Doug wrote:
> On Thursday, October 02, 2008 20:37, Moose wrote:
>
>> Wayne Harridge wrote:
>>
>>> Interesting but...
>>>
>>> ...if you think about some of the greatest photographs:
>>>
>>> Which ones would be significantly improved by having double the film
>>> resolution ?
>>>
>> With just a few words, you have, at least to me, raised a host of
>> complex issues, some of which are probably unresolvable.
>>
>
> Moose I read what you wrote and I think you outline many of the issues very
> well.
>
Thanks!
> I think another question is which good photograph would become great if it
> was taken on film with double the film resolution.
That seems to me to be a valid question. I suspect the answer is fairly
few. The problem is at least in part the narrow definition of "better"
film. A lot of those good, old images were limited as much by lens
limitations and DOF as by film resolution alone.
If one broadens the scope of film improvement to include greater speed
with less grain, my personal opinion is that many good old images might
have been better, at least technically.
Remember that lens coatings didn't come in until WWII; and they improved
a great deal over subsequent years. The glasses available also improved.
Pre-war lenses generally had issues with focus/sharpness at wider
apertures and with flare/reflections reducing contrast.
Uncoated lenses lost significant effective speed to transmission losses,
so the need to minimize the number of air to glass transitions with
fewer elements and more cemented elements was great. That also meant
more abberations, which affect sharpness.
Better film would have allowed smaller apertures ad higher shutter speeds.
> Or possibly which potentially great photograph wasn't taken because the
> photographer understood that it was beyond his technical limits do to film
> resolution. I don't have an answer to either question.
>
Here, I agree strongly. That issue has really come home to me as I use
both film and digital cameras. Some shots that I could make with the 5D
aren't possible with the OM-1. Again, though, it's generally a matter of
noise/ISO/IS more than resolution per se.
> I do think where improving photography technology does produce great images
> is were it puts cameras in places and peoples hands where they wouldn't have
> been before.
>
I tend to agree. To be fair, though, AG's comments about great vs.
mediocre seemed to me to be more on the basis of artistic merit than the
simple chance to get a shot. Art vs. journalism, in a sense.
"Honestly, we are a sad, sad, sad people if we think that technology will
magically transform the mediocre
into anything other than technically perfect mediocre."
One might presume that his model presupposes cameras in the hand of the
competent in any case.
> A couple of examples I can think of are some of the various war time photos,
> almost all taken with 35mm cameras and there are or will be great photographs
> taken with a cell phone camera. It won't be great because of it's technical
> qualities, but because it captures something that has great emotional impact
> and it will spread around the globe like wildfire.
>
Yup. Some cell-phone cameras already surpass early digicams in some
aspects of IQ.
Moose
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