Getting that film look

On Wed, 21 Dec 2005 04:25:28 GMT, no_name
wrote:

[snip]
What part of "OTOH, orbital distance has a lot less effect on
summer/winter temperatures than inclination of earth's axis." didn't you
understand?

no_name, didn't mean to offend but your post started off with this...

Earth's orbit is an ellipse. The earth IS closer to the sun when it's
summer IN THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE. Also helps to account for why
southern hemisphere winters are generally milder that norhtern
hemisphere winters.

Which is wrong (the Earth is closest to the Sun in January so the
Southern hemisphere actually get hotter summers and colder winters
than the Northern hemisphere). So I naturally jumped on the rest of
what you wrote without reading too carefully!

--
Kulvinder Singh Matharu
Website : www.metalvortex.com
Contact : www.metalvortex.com/form/form.htm

"It ain't Coca Cola, it's rice", Straight to Hell - The Clash

On Wed, 21 Dec 2005 15:51:45 +0900, "David J. Littleboy"
wrote:

"Scott W" wrote:

I shot 35mm for over twenty years, now I really wish I shot MF instead.

I started out with MF and never could understand 35mm...


I see both points of view.

Until a few years ago I shot very little MF... just enough
to know it was there, and better.

But I've had scores of 35 mm photos published -- mostly
in high-school yearbooks, a few more in academic
magazines, etc. 35 mm gear feels right in my hands.

At work I walk by a calender of Galen Rowell photos.
IIRC, he was a Nikon man. Ditto Art Wolfe, et. al.
I often wish those shots had been done with MF or
LF, but that's pretty silly of me. Mostly I wish I had
the innate sense of place and of composition that
these guys had.

35 is good for dealing with fast-moving targets and
of people, using available light. I can't visualize
Cartier-Bresson without also seeing the Leica.
Amazing history from the 20th century was captured
on 35 mm. Bourke-White. Capa, and on and on.
(And lots of history on Crown Graphics also.)

Speaking of which, was there ever a favorite MF
camera for news-hounds? Did beat photographers
ever use MF?


rafe b
www.terrapinphoto.com

Scott,
I sent you a personal email to your hotmail account
on a different subject, but then it occurred to me
that you may never read it because hotmail accounts
get filled with spam. If that is not a good way
to contact you, please email me another address
if that is OK with you.

Roger

rafe b wrote:

Speaking of which, was there ever a favorite MF
camera for news-hounds? Did beat photographers
ever use MF?


The Rolleiflex TLR, of course!

Roger N. Clark (change username to rnclark) wrote:
Scott,
I sent you a personal email to your hotmail account
on a different subject, but then it occurred to me
that you may never read it because hotmail accounts
get filled with spam. If that is not a good way
to contact you, please email me another address
if that is OK with you.

Roger
Got it, a reply should be there by now. I only check the hotmail
account once or twice a week. Sadly the hotmail account get far less
spam then my regular email account.

Scott

David J. Littleboy wrote:
Maybe. So far, looking at the samples and at things in galleries, I'm
perfectly happy with A4 to hand people and 13x19 for walls. Larger quality
prints are wonderful, but the desire to make them myself isn't there.

I find myself creeping up on print size. If I print a photo as a 4 x 6
it has very little impact, it is far too small. If I print the same
photo as a 8 x 12 and hand these to people it make a much larger
impact. But I am finding that handing them a 12 x 18 has far more
impact yet. Just a few years ago I would have said that the largest
prints I would have been interested in would be 8 x 10s. For now I am
pretty happy with 12 x 18 prints, they are cheap and not hard to
handle, but I can well imaging 5 to 10 years from now printing out more
20 x 30 prints. There is something about viewing a large print close
that gives you the feeling of being there, if of course the photo has
the needed resolution.

So for now I find I am shooting, at times, with far more resolution
then the prints I am currently having made need.

Scott

Scott W wrote:

I find myself creeping up on print size. If I print a photo as a 4 x 6
it has very little impact, it is far too small. If I print the same
photo as a 8 x 12 and hand these to people it make a much larger
impact. But I am finding that handing them a 12 x 18 has far more
impact yet. Just a few years ago I would have said that the largest
prints I would have been interested in would be 8 x 10s. For now I am
pretty happy with 12 x 18 prints, they are cheap and not hard to
handle, but I can well imaging 5 to 10 years from now printing out more
20 x 30 prints. There is something about viewing a large print close
that gives you the feeling of being there, if of course the photo has
the needed resolution.

You might try, as a start, investing in some really good prime lenses...

Chris Loffredo wrote:
Scott W wrote:

I find myself creeping up on print size. If I print a photo as a 4 x 6
it has very little impact, it is far too small. If I print the same
photo as a 8 x 12 and hand these to people it make a much larger
impact. But I am finding that handing them a 12 x 18 has far more
impact yet. Just a few years ago I would have said that the largest
prints I would have been interested in would be 8 x 10s. For now I am
pretty happy with 12 x 18 prints, they are cheap and not hard to
handle, but I can well imaging 5 to 10 years from now printing out more
20 x 30 prints. There is something about viewing a large print close
that gives you the feeling of being there, if of course the photo has
the needed resolution.

You might try, as a start, investing in some really good prime lenses...

