photography by a.f. smith

<p>I'll throw in a vote for the super graphic, though it was MY first 4x5 so I may be biased. I still use if for hiking and you an get a lot done with it movement wise if you're willing to be patient and a bit creative. You can probably pick up one with a decent lens for 500, or one with a shootable "press" lens for 350 or so. A toyo field camera is pretty much the same as a super graphic, so if you see a deal on one of those snap it up.<br>

The linhofs and shen hoas are more versatile, but you'll pay for it. Only you know if its worth the coin.</p>

<p>I'm also a proponent of the spend on the glass, not the camera philosophy, but I can't agree that its ridiculous to put the 1.8 on your 7d.<br>

The only thing thats rediculous in that scenario is the IQ to dollar ratio you get from the 50 1.8. I shoot everything from aps-c-digital up to 4x5. I've had a lot of gear pass through my hands, and the only deal thats even comes close is finding a beat-up, ugly, but fully functional rolleiflex. As far as brand new gear goes its unmatched. The build quality is crap, but if you're not careful with it you're only out a hundred bucks. Not bad.</p>

<p>I recently activated the ISO expansion on my T1i and noticed that when I did my minimum ISO became 200. I went back in and turned it off, but guess what, ISO 100 didn't come back. What am I missing?</p>

<p>I'm an EOS 1n owner, and lusted after the v back in the day. The option to record exposure data for the whole roll on the last frame seemed especially cool.</p>

<p>I could be wrong in this, but I'm not sure the actual build quality of the v is that drastically better than the 1n, or the 1 for that matter. They're all canon's top of the line, and form a good seal with an L lens. Be warned, that the system does depend on the top of the line construction of an L lens to complete the seal. Anything else and risk a leak through the lens mount.</p>

<p>I can't really say how drastic the difference is in terms of the seal though, as I've never used L glass on the 1n. Sigh. -Adam</p>

<p>I think some clarification would benifit a bit here. Continuous lighting is NOT nescesarrily "hot" light. HMIs and CDM/CSTs are warm, Fluorescents are cool, and LEDs produce almost NO heat.<br>

Now, some of these have some other drawbacks of their own. Most notably they are all expensive. (Assuming you purchase Fluorescents with a HIGH CRI which is crucial.)<br>

One of the main benifits of continous lighting, far more important that WYSIWYG in my opinion, is the variety of fixture types available. Fresnels and Elipsoidals can produce far more dramatic effects than most strobes, and are far easier to work with if you need to control spill. (Although this typically rules out any LED or fluorescent solutions.)<br>

The hardlight provided by these fixtures, is, in my opinion, is much better for table top stuff. Objects typically look more attractive in hard light (reveals texture and dimension) than people do. (On people, texture = wrinkles, and blemishes and dimension = shadows.)<br>

Finally, shooting tabletop stuff, (Such as jewelry.) allows you to work with smaller, lower wattage fixtures. So, if you're on a budget, standard hot lights can be cost effective to purchase and low wattage means a far more managable amount of heat. <br>

Assuming you're shooting from a tripod, you don't really have to shell out for a high output fixture. Just adjust your shutter speed accordingly.<br>

If you prefer working with strobes, yes, just get some with modeling lights. Everyone produces the best results with what they know. I, personally prefer continous lights, and if you're intrested in using, experimenting, or learning don't let heat be a deterrent.</p>

<p>Thanks very much guys. Good news to hear. I was worried about condensation freezing and causing all sorts of problems, bu sounds like it will be ok. -Adam</p>

<p>Greetings all,<br>

My friends and I do a cold weather backpacking trip every year, and until recently I've brought along my TLR for some shots.<br>

However, I've never really made any huge prints, so Medium format is kinda overkill. On top of that, I recently purchased a rebel T1i which I would love to bring along for the video capabilities, but we are headed for the summit of Mount Washington in february, where tempratures average from -4f to 12f on the summit. My question is, if I keep a handwarmer or two in the bag with the camera is there any chance of getting some shots?<br>

If I do do this, what are the chances of damaging the camera? Thanks all. -Adam</p>

<p>The cost difference honestly means very little to me. My big concern is that the extra mega-pixels may actually be hurting the image.<br>

From what I've read, cramming that many mega-pixels onto an APS sized sensor requires the noise reduction to get cranked out of control and some areas of fine detail become single tone blobs instead because the this edges are interpreted as noise.</p>

