On Wed, 2007-11-07 at 08:46 +0900, John Summerfield wrote: > There's a reason professional portrait (and I include wedding) > photographers use medium format cameras such as Hasselblads. They do > that size easily. Not to mention having decent accessories (lots of them, and robust ones, too). I still have a Kodak Brownie camera that used 127 film. Not a large format, but a medium format. Despite its rudimentary optics, it could produce reasonably good pictures because it used a very large negative. 'twas also the ultimate in point and shoot for a rank amateur. There was no auto focus to get things wrong, it had fixed focus, so focussing was instantaneous. ;-) It was always, almost, in focus. Likewise, there was no iris or shutter speed to work out. In daylight, it just worked. Press button, wind on film, rinse lather repeat... No batteries, no adjustments, nothing to go wrong. ;-) A good camera to learn on, all you had to worry about was framing, and having something worth taking a photo of. My 35 mm SLR, just a middle priced enthusiasts semi-automatic Chinon camera, does very nice A4 enlargements, can do reasonably good A3, and acceptable A2 (for viewing from a distance). The optics aren't pro, so things suffer around those points. Cinemas may still use 35 mm to project onto huge screens, but you view them from far away, they use much better optics, and the randomness of film grain across moving frames gives you the impression of much higher resolution than a single frame can produce. My 4 megapixel Canon compact digital camera just about manages a reasonably good A4 enlargement. I'm not game to try anything bigger. It's convenience factors almost outweigh my preferences for my Chinon. -- (This computer runs FC7, my others run FC4, FC5 & FC6, in case that's important to the thread.) Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I read messages from the public lists.
