Reccomendations for buying an 8x10 system

[bill t.]

I am very unimpressed with those wildly sloppy, result-anticipating tests, but I will say no more about it.

The only tests that make the slightest sense for you is to set up an example of the kind of shoot you plan to do, and shoot your own darned tests.  Be sure to include everything you would need along the entire workflow, to include some prints if that's your goal and some intelligent criticism of the results.

Nothing else is relevant, not even my own enlightened prattle, and all this internet blah-blahing is an absurdity.

So OK, the ball's in your corner.  I am genuinely interested to see what you can make of it.  Maybe I'll be surprised.

Please share your results.  Because it you don't that will only feed our worst suspicions.  

[bill t.]

I've got such a big mouth...

To counter that tunnel-visioned, apoplectic test page with a dose of reality, here is a screen grab of an 11" high crop of a 43 inch high x 96 wide image I am printing right this minute.  A stitch with a single 5D2 vertical frame, and a few more left and right.  This part of the frame is in deep shade.  It's gorgeous, Crewdson would cry.

Please note the 50% down at the lower left corner.  At pixel level what you see here is a little bigger than print size, but half the resolution.  It takes smooth paper to show anywhere near the full resolution on a print.  Not bad for a "crappy" 5D2 frame and a wee bit careful post processing.  And BTW this is from a corner of the frame, not the center.  Focus is everything, zooms stink, and so does autofocus.  Mama don't take my 55mm Micro Nikkor away, or even my 45mm T/S lens, or my manual focusing ring.

Be sure to look at this all the way scaled up.

[K.C.]

This tethered thing will get the most technically perfect image it is possible to achieve by any technology in the entire history of photography.  For basically zero money.  All that adds up to a freaking damned photographic miracle that makes it a sin against common sense to use a view cameras + film in almost any setting, amen.

Hear yea, hear yea!

[Ellis Vener]

Hear yea, hear yea!

What K.C. said.