Here are a few comments on the Thread Danny started on why his LF chromes are soft compared to the ones on smaller formats.

Lots of good responses, especially the ones that discussed practice rather than theory. The ideal situation where your subject exist on one plane, as in a lens test target, rarely occurs for me in my feeble attempts at landscape photography. I shot med. Format for several years and can tell you that you rarely ever shoot at f5.6, or even f8. Usually you're trying to max out DoF and using F22+ (you can't take a near-far shot w/o this if you have no movements. So I think the "ideal" resolution of med. format lenses is quickly compromised in practice (at least for my work). Of course the same is true for LF, But you have a bigger piece of film to help compensate AND the movements can make ALL the difference.

Todd

-- todd tiffan (newhope@4dv.net), January 18, 2000

Answers

Thanks for your contribution. In the future, please respond in the thread in question, rather than starting a new one.

-- Alan Gibson (Alan.Gibson@technologist.com), January 19, 2000.

Great answers; I read many sources on this subject and quite a few are of the opinion that 6x9 s so close to 4x5 that there is little difference. And given the quality of lense that is standard on most MF you have to get a pretty expensive one for 4x5 to show a real difference, especially at enlargements of 11x14 or smaller. The greatest advantage for me is camera movements, single sheet processing and probably best of all the added TONAL SEPARATION. Straight resolution and fine grain are not the best determiners of photographic quality.

-- Ronald J LaMarsh (ronald.lamarsh@med.ge.com), January 25, 2000.