You make a number of very good points and I originally wrote a much longer response. So long in fact that I realised I needed to repost your article and write my original post as an intro. Somehow my response posted before I had finished so it had to be deleted. Still learning the mechanics of Substack on my phone.
You make a number of very good points and I originally wrote a much longer response. So long in fact that I realised I needed to repost your article and write my original post as an intro. Somehow my response posted before I had finished so it had to be deleted. Still learning the mechanics of Substack on my phone.
Your post brought to mind a magazine article by a UK photographer who felt that ‘Sharpness is Overrated’ and a different article by another UK photographer about how he was able to print a very large panoramic from a 12MP camera.
I saw both your responses. There are some tiny-sensor cameras (iPhone, other phones, and many old very small sensor consumer digital cameras) that under the right conditions can produce reasonable enlargements/prints. To summarize my observations regarding these tiny sensor cameras is many just fall apart tonally at larger sizes, all other things like noise, sharpness, detail aside, it's that lack of smooth tonality that seems to be the killer. I have printed MANY 35mm negatives both scanned and wet-print at very large sizes that don't compare to high-quality full-frame digital in the "noise", sharpness, and detail provided by the digital but the tonality holds up from the film which makes all the difference. Example, 35mm TMAX 3200 with golf-ball sized grain and a 4000dpi 16bit scan has fantastic tonality where tiny sensor digital just falls apart even with minimal noise.
Absolutely. It’s all about the almost undefinable ‘quality’ of a picture. Tonality, which gives dimension and definition plays a huge part in this. I look forward to reading more of your posts, both past and future.
You make a number of very good points and I originally wrote a much longer response. So long in fact that I realised I needed to repost your article and write my original post as an intro. Somehow my response posted before I had finished so it had to be deleted. Still learning the mechanics of Substack on my phone.
Your post brought to mind a magazine article by a UK photographer who felt that ‘Sharpness is Overrated’ and a different article by another UK photographer about how he was able to print a very large panoramic from a 12MP camera.
I saw both your responses. There are some tiny-sensor cameras (iPhone, other phones, and many old very small sensor consumer digital cameras) that under the right conditions can produce reasonable enlargements/prints. To summarize my observations regarding these tiny sensor cameras is many just fall apart tonally at larger sizes, all other things like noise, sharpness, detail aside, it's that lack of smooth tonality that seems to be the killer. I have printed MANY 35mm negatives both scanned and wet-print at very large sizes that don't compare to high-quality full-frame digital in the "noise", sharpness, and detail provided by the digital but the tonality holds up from the film which makes all the difference. Example, 35mm TMAX 3200 with golf-ball sized grain and a 4000dpi 16bit scan has fantastic tonality where tiny sensor digital just falls apart even with minimal noise.
Absolutely. It’s all about the almost undefinable ‘quality’ of a picture. Tonality, which gives dimension and definition plays a huge part in this. I look forward to reading more of your posts, both past and future.