Cameras that are more expensive than a Leica

[Alan Gales]

photographs are supposed to be viewed from a distance, aren't they ?

That's a popular argument today. It looks good from a normal viewing distance. What's a normal viewing distance? When I see prints in a museum or show I put my nose up to them.

 

[removed account4]

huh

f64 sort of thing?
" nose to glass and love the details" ?

 

[frank]

It's at least nice to have the possibility of moving in close and seeing detail instead of smear.

 

[removed account4]

It's at least nice to have the possibility of moving in close and seeing detail instead of smear.

smear?

 

[frank]

smear?

Fuzz/smear = opposit of fine detail

 

[PKM-25]

Acros 100, or any current film from kodak or ilford can barely reach half of what a decent prime lens for 35mm RF cameras is capable of, not just Leica, Zeiss etc.
Acros 100 is underpowered even for Industar 3,5/50 or most of the Jupiter glass.

Yeah, but this is the way to look at it if you are obsessed with technical image quality only which in my opinion is often a big distraction from the total impact of the resulting photograph, it often shows in a lot of work on here. If you are doing amaze balls work using super sharp glass on super high res 35mm film, rock on. But if it is the same old "Wow, look at that detail in my neighbor's brick wall!"...?....I'll pass every time. I have quite a nice stash of Kodak Techpan in 35mm and 120 and while amazing in 35mm behind a lens like the Leica 50mm 1.4 Asph, the prints are not nearly as amazing as say, APX25, PanF, Tmax 100 or Acros in 120. One of the main reasons is dust, it is night and day between 35mm and 120 when it comes to printing and a film like Techpan with no grain to hide it is kind of a nightmare. The main use for me with a film like Techpan is specific macro shots and *very* specific tonal relationships, not uber sharpness. I use about 3-5 rolls a year & I am glad I keep at that level and not try to use it on everything I want to look under a microscope at.

If you go waaaay back in my posts on here, you will see I too was obsessed with films like Techpan in 35mm...then I started printing from 120 and eventually 4x5 and found it exponentially easier to arrive at a nice print with loads of detail and tonal nuance.

I do love 35mm though, it's a often chosen tool by many for a reason and being able to react fast to things and nail the focus easily makes it a worthwhile choice. But the photo...impact, impact, impact....

If you really want big pictures ya just gotta shoot big film.

...or just shoot a big idea and have a big print made out of it. This 35mm Tmax 100 shot was printed 30' feet wide...no one complained about it not being a larger format...

 

[analoguey]

If you go waaaay back in my posts on here, you will see I too was obsessed with films like Techpan in 35mm...then I started printing from 120 and eventually 4x5 and found it exponentially easier to arrive at a nice print with loads of detail and tonal nuance.

I do love 35mm though, it's a often chosen tool by many for a reason and being able to react fast to things and nail the focus easily makes it a worthwhile choice. But the photo...impact, impact, impact....



...or just shoot a big idea and have a big print made out of it. This 35mm Tmax 100 shot was printed 30' feet wide...no one complained about it not being a larger format...

That is an awesome shot! (and wherever it is framed looks appropriate!)

 

[georg16nik]

... I have quite a nice stash of Kodak Techpan in 35mm and 120 and while amazing in 35mm behind a lens like the Leica 50mm 1.4 Asph, the prints are not nearly as amazing as say, APX25, PanF, Tmax 100 or Acros in 120. One of the main reasons is dust, it is night and day between 35mm and 120 when it comes to printing and a film like Techpan with no grain to hide it is kind of a nightmare. ...

Dust?
I use glass negative carrier, condenser head, I print 135 and 120 negs. Dust was never an issue with Tech pan or any film.
My films are stored in archival, acid-free, buffered glassine film sleeves.

 

[Sirius Glass]

hi georg

sorry to ask this, i mean no disrespect ...
but i never understand why it is so important to have excessive sharpness so one could
inspect the film under a microscope .. ?

photographs are supposed to be viewed from a distance, aren't they ?
i mean i don't look at dry point etchings or pointalist paintings with my nose to the image, don't do that to photograph ...
or should i?

i mean i have 16x20 prints made from 35mm negatives ( tri x processed in gaf universal )
that look fine, if you are up-close you see the film, but you don't see the image ...

Because if one wants to make a large print of a portion of the negative there needs to be enough detail to support the print. The smaller the area of the negative, more detail is required to make the large print. If the details are not needed, they will not be noticed. If the details are needed and missing, it will be obvious to the most casual observer.

 

[removed account4]

...or just shoot a big idea and have a big print made out of it. This 35mm Tmax 100 shot was printed 30' feet wide...no one complained about it not being a larger format...

exactly

no one knows the difference ...

but tell me PKM-25
when you put your nose up to it
is it a smear?

 

[georg16nik]

no disrespect taken

If you need to print big from 35mm film, excessive sharpness is usually of least concern.
Film flatness, enlarger alignment, light source, lens performance, chemistry etc. are integral parts.

hi georg

sorry to ask this, i mean no disrespect ...
but i never understand why it is so important to have excessive sharpness so one could
inspect the film under a microscope .. ?

photographs are supposed to be viewed from a distance, aren't they ?
i mean i don't look at dry point etchings or pointalist paintings with my nose to the image, don't do that to photograph ...
or should i?

i mean i have 16x20 prints made from 35mm negatives ( tri x processed in gaf universal )
that look fine, if you are up-close you see the film, but you don't see the image ...

 

[Alan Gales]

huh

f64 sort of thing?
" nose to glass and love the details" ?

It depends upon the photograph of course but wouldn't you put your nose up to a print of Edward Weston's Cabbage? https://www.flickr.com/photos/eam1230/1794608674/in/photostream/ If I'm admiring a 16x20 print or any other size, I'm going to stand right in front of it and not view it from across the room.

