Does anyone make ...

On 7/26/2010 11:49 AM Doug McDonald spake thus:

On 7/25/2010 6:02 PM, Peter wrote:

All of these seem to be interesting points. Even so, film is cheap.
Why not just shoot 4x5 and trim it later with scissors?

There is an answer to that: becasue even to this day, 4x5 films
are simply inferior to 35mm ones (unless you like Velvia).

That's an interesting accusation, and one I've never heard before. Do
you have any evidence to substantiate it?

Not challenging you, because I simply don't know. However, if what you
say is true, it could simply be because 4x5 film doesn't *have* to be as
good as 35mm film, by some proportional margin, because it gets blown up
less to make prints.


--
The fashion in killing has an insouciant, flirty style this spring,
with the flaunting of well-defined muscle, wrapped in flags.

- Comment from an article on Antiwar.com (http://antiwar.com)

On 7/26/2010 1:56 PM, David Nebenzahl wrote:
On 7/26/2010 11:49 AM Doug McDonald spake thus:

On 7/25/2010 6:02 PM, Peter wrote:

All of these seem to be interesting points. Even so, film is cheap.
Why not just shoot 4x5 and trim it later with scissors?

There is an answer to that: becasue even to this day, 4x5 films
are simply inferior to 35mm ones (unless you like Velvia).

That's an interesting accusation, and one I've never heard before. Do you have any evidence to
substantiate it?

Only my own photographs.


Not challenging you, because I simply don't know. However, if what you say is true, it could simply
be because 4x5 film doesn't *have* to be as good as 35mm film, by some proportional margin, because
it gets blown up less to make prints.



You are implying that it doesn't have to have as fine grain, etc.

To some extent that is true.

But there is also tonal rendition and color rendition.

I don't like any Fuji film. I don't like the color rendition.

I used negative film. Kodak never made any 4x5 color negative that offers
the critical rendition of greens that their 35 mm films do. It's not
subtle. I consider green the most important color to
get rigght, especially the differentition of nearby shades. The
"amateur" 35mm films do this best, though in some cases it appears
that they were selling, at times, the same film in different
boxes some sold as "amateur" and some as "pro".

But none of this stuff (i.e. film) is as good as a standard Bayer sensor
digital camera.

Doug McDonald

Doug McDonald wrote:
On 7/25/2010 6:02 PM, Peter wrote:

All of these seem to be interesting points. Even so, film is
cheap. Why not just shoot 4x5 and trim it later with scissors?

There is an answer to that: becasue even to this day, 4x5 films are
simply inferior to 35mm ones (unless you like Velvia).

I cannot imagine why that would be true. Why would a manufacturer put an
inferior emulsion on a product with the same name as another product
that differs only in size? It does not seem to make sense to me. Why
would they want to keep more batches of emulsion in inventory than the
minimum they need to run their business?

It is true that Kodak gave similar names to Plus-X and Tri-X films, but
they had different codes. Tri-X sheet film was all toe as far as I was
concerned, as was Plux-X. In 35mm the had shorter toes. And, IIRC, 120
had yet another emulsion. But I think those were exceptions. As far as I
can tell, they tended to have the same sharpness (I never had a
microdensitometer to actually measure this).

So I do not know from your post if your criticism has to do with curve
shape, sharpness, or what. If it is about sharpness, I would examine
film flatness in your holders, or proper ground glass location, before
criticising the film. If you do not like the curve shapes (I dislike
most of them), I would consider TMax film in Xtol 1+1 one shot for very
good straight line results. But many people like long toe films for some
reason. YMMV.

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In article ,
Doug McDonald wrote:
But there is also tonal rendition and color rendition.

I don't like any Fuji film. I don't like the color rendition.

I used negative film. Kodak never made any 4x5 color negative that offers
the critical rendition of greens that their 35 mm films do. It's not
subtle. I consider green the most important color to
get rigght, especially the differentition of nearby shades. The

You are an idiot. It's the same emulsion!

--
Thor Lancelot Simon
"All of my opinions are consistent, but I cannot present them all
at once." -Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On The Social Contract

Jean-David Beyer writes:

It is true that Kodak gave similar names to Plus-X and Tri-X films, but
they had different codes. Tri-X sheet film was all toe as far as I was
concerned, as was Plux-X. In 35mm the had shorter toes.

