medium format vs. 35mm film tonality

[jacobmiles]

I've never been able to quanitify the difference between a 35mm image

and a 6x6 image when printed the same size, but my qualitative

impression is that the tonality is better. Is this my imagination?

Is there any reason medium format tonality would be better than 35mm

at the same enlargement size?

[dpowis]

There is. As you have more "space" between two points, you have more silver grains of different sizes to represent the tonal scale.

[patrick_s2]

Excellent answer from the previous poster. I notice a difference between 35mm & 6x6 (Leica vs. Hasselblad) but I soup/print all my own b&w. Machine prints from the lab show me differences, but not as much.

 

I shoot a lot of children/portraits, and I just see a smoothness with the 6x6 the 35 doesn't have. I remember the first great print I enlarged 10x10, and the grain was nonexistant with 400 speed film, using an old C type T* 80mm lens. I have never had such smooth stuff from 35...

[andy m.]

If you print your own images you can see the clear difference before the images has even fully formed in the paper developer. The includes comparisons with the best possible 35mm glass.

 

No doubt and surely not imagination. The reason is simple physics, as outlined above.

[bueh]

That's the problem: Once you have tasted medium format you don't want to go back to the seemingly much inferior 35mm. Everything worth shooting is worth shooting nice/well/at high quality. It takes some time to reckon 35mm as a serious alternative again for some subjects.

[stwrtertbsratbs5]

And large format is even better yet!

[jd_rose]

Unless you are the next Galen I would not ever recommend 35mm for landscape work. The tonality and range of 6x7cm is superior to 35mm.

 

--- JDR

[wes_baker1]

I agree with Robert. The tonality smoothness is the biggest benefit of MF over 35mm, and LF is a whole level higher yet. A lot of people are under the misimpression that "sharpness" is the biggest benefit to be gained by jumping up a format size. Not so: It's tonality. If you look at the LPM figures for assorted lenses, there are actually 35mm lenses that can resolve detail nearly as well or better than some common MF and LF rigs, but film grain and the need for greater enlargement prevents that resolution from ever approaching the clarity of even a relatively low grade MF or LF lens.

[philippartridge]

I sometimes ponder why some people cannot see the 'sharp edge/ poor tonal separation' syndrome one encounters all over the place with digicam images. Maybe there is a kind of visual literacy at play?

 

In a word, better images, so typical of larger pieces of film real estate, exude *authenticity*. It's a combination of clarity, fine detail rendition, lack of obvious grain, and tonality (or tonal separation) and even the range of tonal values. It's not apparent sharpness (MTF) as such - many top MF lenses rate with the finest from Canon/Nikon; check out photodo.com.

 

Notice that most of these qualities do not lend themselves to ready quantification or measurement. Which explains the plethora of '6mp vs (pick a film camera)' comparos on the web, that narrow it all down to *resolution*, which is perhaps the least significant metric of photographic image merit. Witness the rich heritage of the accumulated photographic record from the olden times down to the present. Not too many 'L' lenses in that lot...

 

IMNSHO, the jump from small format to medium format is a good leap, whereas the step from there to 4x5 is well, a good step. It's a threshold in image quality you cross when jumping to MF. LF cameras also suffer all manner of drawbacks technical and practical - you miss plenty of shots that are eminently takeable with MF, esp. the more auto ones. Most LF guys use dumbed-down flatbeds; no good desktop film scanners are available for them..

[gaius1]

The difference is in the lenses. 135 format lenses emphasize microcontrast in order to retrieve detail for a small piece of film. 120 format lenses have more area to play with, so can render the same amount of detail more smoothly. As others have said, in terms of MTF (using artificially high contrast test charts that don't really represent the contrast of a typical photo) there's little to really call.

 

Personally, shooting handheld, I don't even expect any more detail out of 645 or 6x6 than 135, it's purely for the smoother tonal transitions that I do it.