• site home
  • blog home
  • galleries
  • contact
  • underwater
  • the bleeding edge

the last word

Photography meets digital computer technology. Photography wins -- most of the time.

You are here: Home / The Last Word / Is digital photography a left-brain pursuit? — part 3

Is digital photography a left-brain pursuit? — part 3

November 12, 2011 JimK Leave a Comment

We move on to another historically important art photography capture genre, cameras that are used when maximum quality is desired, and size, weight, convenience, and speed of operation are all much less important. In the film world, this usually means a view camera using sheet film of 4 x 5 or larger. It’s hard to pick one digital camera for comparison. Roughly the same image quality as a 4 x 5 negative or transparency can be obtained with a medium format single lens reflex such as a Hasselblad H4D-60, or similar products from Phase One, Mamiya, Leica, or Pentax. These cameras offer a user experience similar to medium format single lens reflex film photography, and one that is quite different from the view camera experience.

Even though the medium format digital single lens reflex is the more popular choice, the closest digital experience to that of using a film view camera is probably obtained by using a digital back such as the Phase One on a conventional view camera. Since the sensors in digital backs are much smaller than 4 x 5, the appropriate view cameras are roughly 2 ¼ x 3 ¼. Even scaling down the size of the camera will leave some challenges in obtaining wide angle photographs, but with recessed lens boards, you should be able to make many wide angle lenses work.

Another approach that offers a similar user experience to a film-based view camera is to use a technical camera like the Alpa Max. These cameras offer similar capabilities to conventional bellows- and lensboard-based view cameras, although the controls may be quite different. If you want to use a 23 mm lens, they may be the only practical choice.

To come close to reproducing the film-based view camera experience, the user of a technical camera with a digital back, or a view camera with a digital back, should:

  • Use small memory cards to preserve the feeling that exposures are precious.
  • Avoid looking at the histogram; use a separate spot meter to calculate exposure.
  • Don’t use HDR.
  • Make sure you do all your perspective correction in camera.
  • Make two identical exposures of every image. You won’t have any processing errors as with chemicals, but do it anyway.

Some things that are part of the film-based view camera experience that are probably nearly impossible to replicate in digital photography are:

  • Loading film holders in a changing bag.
  • Loading film holders in a motel bathroom with the windows taped up and towels draped over the door.
  • Living in fear of dust on the negative before the exposure, and the resultant hard-to-deal-with black spots on the print.

There are other ways to digitally achieve images of extreme resolution: scanning backs and stitching. Both provide a capture experience unlike film-based view cameras. Using a scanning back outside the studio means lugging a computer into the field and not being able to photograph moving subjects. Stitching means having only approximate knowledge of your composition until you get home. You could argue that the stitching situation isn’t much different from using a moving-lens film camera like the Cirkut, Hulcherama, or Roundshot. But if stitching is used just to gain high resolution, not a sweeping panorama, then an 8×10 view camera can do some of the job with precise framing. There is nothing in the film world that approaches the resolution of massively stitched images like this one.

The bottom line: the parallels between doing high-resolution film and digital photography are not as simple or as exact as with 35mm SLR and RF cameras. The common way to get high resolution digitally, the medium format SLR, is more fluid and convenient than a 4×5 view camera, and does not easily offer the perspective control that is part of the view camera experience. Technical cameras and digital view camera backs offer an experience akin to that of operating a 4×5 view camera, but hardly anyone goes there these days. Usage of scanning backs is declining from a tiny base, and they are now curiosities in the field, although they have established a niche in studios, mainly for reproduction. Resolution equaling or surpassing that of an 8×10 view camera is most commonly obtained digitally by stitching, which feels nothing like using a view camera.

Still, it’s hard for me to see that one world is more left-brain than the other. Using the zone system means metering and placing tones and deciding on development strategies, a decidedly left-brain process, especially when compared to taking a picture and adjusting the shutter and f-stop so that the histogram shows a little daylight on the right. Previsualization can work in either realm, but to make it work with film you have to be a lot more calculating, or left-brain, in the time before you trip the shutter.

 

The Last Word

← Is digital photography a left-brain pursuit? — part 2 Is digital photography a left-brain pursuit? — part 4 →

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

May 2025
S M T W T F S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031
« Apr    

Articles

  • About
    • Patents and papers about color
    • Who am I?
  • How to…
    • Backing up photographic images
    • How to change email providers
    • How to shoot slanted edge images for me
  • Lens screening testing
    • Equipment and Software
    • Examples
      • Bad and OK 200-600 at 600
      • Excellent 180-400 zoom
      • Fair 14-30mm zoom
      • Good 100-200 mm MF zoom
      • Good 100-400 zoom
      • Good 100mm lens on P1 P45+
      • Good 120mm MF lens
      • Good 18mm FF lens
      • Good 24-105 mm FF lens
      • Good 24-70 FF zoom
      • Good 35 mm FF lens
      • Good 35-70 MF lens
      • Good 60 mm lens on IQ3-100
      • Good 63 mm MF lens
      • Good 65 mm FF lens
      • Good 85 mm FF lens
      • Good and bad 25mm FF lenses
      • Good zoom at 24 mm
      • Marginal 18mm lens
      • Marginal 35mm FF lens
      • Mildly problematic 55 mm FF lens
      • OK 16-35mm zoom
      • OK 60mm lens on P1 P45+
      • OK Sony 600mm f/4
      • Pretty good 16-35 FF zoom
      • Pretty good 90mm FF lens
      • Problematic 400 mm FF lens
      • Tilted 20 mm f/1.8 FF lens
      • Tilted 30 mm MF lens
      • Tilted 50 mm FF lens
      • Two 15mm FF lenses
    • Found a problem – now what?
    • Goals for this test
    • Minimum target distances
      • MFT
      • APS-C
      • Full frame
      • Small medium format
    • Printable Siemens Star targets
    • Target size on sensor
      • MFT
      • APS-C
      • Full frame
      • Small medium format
    • Test instructions — postproduction
    • Test instructions — reading the images
    • Test instructions – capture
    • Theory of the test
    • What’s wrong with conventional lens screening?
  • Previsualization heresy
  • Privacy Policy
  • Recommended photographic web sites
  • Using in-camera histograms for ETTR
    • Acknowledgments
    • Why ETTR?
    • Normal in-camera histograms
    • Image processing for in-camera histograms
    • Making the in-camera histogram closely represent the raw histogram
    • Shortcuts to UniWB
    • Preparing for monitor-based UniWB
    • A one-step UniWB procedure
    • The math behind the one-step method
    • Iteration using Newton’s Method

Category List

Recent Comments

  • JimK on Goldilocks and the three flashes
  • DC Wedding Photographer on Goldilocks and the three flashes
  • Wedding Photographer in DC on The 16-Bit Fallacy: Why More Isn’t Always Better in Medium Format Cameras
  • JimK on Fujifilm GFX 100S II precision
  • Renjie Zhu on Fujifilm GFX 100S II precision
  • JimK on Fuji 20-35/4 landscape field curvature at 23mm vs 23/4 GF
  • Ivo de Man on Fuji 20-35/4 landscape field curvature at 23mm vs 23/4 GF
  • JimK on Fuji 20-35/4 landscape field curvature at 23mm vs 23/4 GF
  • JimK on Fuji 20-35/4 landscape field curvature at 23mm vs 23/4 GF
  • Ivo de Man on Fuji 20-35/4 landscape field curvature at 23mm vs 23/4 GF

Archives

Copyright © 2025 · Daily Dish Pro On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Unless otherwise noted, all images copyright Jim Kasson.