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Author Topic: Ansel Adams And Camera Phones - Continuation of "Why Print" Thread  (Read 5289 times)

RSL

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Re: Ansel Adams And Camera Phones - Continuation of "Why Print" Thread
« Reply #20 on: December 11, 2012, 05:48:33 pm »

Ray, I'm not going to argue with you. I gave you my arithmetic and I stand by it. Eric came up with proof positive: If you really think f/64 on an 11 x 14 camera is affected by diffraction you need to go take a look at some 11 x 14 contact prints. It's clear Eric and Slobodan have done that. It's equally obvious you haven't.
« Last Edit: December 11, 2012, 05:50:19 pm by RSL »
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Ray

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Re: Ansel Adams And Camera Phones - Continuation of "Why Print" Thread
« Reply #21 on: December 12, 2012, 08:17:36 am »

Ray, I'm not going to argue with you.

Very wise, Russ. You'd probably lose.  ;D

Quote
I gave you my arithmetic and I stand by it. Eric came up with proof positive: If you really think f/64 on an 11 x 14 camera is affected by diffraction you need to go take a look at some 11 x 14 contact prints. It's clear Eric and Slobodan have done that. It's equally obvious you haven't.

Crikey! Some of you guys are really slack. Thank God you are not running the country. Oops! Perhaps some of you are running the country, hence the current financial problems.  ;D

Surely we all know by now that at that small size of the large-format contact print, whether 8"x10" or 11"x16", an image from any good P&S camera, and certainly the Nokia PureView 808 iPhone, can look indistinguishable from a 40mp image from an MFDB. The owner of this site has demonstrated this, a fact to which Slobodan referred in his first post.

However, when comparing different film formats, the grain factor can prevent the prints from being indistinguishable even when the image that is projected onto the film surface has equal resolution.

When the 35mm image is enlarged to the same size as the large format contact print, the grain is also enlarged. However, the grain in a contact print is not enlarged. Therefore, if the film type and speed is the same or similar, the larger format always looks smoother when it's given the benefit of a longer shutter speed.

Whether or not Slobodan and Eric have seen a contact print of a large format image shot at F64 is not relevant. Many of us have seen large format contact prints. My father was an amateur photographer taking shots of his school mates as far back as 1920, using the small-format plate cameras of the day, before 35mm film was invented.

We're talking here about comparisons. When people make comparisons, they can often achieve any result they want, if they are sufficiently devious. My preferred method, because  I'm an honest and rational sort of person and wish to seek the truth, is to keep the relevant parameters of DoF and shutter speed the same, and always compare images of the same scene with the same lighting and at equal size, at least as a starting point. From that basis one can then determine what the advantages are of a particular format and in what circumstances those advantages may apply.

Eric asked me if I'd seen a large format contact print. I probably have, when I was around 10 years old. My father did experiment with large format for a while, then threw the camera in the bin, so he told me, because it was so ridiculously cumbersome. His main passion was painting, but he earned his living as a textile designer and would often photograph his own designs to make prints for the salesmen to show to the customers. In that sense, my father was a semi-professional photographer. He also taught the subject in adult evening classes at Manchester University (U.K), as a side-line.

I understood that Slobodan was being sarcastic again when he wrote, "I rest my case". Did you miss that?  ;D


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