sharpest lens ever

[Armin Seeholzer]

That's a huge print. You need an 8x10 negative for that.

1+

[Mark Kononczuk]

i know exactly what you mean ....

the reason i asked about the solargraphs
is because they are highly unstable images.
typically they are done using a pinhole camera that is left in a perch / tree
for 6 or 7 months, and they are a small scrap of paper that was put into a 35mm film canister.
the light stains an image on the paper ...
they can't be fixed because there isn't really a chemical reaction, the image turns white in fixer ...
even extremely dilute hypo/sodium thiosulfate fixer buffered with sodium carbonate...
and if left a pitchblack room/storage the image will turn completely grey. the usual way of capturing
the image is by scanning or xeroxing it ( xeroxes are archival ) and then enlarging it
like one would any digital negative ... and the process of scanning or xeroxing the image ruins it.

it isn't that i can't imagine a large camera obscura being made, like a shed, and photo paper left in it for 6months ...
kind of like a very long abe morell photograph without a camera ....
and then the stained unstable image displayed as an installation piece and the image, as well as its deterioration/greying
is the "art"... but i have a feeling your fellow students just enlarged small images instead.

is there any way to view you and your fellow students' work ?

thanks !
john

http://www.galeriaff.infocentrum.com...yk/decyk_a.htm

http://galeriaego.pl/artysci/76-katarzyna-majak#

http://www.stepinski.com/index.php?zone=phot

http://www.wspolczesnafotografia.pl/...al-milach.html

[jnantz]

http://www.galeriaff.infocentrum.com...yk/decyk_a.htm

http://galeriaego.pl/artysci/76-katarzyna-majak#

http://www.stepinski.com/index.php?zone=phot

http://www.wspolczesnafotografia.pl/...al-milach.html

thanks mark

- john

[Atul Mohidekar]

About Digitar 120mm lens...

The Schneider literature is very conservative and is probably appropriate for the usage of the lens on digital back. For the record, the Digitar does cover 4x5 but allows very small amount of movements. I have the 120mm Digitar lens and I bought it after communicating directly with the Schneider engineer. At that time I was trying to decide between two stellar Schneider lenses - Digitar 120mm and Super-Symmar XL 110mm. Also, I was concerned about the diffraction effects at f/22. When I specifically asked the Schneider engineer to compare these two lenses at f/22. His reply was that the Digitar would be far superior to Symmar at f/22 "in terms of resolution". He did point out that the IC for the Digitar is much smaller. I bought the lens and have since compared its results with many other great modern lenses including Sironar-S 135mm, Nikkor-M 300mm, Nikkor-M 200mm and Nikkor Macro 120mm. Digitar is the sharpest LF lens I have owned. As it has been correctly pointed out in this thread, its main problem is its smaller IC. I don't use the lens much on my 4x5 as I don't use any lens in that focal length in 4x5. For 6x9, Digitar is my most used lens.

// Atul

[genotypewriter]

This has to be one of the most moronic threads on this forum - Image QUALITY is dependent on lots of factors - In my not very humble opinion tripod choice is one of the most crucial at the neg making stage

It is moronic to assume that the OP meant that quality depends exclusively on the lens' sharpness when they never said that in the first place.

The most important lenses, the only ones you should spend sleepless nights over, are your enlarging lenses - Enlarging lenses are the bottleneck through which all your images are filtered - In the case of anyone making digital scans, don't worry about camera lens quality as you will ruin your images in Photoshop whatever their original quality

Wrong. (1) Smaller lenses, such as ones in scanners, can be made sharper... would you rock up with your favourite enlarging lens to a medical lab to inspect blood slides or would you use a microscope? (2) "photoshop" and scanning doesn't ruin the "original quality" any more than your enlarging lens and photo paper. Putting things back in to context, because most people miss that, all I'm saying is one is not a replacement for the other.

PS, there is no "e" at the end of lens, that told me a lot to start with

So you're associating English language skills to intelligence? There are people who are literate in far more difficult languages than English but according to you, are they "moronic" too?

[SergeiR]

Umm.. Kinda offtopic, but "lense" is not entirely incorrect spelling. Some old photography books (english ones, no less) do use it.

[Mark Kononczuk]

Umm.. Kinda offtopic, but "lense" is not entirely incorrect spelling. Some old photography books (english ones, no less) do use it.

thank you. some people see beyond wikipedia I see.

[Mark Kononczuk]

Anyway, returning to the original thread.... has anyone out there made a large print, eg. 1.5 x 1 metres from a single 4x5 film and been satisfied with the results?

[E. von Hoegh]

Anyway, returning to the original thread.... has anyone out there made a large print, eg. 1.5 x 1 metres from a single 4x5 film and been satisfied with the results?

I've never made a print that big, from any size negative. I'd use an 8 x10 negative myself. I've enlarged 35mm negatives and 2 1/4" x 2 3/4" negatives by a similar factor, though, and can say that it requires care with every single step from start to finish - it will certainly test your technique.

[rdenney]

Anyway, returning to the original thread.... has anyone out there made a large print, eg. 1.5 x 1 metres from a single 4x5 film and been satisfied with the results?

4x5 enlarges to a print 1x1.2 meters with a 10x enlargement.

I have a 10x enlargement on display in my home, but from 6x12, not 4x5 (the print is 22x40 inches). It was, however, made in a 4x5 camera using 4x5 lenses. The lens was a Super Angulon f/5.6, as I recall from the photographer (I don't recall the focal length). The film was scanned and printed on a large Epson.

It looks good to me. I can view it as closely as my eyes can focus and I do not feel as though the sense of endless detail breaks down.

With proper drum scanning, 10x is not out of reach at all, even without using the sharpest lens ever.

Rick "not saying it would look good to everyone here" Denney