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I quite like using view cameras I own two - a Technica V and a very pretty and well built wooden Shen Hao. I have absolutely no desire to go back to processing black and white film and particularly to scanning film or heaven forbid making silver prints.
I gave serious consideration to the Betterlight scanning back but found that the maximum exposure was such that it precluded much of the work I do.
At this point, there is no good alternative. One could use a medium format digital back (assuming of course that one had $30,000) but they aren't even full 645 size and need heavy geared view cameras best designed by people who normally make military tanks. They are completely unsuited to 4X5 wooden view cameras. Thus my lovely cameras sit unused in months, and the last time I used them, it reminded me why I switched to digital.
No, for now, stitching is the best alternative for landscape and industrial work, using the best camera one can afford. At my office I have a 16X56 inch print shot from my 10D using 8 images - I have never made a print that big from large format and no one has suggested that the image would have been better had it been from large format.
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5 comments:
You don't think the colors would be richer and definition better from using the old medium and large-format cameras?
I too like stitching, my recent Mongolia shot running at 6' wide would have not been possible without it. I've recently bought a Shen Hao 4x5, however (film & scan) for 1 reason - movements.
Plus,, it enables me to get the image in one shot which is useful is anything is moving significantly (but I can easily stitch with slow moving cloulds, for example).
I can get the quality of a medium format digital back with stitching from my 1Ds2. To do so with a camera of fewer pixels would require two rows, complicating the stitching but hardly making it impossible (I know, I used to use multiple row stitching with my 5 MP Sony 707 for lovely 18X18 prints). Luminous Landscape has good evidence in their megapixels testing that medium format digital is better than medium format film and close to 4X5 - having substantially better tonality if not quite the resolution.
As regards colour fidelity or richness, digital does just fine and arguably better than film - emulsion like Velvia grossly distorts colour and is chosen specifically for it's eye popping saturation, yet it can be imitated quite easily with manual or plug-in automatic adjustments in Photoshop.
My opinion is that large format's main strength these days is with black and white film where it still maintains some advantages in resolution and dynamic range, all be it at a substantial cost in effort and to a lesser degree in speed.
That said, my stitched black and white images look better in large prints than anything I ever produced in 4X5 so in the real world, I'm not going back.
I would like to see that photo you have at the office :-)
I agree. I have a Shen Hao as well and also stitch with a 1DsII and I consider stitching a better approach for MOST situations. But there are situations that call for the Shen Hao and Tmax100, like dynamic subjects, moving water for example or when exposures of over a minute or two are required.
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