Kevin Waterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > My problem is that photography has become more of a production line > than an art.
There's another thing that's nagging me about digital: With analog, it takes very little money to produce a technical quality that can't be distinguished from what you get with the most expensive pro gear. An amateur with a modest budget can get the same quality as a pro with much more money to spend. Take a Kiev 60 (or the more expensive Arax version), put a Schneider 80 mm Xenotar on it and you'll get the same technical quality as if you'd taken your pictures with an expensive Rollei 6000 and the same lens. Take a few pictures with an MX and an SMC 1.4/50 mm plus a few more with, say, a Leica R9 with the 50 mm Leica lens and noone will be able to tell them apart. You need 'real' quality, the stuff that will absolutely blow you away? Want to count the leaves in your wide-angle landscape shots? No big deal. Spend a few hundred to buy a used 4 by 5. Get the idea? These days are over with digital. There is no digital equivalent to the Kiev with the Xenotar and there will never be one. The difference in quality between a *istDS and a 39 mpix back is there for all to see and there's no way around this. It may not show in many applications but it sure does in others. >From now on, with our DS or DL we'll have to live with the fact that we'll never again be able to produce the same quality as the big guys simply because there is no affordable alternative to the Hassy with the 39 mpix back. But wait, there's more... Enlargers. Put a decent lens on a Meopta and your prints will be just as good as those made with a Leitz Focomat costing ten times as much. The digital Meopta (aka Photoshop Elements) works in 8 bit as oppposed to 16 bit with the real thing. A little more curve-tweaking and you'll clearly see the fringing and posterizing. So, either fork out your shekels for the CS2 version or learn to live with limitations and inferior quality. Pity, really... DRI as I might, my industrial night shots simply don't work with an APS-C size sensor. Experience from analog 35 mm suggests even a full-format DSLR won't do. It takes something - no matter if analog or digital - at least the size of 645 to keep those star-shaped patterns around the lights tamed and to accomodate the enormous dynamics between highlights and shadows. Stay with analog, you say? As much as I like the ease of digital, I guess I'll have to keep at least the medium format equipment for a significant part of my photography. And I frankly don't see anything happen that will change this situation. Noone will ever make an affordable 12 or 16 mpix full format 645 sensor. His investors would kill him. Now, if only the price for C-41 developer alone hadn't more than doubled over the last 12 months because of manufacturers eliminating certain package sizes (3 x 5 l with Fuji-Hunt) or going bankrupt (Agfa). And I'm afraid that's only the beginning. Ralf -- Ralf R. Radermacher - DL9KCG - Köln/Cologne, Germany private homepage: http://www.fotoralf.de manual cameras and photo galleries - updated Jan. 10, 2005 Contarex - Kiev 60 - Horizon 202 - P6 mount lenses
