Medium Format Film
To those of you that think Digital is the best thing since sliced bread, think again.
Many of us have hung up our 35mm gear because we now have digital cameras that take just as good if not better images than 35mm film; but what obout getting REALY BIG, SHARP IMAGES WITH FINE DETAIL AND RICH, SMOOTH COLOUR AND CONTRAST. We have all heard the stories " My 12 megapixle camera and zoom lens are so good, I printed a 16x20 print and it's still sharp". I am sure many of these images are fairly sharp (from a distance), but what are these images being compared to. Right now you can go into many camera stores and find a heap of Medium Format gear at low, low prices, many of us will bypass this gear because we think it's out dated junk. Think again, to get the equivalent performance from Digital compared to from these old Medium Format cameras, you will have to spend $25,000.00 to $40,000.00.
I have attached two images, the full size image I have printed 16x20 inches and I consider it to be very sharp, not as sharp as large format, but very sharp all the same. The other image is a croped out section about 2.5 x 2.5 inches in size; see if you can fiend which part it came from. This should give you an idea of what kind of detail you can expect from Medium format film.
The images shown were taken with 120 Slide film (Fuji Provia F 100) and the slide was scanned using a consumer level scanner. If a drum scanner were used, the image quality would be even better.
Untill digital gets realy big and affordable, I will continue to crank the leaver of my trusted and durable MEDIUM FORMAT CAMERA when I want that BIG image. For the rest of my photos I have the convenience of digital.
Best regards
Jonathan Farmer
For the rest of my
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