For the work I do, medium format really needs to write some presets or change their color response.
All of digital is somewhat flaky compared to film in the way it picks up ambient color and all of digital is so tilted towards holding the highlights and shadows even the dslrs look somewhat flat, but this (and I'm not a color scientist) makes for a lot of color contamination (or better put it digital sees everything and the medium format backs see too much for what I do).
Film was different in the fact it was kind of dumb, it didn't seem to see everything. With film I was always adding fill and with digital I would rather start in black and work my way to white.
The medium format files are the most problematic. When they are on they are completely amazing and if your working with controlled lighting under the conditions they seem to be designed for they hold detail, highlights, shadows like no dslr can, but when you are working with mixed lighting, like sunlight and hmi fill, or your working with very hard direct light in studio, they cast and require a lot of post work to get skin colors to the look you remembered in film.
Little things like high key, extreme low key and back light going to flare seem to make digital go crazy.
I assume that whoever writes the software/firmware/grey balances . . . whatever, is shooting color charts and vegtables but they really need to shoot under a lot of conditions and skin tones in almost every kind of light.
Last night I was putting together some pre production materials for a project and went onto the servers and pulled down images from the 1ds1, 1ds2, A-22, p30 and p30+.
Some were amazingly on, others were almost impossible to get that great skin color without working in photoshop. Once again when the medium format was ON it was amazing, but when off it requires selecting and almost painting the skin.
The most uniform of all the cameras was the original 1ds1. It had it's issues, but is was the most consistent.
As far as 60mpx, well that's up to whoever buys it. Personally I think it's just easier and sound bites better to claim more megapixels than it does to mention stable software, or show beautiful skin tone color, but these companies will do what they want and I guess there is value in bigger is better.
Regardless, why none of these companies have not hired some kid out of Art Center, send him on a week long shoot of 5 skin tones, all types of lighting, clothes and locations and had him shoot their digital backs, next to film and compared the results is beyond me.
JR
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I don't know about you but I was very tuned-in to my film back in the day, and I shot only a few types because I knew what I wanted and what would deliver..now if someone handed me a back or holder with something else and I shot it and got it back from the lab I would have not liked it..
my point is that it took a lot of shooting and processing to dial in the desired film look. So too do I have to shoot and tweek to get the look I need with a digital workflow.. It was my experience with film, that unless I was shooting the same stock, the same lights, and the same set, all parameters would be different.. I never did a big shoot with out running some film first.
The biggest difference now is that I know a lot more about post and prepress..I know what will print and what won't..before I'd hand them a lovely(to my eye) velvia transparency and say "have fun matching this" and know that it was't my problem..and knew as well that there were masters in the prepress industry who could tweek their system and even improve on what I gave them. It has been a lot of work to try to get up to their knowledge level as all of us need to be delivering a finished image.. not prepress ready, but damn good so it can be converted by joeblow print guy. Do I wish I could go back to dropping the film at the lab and editing on the light table.. sometimes. However, I now deliver a better, printable file than I did a sheet of film 5 years ago. Hey we were spoiled then, kodak, fuji and the lab determined everything, our curves,hue/sat, levels,iso, etc...we just shot into their predetermined conditions.
I wouldn't mind if the next back I got had a preset for astia100, then I could tweek from there if needed. However I am happy now shooting a bit flatter & processing a flat raw file and adjusting to the look I want, more work but worth it.
Regarding flakyness of digital with mixed lights..I tend to think that my small digital camera which I use in mixed light situations handles it better than transparency film ever did.