Good lenses can only take you so far. My favorite lens is a 50mm 1.8.
The 1.4 has little interest since I normally shoot at f/16 to f/22 or
so in order to get a good DOF. I will stitch 40 to 80 of these
together and get a photo in the range of 80 to 150 MP. Getting a good
80MP photo with LF (4 x 5) is not all that easy and just not possible
at all with a MF camera. Others do much more with stitching then I
do, there are any number of 500 MP photos a few 1000 MP and at least
one 2500 MP photo. Photoshop Elements starts to get pretty slow when
dealing with photos much over 100MP so this seems to be a good size for
now. I can downsample when stitching so that in a few years I can go
back to the same source images and stitch a larger photo if I wish to.

This is a 100MP photo I did using the 50mm 1.8, this was a test photo
inside, this is a good test since parallax is much more of a problem
when photographing in a room rather then landscape type photos outside.
http://www.sewcon.com/temp/100MPphoto_HC.jpg I use high compression on
this so it only takes 11 MB as a jpeg. Not a bad photo for a $70 lens.

Scott

Scott W wrote:
Chris Loffredo wrote:

Scott W wrote:


I find myself creeping up on print size. If I print a photo as a 4 x 6
it has very little impact, it is far too small. If I print the same
photo as a 8 x 12 and hand these to people it make a much larger
impact. But I am finding that handing them a 12 x 18 has far more
impact yet. Just a few years ago I would have said that the largest
prints I would have been interested in would be 8 x 10s. For now I am
pretty happy with 12 x 18 prints, they are cheap and not hard to
handle, but I can well imaging 5 to 10 years from now printing out more
20 x 30 prints. There is something about viewing a large print close
that gives you the feeling of being there, if of course the photo has
the needed resolution.

You might try, as a start, investing in some really good prime lenses...


Good lenses can only take you so far. My favorite lens is a 50mm 1.8.
The 1.4 has little interest since I normally shoot at f/16 to f/22 or
so in order to get a good DOF. I will stitch 40 to 80 of these
together and get a photo in the range of 80 to 150 MP. Getting a good
80MP photo with LF (4 x 5) is not all that easy and just not possible
at all with a MF camera. Others do much more with stitching then I
do, there are any number of 500 MP photos a few 1000 MP and at least
one 2500 MP photo. Photoshop Elements starts to get pretty slow when
dealing with photos much over 100MP so this seems to be a good size for
now. I can downsample when stitching so that in a few years I can go
back to the same source images and stitch a larger photo if I wish to.

This is a 100MP photo I did using the 50mm 1.8, this was a test photo
inside, this is a good test since parallax is much more of a problem
when photographing in a room rather then landscape type photos outside.
http://www.sewcon.com/temp/100MPphoto_HC.jpg I use high compression on
this so it only takes 11 MB as a jpeg. Not a bad photo for a $70 lens.


I'm not speaking of giant stitching operations, but single shots.

You might find that a first-rate lens can really improve your images (at
least technically). With such a lens, you might even find that you like
film!
; )

Do you really believe that a one-billion pixel digital camera with a
cr*p zoom will give you better quality than (your much hated - did your
father invent Kodachrome, or something - just wondering) a fine grain
film with an excellent lens?

Reality is simple: Cr*p in, cr*p out...

Digital is not magic; what the lens doesn't catch, isn't there (unless
you re-create everything in Photoshop).

Chris Loffredo wrote:

I'm not speaking of giant stitching operations, but single shots.

You might find that a first-rate lens can really improve your images (at
least technically). With such a lens, you might even find that you like
film!
; )
If I was to ever shoot film again it would MF. But that would be a
pretty large investment, not just the camea but about $1500 for a
scanning that can do a good job scanning the MF film.

Do you really believe that a one-billion pixel digital camera with a
cr*p zoom will give you better quality than (your much hated - did your
father invent Kodachrome, or something - just wondering) a fine grain
film with an excellent lens?
I liked Kodachrome a lot when I was shooting film. I still like it
because slide from over 20 years ago still look good and are some of my
sharpest scans.

a one-billion pixel camrea would need a very good lens indeed, but then
I don't try and get all the pixels in one shot. I know this is not for
everyone, or even very many people but for me it is what works.


Reality is simple: Cr*p in, cr*p out...

Digital is not magic; what the lens doesn't catch, isn't there (unless
you re-create everything in Photoshop).

You seem to not want to allow me to stitch in all of this, this would
be somewhat like me trying to demand that you use ISO 800 or higher
film. We all have our methods of working. For me stitching is pretty
magical, I can take 4 quick photos hand helded and stitch them to
produce a sharp 20MP photo. This gives me a very sharp 12 x 18 inch
print, something that I can't get with either a single shot from my
digital or film camera. With my panoramic head I can capture the
photos needed for a 100MP photo in less then a minute.

I don't expect many people to want to stitch photos to get higher
resolution but then the percentage of people who really care about high
resolution is very small. Don't take this wrong, I shot 35mm for
years, but if you only are shooting 35mm you don't really care much
about resolution. You might want to get the most out of your
equipment and there is nothing wrong with that but 35mm is very limited
in what it can do. But for what most people want to do either 35mm or
digital will do just fine and either can take great photos, but not
what I would call high resolution.

Scott