Edmund,
Yes, I understand that looking at your image at 100% or greater reveals shortcomings, but unless you are also printing at that massive size, it's basically academic.
I mentioned recently buying Italian Vogue and being dismayed at the stiffness of the little editorial that there was; it looked as if everything, editorial as well as advertising, had been shot in the same studio on the same monolithic 8x10 wooden camera - the wood of the camera echoed in the woodenness of the photographs. With human subjects the effect is awful, not as in filling one with awe and wonder, but with a certain revulsion and, as dangerous for fashion, of boredom.
Perhaps this isn't really a photographic problem but, rather, one of too many noses pressed against the monitor, looking at gigantic reproduction ratios when all you really want is an image 11.5 inches tall!
Anyway, it used to be perfectly possible to make massive hoarding pictures out of 135 format film... I remember the beauty of the Cacharel posters Moon made with Nikon cameras and even, in far more humble mode, my own 40x60 inch black/white fashion blow-ups that used to travel around the world as selling aids at exhibitions for knitwear company products, or in-store point-of-sale advertising.
It seems it just becomes exceedingly more expensive for working photographers to make the same photographs that they already could.
Rob
