Mark Roberts wrote:
> There are several people on this list who use 4000 dpi film
> scanners. And Kodak photo CDs can be made for anyone. And who
> says you have to scan your film at all?
I was gonna say that it's the same argument as "Why spend money for good
lenses when all you're going to do is make 4x6s?" :)
But I'll tell ya...regardless of how unsharp your film is and how lo-res
your scanner is (or how unsharp your enlarger lenses are), if you really
look at the images you can see the difference. I almost wept when I got
back my first roll of film (printed in 4x6s) shot with my SMC-A* 200mm
f2.8. There is a clear and obvious difference, even on a 4x6 minilab
print. Scale that difference up to an 8x10 or 11x14, and it's a huge difference.
Back when I was working at Sterling, I put my SMC-A* 200mm f2.8 up
against the boss' Tokina ATX Pro 80-200mm f2.8, the cheap Pentax AF
70-210, the cheap Sigma AF 70-210, the cheap Nikon AF 70-210 and the
Pentax 28-200, all at 200. The image was of the store's sign from
across the road...lots of straight lines and fine text. The bodies used
were a Nikon F70 and a Pentax MZ-5 (might've been a 5n, but I think it
was a 5). We made 4x6s of everything, marked them on the back as to
what they were, and had everyone who came in that week (who cared) put
the images in order from best to worst.
Without hesitation, people picked out the 28-200 as the worst every
time, at every aperture. They didn't even need to look closely.
The SMC-A* just barely edged out the Tokina ATX (a lot of people thought
they were tied), but they were clearly the winners. The three cheapies
were a virtual tie for "middle place", too.
There may be math that says the difference in sharpness is not very big.
I don't give a damn about the math, since I'm not hanging the math on
my wall. If I can see the difference with my eyes, no math in the world
will change my mind.
I think that some criticism of primes may come from people who can't see
the difference on their prints because they're either not attuned to it
or because their lab does not have a set of lenses as good as the ones
they were shooting with. I would not at all be surprised to find out
that the second was true.
Aaron
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