I just get tired of all the digital people saying that with a 10 megapixel camera you can print huge murals. Then when someone tells them it's not sharp they reply that you have to look at it from a normal viewing distance, whatever that is.

 

[Hatchetman]

I admire Georg's good humor in this thread. Most people when taking shots left and right run away.

 

[pdeeh]

wouldn't you put your nose up to a print of Edward Weston's Cabbage?
.

I would but that's not all I'd do. I'd mostly look at it from a normal viewing distance ... (well defined in various encyclopaedia, as it happens)

I just get tired of all the digital people saying that with a 10 megapixel camera you can print huge murals. Then when someone tells them it's not sharp they reply that you have to look at it from a normal viewing distance, whatever that is

On all the digital sites I know well, no-one ever prints, and they go on and on about how sharp a camera/lens/sensor/raw file is because they can look at their pictures at "100%" and see how sharp it is ... or not.

I posted a couple of pinhole shots on one site (made on 120 velvia) and several people wanted to know how I got the pictures so sharp ... the thing was that I could see my original scans, and not only were the pictures thoroughly not sharp, they had great smears of motion blur too ...

our perceptual apparatus is unreliable

 

[Alan Gales]

I would but that's not all I'd do. I'd mostly look at it from a normal viewing distance ... (well defined in various encyclopaedia, as it happens)

I would too. I do know what a normal viewing distance used to mean but in today's world, where the digital photograhers rarely print, everyone's definition seems to be different.

 

[removed account4]

It depends upon the photograph of course but wouldn't you put your nose up to a print of Edward Weston's Cabbage? https://www.flickr.com/photos/eam1230/1794608674/in/photostream/ If I'm admiring a 16x20 print or any other size, I'm going to stand right in front of it and not view it from across the room.

I just get tired of all the digital people saying that with a 10 megapixel camera you can print huge murals. Then when someone tells them it's not sharp they reply that you have to look at it from a normal viewing distance, whatever that is.

hi alan

not sure if i would put my nose up to it, but i would look at it not from so close i couldn't see the whole image.
i think everyone's normal viewing distance is different ... mine "viewing distance" certainly isn't from across the room, unless it is an enormous
print and i need that much space between me and the image to see it whole, unless it is the intent of the photographer NOT to see the image as a whole image
but as close up 'vision bites" and if that is the point, up close i will look ...

there used to be a painting at the mfa in boston (i wish i could remember it's name ... ) it was from the 1870s i think,
and it was floor to ceiling and an enormous wall size image ... if you were too close you couldn't see it you had to be a few feet back
to even see what it was ... too far away didn't work either ...

i agree ... whatever that is ( and the-that depends on the image ? )

john

 

[Old-N-Feeble]

Yes, I'll put my nose up against a print. I like to feel like I'm seeing every tiny detail as if I'm "there" and can closely inspect interesting bits very closely. What's wrong with that?

 

[Sirius Glass]

I view photographs from the "usual" viewing distance and I get my nose up to the print too.

 

[Old-N-Feeble]

I view photographs from the "usual" viewing distance and I get my nose up to the print too.

Right... as we all do...and being able to closely inspect for very fine detail is damn nice rather than seeing course grain and blur because that fine detail puts you "there".

 

[frank]

Right... as we all do...and being able to closely inspect for very fine detail is damn nice rather than seeing course grain and blur because that fine detail puts you "there".

Or smear.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Or smear.

Touch, lick ...

 

[Old-N-Feeble]

Touch, lick ...

Please stop talking dirty... you're embarrassing me.

 

[Alan Gales]

hi alan

not sure if i would put my nose up to it, but i would look at it not from so close i couldn't see the whole image.
i think everyone's normal viewing distance is different ... mine "viewing distance" certainly isn't from across the room, unless it is an enormous
print and i need that much space between me and the image to see it whole, unless it is the intent of the photographer NOT to see the image as a whole image
but as close up 'vision bites" and if that is the point, up close i will look ...

there used to be a painting at the mfa in boston (i wish i could remember it's name ... ) it was from the 1870s i think,
and it was floor to ceiling and an enormous wall size image ... if you were too close you couldn't see it you had to be a few feet back
to even see what it was ... too far away didn't work either ...

i agree ... whatever that is ( and the-that depends on the image ? )

john

John, you and I are on the same page.

I understand film formats but at one time I was trying to understand digital and kept getting the same silly answers from the digital crowd. They say you can print as large as you want as long as you look at it from the proper viewing distance. I guess they think that if you blow up images from a digital medium format camera and a cell phone both to 16x20 and stand the same distance from each image the sharpness in the prints will be the same. I just wanted a small digital camera to carry around that I could blow up photographs to 11x14 and the sharpness would be equal to my old 35mm Contax 139 and 167 MT's. I ended up buying a Fujifilm X100s and am real happy with the sharpness of the prints.

 

[Nuff]

I agree with PKM-25, what if my vision of a photo I envision doesn't involve nice tonality or sharp detail? What if I don't want you to stuff your nose in the photo? And if you stuff the nose in the photo all I want you to see is smear/grain/no detail?

I think everyone assumes here that everyone seeks the same out of photos. I could be one of the few people here who finds Ansel Adams' photos nice, but not spectacular. And yes, I did see the original prints at gallery in Sydney to make sure I'm not missing something. I do find pictorialist photos a lot more appealing.

I think it's about time some people here realised that not everyone shares the their goals in photography...

 

[Sirius Glass]

I understand film formats but at one time I was trying to understand digital and kept getting the same silly answers from the digital crowd.

Alan it is quite simple. The digital people cannot be understood. Do not bother to try. Just concentrate on film.