They didn't hide the difference, either. The sheet Tri-X was specified
as 320 ASA, whereas the 35mm was 400.

-tih
--
SIGTHTBABW - a signal sent from Unix to its programmers at random
intervals to make them remember that There Has To Be A Better Way
--Erik Naggum

On 7/26/2010 7:21 PM, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
In ,
Doug wrote:
But there is also tonal rendition and color rendition.

I don't like any Fuji film. I don't like the color rendition.

I used negative film. Kodak never made any 4x5 color negative that offers
the critical rendition of greens that their 35 mm films do. It's not
subtle. I consider green the most important color to
get rigght, especially the differentition of nearby shades. The

You are an idiot. It's the same emulsion!


No, I'm not an idiot. Go back and look at the data sheets. You will
see that at times, looking at the data sheets, the same emulsion
would be available in 35mm and in 4x5. But not necessarily available at the same time.
Often a new improvement would come to 35mm far before it came to 4x5.

However, in many cases color negative emulsions NEVER came to 4x5. In general,
Kodak avoided like the Plague offering any emulsion in 4x5 that was high
contrast and had good green rendition.

Look particularly at the gamma of the three colors, and even more
specially at the exact shape of the spectral sensitivity curves
of the three layers.

This was most prominent in the early to late 1970s, when the 4x5 offerings
were grossly inferior to the latest 25mm ones. At one time Kodak did
offer a somewhat moderately high contrast 4x5 called "commercial"
(as I recall, it was ASA 160) but it was not the same as the then-current
35mm "amateur" offerings. They did offer a similar (to the 4x5)
35mm film, but not identical.

In the late 60s to early 70s there was a HUGE difference in grain between
the 4x5 color films and 35mm films ... 4x5 was far worse. By 2000
that had disappeared.

Doug McDonald

In article ,
Doug McDonald wrote:
On 7/26/2010 7:21 PM, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
In ,
Doug wrote:
But there is also tonal rendition and color rendition.

I don't like any Fuji film. I don't like the color rendition.

I used negative film. Kodak never made any 4x5 color negative that offers
the critical rendition of greens that their 35 mm films do. It's not
subtle. I consider green the most important color to
get rigght, especially the differentition of nearby shades. The

You are an idiot. It's the same emulsion!


No, I'm not an idiot. Go back and look at the data sheets. You will
see that at times, looking at the data sheets, the same emulsion
would be available in 35mm and in 4x5. But not necessarily available at
the same time.

It is assuredly the same emulsion now; Kodak hardly makes any, and what
they make, they coat on most every format where they can sell a minimum
production run -- and some where they probably can't, like 8x10.

--
Thor Lancelot Simon
"All of my opinions are consistent, but I cannot present them all
at once." -Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On The Social Contract

Doug McDonald wrote:

I used negative film. Kodak never made any 4x5 color negative that offers
the critical rendition of greens that their 35 mm films do. It's not
subtle.

That sounds more like an issue with differences in processing than the
films themselves..

Stephaney

On 8/17/2010 12:09 AM, wrote:
Doug McDonald wrote:

I used negative film. Kodak never made any 4x5 color negative that offers
the critical rendition of greens that their 35 mm films do. It's not
subtle.

That sounds more like an issue with differences in processing than the films themselves..

Stephaney

No, it was the films themselves.

The results were the exact same if I processed the films myself
using Kodak chemicals, had them processed at a Chicago pro lab,
or processed them myself using solutions made from raw
solid chemicals.

Doug McDonald

In article ,
Doug McDonald wrote:
On 8/17/2010 12:09 AM, wrote:
Doug McDonald wrote:

I used negative film. Kodak never made any 4x5 color negative that offers
the critical rendition of greens that their 35 mm films do. It's not
subtle.

That sounds more like an issue with differences in processing than the
films themselves..

Stephaney

No, it was the films themselves.

The results were the exact same if I processed the films myself
using Kodak chemicals, had them processed at a Chicago pro lab,
or processed them myself using solutions made from raw
solid chemicals.

In that case, your processing was imaginary, since you can't _get_
the exact same raw chemicals Kodak uses to manufacture their color
developers -- or even the exact formulae -- and even small differences
in color chemistry will produce detectable differences in the negatives,
though usually small enough that closely matching prints can be obtained
regardless.

--
Thor Lancelot Simon
"All of my opinions are consistent, but I cannot present them all
at once." -Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On The Social Contract