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I keep an old Hasselblad 500C/M for the purpose of photographing my paintings for reproduction purposes and it supposedly should give the most exact detail possible.
This may disturb some of you photo purists out there, BUT: I have just photographed a painting with my new Olympus Camedia C-8080 Wide Zoom that has already been photographed with the Hassy under the same lighting conditions. The result was enlarged to the same picture size as the Hassy photo. I couldn't believe it, but the Olympus digital Camedia C-8080 is showing more detail then the Hassy.
Hmmmm....if this should continue then that would mean my Hasselblad will be obsolete for it intended purpose.
Sacrilege??????? Are old Hasselblads now a dinasour??? Are old film cameras really on the way out????
Follow Ups:
What lighting are you using, 'Shutters' old chap? Might be the wrong lighting for the Hassy, hence the duff quality. Incidently, Hasselblad have moved over the river to a new factory, their new owners splashing-out the money Hasselblad didn't have. I once tried for a job there, as a CNC operator, but didn't get it.
I knew the infamous sex-doctor, Steven Ward, in the late 50's-early 60's, he was a very keen artist/photographer when not organising orgies, and knew all the top men of the day. I met Beaton, Bailey, Morley, Snowdon, and Lichfield (and some chap called Rategen?) As I was a beautiful boy of 13-15 I posed for the lot of them, with and without clothes...and not always alone, ahem, and sometimes helped Bailey test 'emulsions' at his studio (he never called it film) especially colour. Sometimes he was given it, sometimes he had to pay! Mary Quant was very into the new dyes coming onto the market and he needed to know how it would come out. He was forced to try many combinations of filters and lighting to get the right colours, it's to do with the various wavelengths of the light given off. I think we once reeled-off 500 photos one day, a record! I got lunch and some fish and chips in the evening, out of it. It's how most models have to start, you needed to prove yourself before they paid you. I never got paid. Mary once made some underpants on my naked body that were later modelled by Sean Connery, just back from filming the tropical scenes for Dr. No, his last modelling-assignment. We had the same arse (butt).
Oh yes, I almost forgot. Anthony Blunt, 'the spy that got off the hook'? (and I know why), I was at the National Gallery in London with Mandy Rice-Davies, and we bumped into him. I knew him via Ward, a childhood friend of his, and he showed us around, interested that we both loved art. Mandy, a very intelligent and educated girl, asked him about the lighting they used to light each picture with, and it was the same there, it was an art-form to light each picture to it's advantage, they spent enormous amounts of money and time to try and get it right, it was one of his main jobs.
I'm sure that of you experiment with the lighting and filters the Hasselblad will come to the fore.
If you really must go digital and have money to burn, you should consider (adding to your hasselblad) the Creo Leaf Valeo 22.It's a 22MPix sensor specifically to replace medium format film.
What kind of film were you using? How did you make the prints from the film? How did you make the prints from the digital camera?Too many times people make these comparisons, and the film is not handled correctly to get the most out of it. I'd like to know your process for each medium.
For the Hasselblad I used Fujifilm Professional 160 NPL and have it processed at a local photo lab. I have the digital images processed at the same lab.
Frankly, I don't understand why a person thinks he needs his own digital printer, by the time you buy the very expensive inks and paper, you probably have not saving much money, if any, and the digital home printers are very slow. You can have a nearby digital print lab. do it in about an hour and with professional equipment and they are cheap. The only advantage I can see is that you can fool around with the images with your cumputor and PhotoShop, -which I'm not knowledgeable in doing. My son-in-law does it all the time though. Eccept when he's doing wedding photographs, then he has a professional lab process his digital images.
For a long time I poo poo'ed digital, having shot large format for many years. That was until I really experienced digital. I now shoot about 98% digital. I will never look back. As you have found, even 'consumer' digicams give great results. With the pro versions, with thier larger sensors, the results are incredible. I remember a few year back when the film guys kept saying it would take 18MP or some such number to equal 35mm. Then I would look at a D1 image (2.7MP) and see more detail than I could see in 35mm film, and then the D1x came out, and exceeded 35mm by a wide margin. The current crop of 6MP and higher pro cameras give better results than 35mm film ever did. Not only is it giving excellent images, but its better for the environment, and it has increased my profit margins. I love it!
I 've sold 30x40" prints with my 'blad.
Well, it certainly wasn't a 30"X40" print. More like 10"X 15". It was a painting of Albatrose flying low over ocean waves. The edge of the rollers were done with a matt knife so that they would stand out. With the Olympus, they stood out and were very diminsional while with the Hassy photo they were flat. Edges with the Oly print were also sharper and better defined.
Such as what type of film were you using? Print or transparency? What speed? What color density? And critically, was it processed properly and printed properly? I have noticed that images from digital cameras seem, to me at least, to be a bit "hot" compared with the results from film (and by that I mean a sharpness to edges where those edges, in reality, may not have been that sharp, but are rendered so by the characteristics of the current crop of CCD's...if that makes sense). I work mainly with black and white, I admit, but have avoided going digital because I simply have not seen an inkjet/dye black and white print that even approaches the look and feel of a silver print. I will grant you that the digital backs for the Hassy's and the Rollei 6000 series are very nice, but I think I can still surpass them with my Rolleiflex 3.5F or Bronica RF645, loaded with TMX, properly processed, and properly printed on Ilford fiber paper. Digitial is convenient, to be sure, and more profitable for professionals. But in my humble (and likely irrelevant) opinion, digital still has problems, but we accept them, as we accept zoom lenses that are not as sharp as prime lenses (and, to relate to this forum, as many accept the convenience of MP3 audio despite its serious shortcomings, and cd's despite their lesser shortcomings). I do believe the day will come, probably soon, when digital surpasses film, and when film will go the way of the cyanotype. But I don't think we're there yet.
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