably due to their enormous size and rich colors. This was my first exposure to LightJet prints and I was awe-struck. How could they possibly be so sharp and grain-free?
Several weeks ago I went to an photo exhibit in San Francisco at the Fort Mason Center, I believe it was called Photo San Francisco. There were around 50 different galleries showing mostly B&W images from various artists like Adams, Weston, Evans, Maplethorp and a whole bunch more. No LightJet prints and the sizes were much smaller. After the show and driving home, I realized that not once had I analyzed any of the prints for sharpness or grain.
In summary, I think the wow effect of large digital prints from LF causes me to approach and analyze them in a different way than I normally would. I suppose this will change w
In the non enthusiast maarket, a browser inside a photo gallery, most people really appreciate a 24x30" shot from an a 8x10, however, they don't realize it was shot on a 8x10 camera... most art appreciators don't even know such big animals exist. So they are impressed the end product, but don't really seem to know what went into making it. I find that there is some shots where 8x10 produces barely marginal benefits over MF, however other shots, the difference is quite large. So IMHO, I think there is no one answer, it varies based on the shot, enlargment factor, quality of lenses and film, etc...
I am amazed how hard it is to make a photo galler successful. In Las Vegas, inside the Caesars forum shops, a very upscale crowded shopping mall, there was a photo gallery open for awhile that had prints from many of the big names in landscape photography.... Meunch, Ketchum, etc. It was magnificant to see all the best work from these icons... however, the store was never busy..I was amazed..while the art stores selling oil paintings were always mobed with people... Needless to say they are no longer in the mall... thought this would interest some readers...
To answer Pete's question:One of the major reasons Playboy shoots centerfolds on 8x10 is because the smallest size they use them at (barring the occasional trading card or desk calendar) is roughly 11x24. Pick up a French Playboy sometime and you'll see it printed even larger. Pick up a German edition and you might see what happens when those editors decide to replace the carefully made 8x10 shot with 35mm. Wander into a college bookstore, and you will usually find wall or door-sized posters made from centerfold shots.If the detail carries the message in those examples, then why are playboy centrefolds taken through a soft-focus filter, and car ads airbrushed to death?
Attend any of their major trade shows or promotions, and you might be lucky enough to see the life-size or larger prints and posters that make full use of the detail in the original. Join the Playboy Cyber Club and you'll have the opportunity to use LivePicture to scroll around a high-resolution scan of those big scans and see just how much fuss went into making them (you'll see other things in great detail too, but that's a different issue).
I've had the chance to look at a life-sized print from a Playboy centerfold, and the quality is pretty darn amazing. The only reason I didn't spend more time looking at it was that the woman in the picture was standing next to me, wearing a little red cocktail dress...
Of course, one of the other reasons Playboy used to like a large sheet of film was the retouching possibilities, something that's handled digitally these days, and hasn't ever been quite as extreme as everyone seems to believe (it's frankly cheaper to fix as many problems as possible before the shutter fires, with lighting, makeup, wardrobe, careful posing, skin tape, and, yes, soft-focus accessories, especially when a last-minute editorial change might result in a different picture running).
Given how much better film has gotten since the 1950s, they almost certainly could drop down to 4x5 and be happy with the results, and that's in fact what they do for product shots. But the centerfold is their claim to fame, and they spare no expense to get exactly what they want. To be honest, I suspect that by the time you add up the cost of having a small army of stylists in the studio for two weeks, the expense and relative inconvenience of the 8x10 format is pretty trivial.
no everything look the same
What an interesting thread. I'm glad the little smart aleck put it back in the "recent answers" column so I could discover it. An effective picture is such a combination of things. Effective pictures are the ones that someone walking through a display will stop for a glance, then start to proceed, then stop for another look, try to leave, and finally spend 5 minutes or so just looking. Just sharpness won't make that happen. But many times it can't happen without. Imagine Clyde Butcher's 50X60" prints shot with 35mm. Picture content, the picture creater's spirit/ vision, picture size, (Weston's would be awful bigger than 8X10), and sharpness are all part of the equation. It's frustrating to have all of the other components in a picture that can't survive past 11X14. That's why I shoot the larger formats. I want the potential to be there just in case I get lucky and the other elements come together also. Other posters have said it better than I am but still it's fun to go through the thought process. Thanks Q
There's more in the play than just sharpness or resolution. As David Goldfarb points it out, there's a three dimensionality that is seen in pictures taken with 8x10 and bigger formats. This can be distinguished even in a poor jpeg'ed webpicture. And this is probably the reason why old historic photographs look so different,that even people not involved in photography notice this quality.
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