<p>Hello all,<br>

Aside from the video, which I'm not so blown away by, is the T1i really worth the extra price over the XSi?</p>

<p> Yes 25% greater resolution, but won't cramming that many pixels onto the same size space create extra noise and artifacting?</p>

<p> Are the other new features legitimate or just marketing hype?</p>

<p>Hello all,<br>

I own the minolta dimage scan 5400 Elite II, and though it has served me faithfully for years, the last time I attempted to use the negative carrier, the motor triped incescently while attempting to pull the film through, leading to predicatably horrible scans.<br>

I am working on the assumption that the cheap plastic holder has become warped, and is the source of the problem. If I am correct, I will need a new holder.<br>

I am having considerable trouble finding a place t o buy a new holder for the 5400 II, does anyone know if I can use the holder for the 5400 I, or any other minolta s canners, or did they change designs? Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.</p>

I'll second Steve here. I own the Fuji F8 and its great. If that's out of your price range, the Schnieder F6.8 is supposedly very sharp, but can be had cheaply because it just BARELY covers 4X5. (That means you can get some movements in 6x9)

Yes, a toyo to 4x4 is exactly what I'm looking for. Where did you get it?

Hi All,

I've got a Super Graphic and would like to use its lens boards on a Toyo View

Camera.

I can't find an adapter from Graphic to Toyo View, but I CAN find one for Toyo field

to Toyo view. Considering Toyo bought the rights to manufacture the speed

graphic as there field camera, I was curious if anyone knew for sure weather or not

they maintained the board size or changed it.

Thanks Guys

Make it 3.

You're right Colin. My brain must have been locked in a technical gear rather than an aesthetic one.

Though I've never played around with it, I imagine the polarizing gel should be after any diffusion.

 

Polarizers are designed to kill light that is eminating "off-axis", which is why they work best at 90 degrees.

 

A diffuser or bounce spreads the light in all kinds of crazy directions, defeating your polarizer.

 

Anyone ever tried a direct comparison to see if the theory hold true in practice?

I didn't get a chance to read every post and every response, so I don't know if anyone floated this idea yet, but here goes . . .

 

Most gyms use sodium-vapor lights. These generally run on cycles of 60 per second here in the US. (50 in most European countries) What does this mean?

 

Well, sodium-vapors actually shift in colour over the course of their cycles. Many have a "spike" in which the colour shifts dramatically, but for an imperceptibly short period. This would be very hard to capture intentionally, BUT, if you're shooting at a very fast shutter speed and click the shutter at the right thousandth of a second, the "spike" could be happening for the majority of your exposure, effectively shifting your colour. If the spike takes up half your exposure time , your colour will still shift, but less dramatically.

 

To avoid this, you should shoot at 1/60th of a second if at all possible. That will guarantee that each exposure contains a full cycle, and therefore, the spike will exert the exact same influence over every photograph. (You can also use 1/30th of a second to capture 2 full cycles, 1/15th for 4 and so on)

 

Motion picture folks can relate to this with fluorescent lights. NTSC video is recorded at 30 frames per second. (Actually 29.97 but close enough) making the shutter speed of most video cameras default at either 1/30th or 1/60th of a second which gets along just fine with fluorescent lights. However, most people shoot film at 24 frames per second, making the shutter speed 1/48th. This will obviously not sync with the 60 cycles per second the light is running at, and each frame will contain a full cycle and part of another, causing anything lit by fluorescents to flicker. (Unless you?re suing fluorescents designed for motion picture work, such as Kinos.) This is because, over the course of a cycle, fluorescents vary in intensity even more than sodium vapors vary in colour. Hope the post was helpful.

I much prefer the Fuji pro series films to the Portra. Less grain, and the latitude of the 800 is pretty incredible.

Edward,

 

This file WAS resampled and sharpened. Thats why MOST of the image looked fine. Problem was, the fine detail of the cable was recorded as a staircase and was upsampled to a bigger staircase.

 

All upsampling does is tell photoshop to take a group of pixels and restructure their image to fit a larger block of pixels. When it detects an edge, it preserves it, when it detects a gradation in tone or colour, it extends it by adding pixels of intermediate tone/colour in between the recorded pixes.

 

Usually this all works out great. Sometimes it doesn't. In the case of my friends cable, it was a small black cable twisting and turning through a sea of relatively bright floor. (No sweat for edge detection) And, as cables occasionally do, it arranged itself so that in several sections it edges landed exaclty wrong in relationship to the camera's sensor and at those sections was not faithfully rendered. It looked like a staircase.

 

Now photoshop is great at interpreting pixels, but not at interpreting objects. It doesn't know that staircase pattern was originally a round, twising cable, it assumes the picture is of something that looks like a staircase so it preserves that pattern when you upsample.

 

Like I said, most of the time it works out great. But you can't expect a set of algorithms to "Fill in the gaps" and get it right EVERY time.

 

Furthermore, if upsampling and USM was a magic bullet we could all upsample to 70ftx70ft. Why would you pay more for more megapixels if you can just upsample to any printsize you want?

 

The answer is that the law of diminishing returns applies . You can only upsample so far (To my taste about 20-30% depending on image content) before you don't get anything more out of it. So yes, you CAN upsample a 4368 x 2912 file and 98% of the time it will stand up to the 2800dpi of 6x6 scan from my example, but what's stoping you from upsampling the scan?

 

"The practical resolution of a 6x6 scan is about twice that of the D2x, limited by the properties of the film (diffusion) and lens. However, at 16x20 inches that difference is not visible. "

 

I do agree however that it doens't often matter at that print size, in most cases both look great.

 

I do have to disagree with this though:

 

"In general, you get better prints from negative film than from slides."

 

I don't think this the case, especially if you're offended by grain. I haven't found a negative film that can compete with reversal film in identical ISOs, even giving the negative film a 1-stop head start bonus I'd usually prefer most reversal emulsions.

 

Negative DOES have a big advantage in dynamic range, but thats not much good at the printing stage, it only makes it easier (or sometimes simply possible) to capture the scene at the shooting stage.

 

Don't get me wrong, I have tons of neg for a scenes that I can't squeeze into velvia, but if you've got a scene that will fit into a slide's dynamic range, the final print will, in my opinion, be far superior to anything you could get from a negative, even one developed specificly for the low contrast range of the scene.

Edward,

I agree that medium format is pushing it at 30x40. That is if by medium format we mean 645 or 6x6, you can obviously get more from 6x9 (I realize some would consider that large format but I'd call anything 120 medium)

I cannot agree that a 12mp DSLR can rival that though. My friend's band recently had a session with a pro shooting with a 5D. They printed 15x20 posters from the full resolution files he gave them and though most areas looked fine, there was significant "stairstepping" visible in the 1/4 inch cables (Cable that connects guitar/bass to amp) when viewed from anything less than a foot.

If you care to dispute this by blaming the photographer or his workflow consider this:

 

A healthy, young eye can distinguish around 300dpi. An older, less healthy but still good eye around 250dpi. At 300 dpi a 12mp camera (4368 x 2912 as specified by cannon for the 5D) can print 15x10 inches. At 250 you can get a 18x12. Even a 2800dpi (relatively low) scan of a 6x6 frame will yield a file 6300x6300, suitable for a 21x21 print even at 300dpi. Of course a better scan will allow for even larger prints.

I'm gonna throw my vote in for the fuji pro family rather than the Porta films. Its a matter of personal preference though.

I would learn to retouch in the darkroom if you really want to print from film.

 

When you change from film to digital or digital to film you are forced to work with the limitations of both. Fortuneately both mediums are forgiving enough that you do not experience a HUGE quality drop when going from one to the other. Going there and back again could introduce a noticable difference though. Can't really say without trying.

 

I am willing to accept that I lose some quality when scanning my film because of the convience/control the "digital darkroom" offers. I don't imagine I would do it just to clean up some spots however.

It all depends on if you think you'll enjoy scanning and what your concept of a smaller enlargment is. I like scanning myself because of the extra control, though it can be time consuming and I wouldn't think twice about printing 11x14 from a 35mm scan I did myself. (Provided the film was a low iso.) I'd say if you think scanning may be fun and are willing to put the time into it, you won't find the quality of a dedicated film scanner particularly limiting.

Thanks for the reply. Yeah I'm not a fan of the idea of Rangefider vs GG either. I don't own the bush yet, just looking for an excuse to buy it. Guess I should save my money for a 2x3 graphic instead. Sigh.