Shawn writes:
===============================
I guess what I'm saying (I'm rambling again...) is I think it's all
about finding and pushing limits, both your own, and the
equipment. In my case, a 6x7 would be wasted, as I'd produce just
as many mediocre shots as on 35mm, and spend more time (and
money) doing so. But many on the list are clearly much more in
tune with there equipment, and their own abilities, and now see the
need to raise the limit to a higher format.
===============================
for me it is that time to go out photographing is the most critical
resource, so when I do get out, I like to come home with larger
negatives/slides. although rejects are more painful to toss
at medium format prices, getting a rare shot and then having
it be on 35mm has its own downside.
if I'm going to work carefully to push a format to its limit, I'd
just as soon push medium format ot its limits.
generally, i think each type of work has an optimal type of camera
and format to use, and I'd never give up my 35mm gear to shoot
exclusively medium format. for macro work and telephoto nature work, and
nightime urban street photography, I don't find medium format all that
great. but for landscapes, my rule of thumb is I use the heaviest
format i can carry to the location of the shot. sometimes that will
be 35mm, sometimes 6x6, sometimes 6x7. if I had 4x5 gear, sometimes
I would use that too.
you can get sharpness from 35mm that rivals medium format with careful
technique, but grain limits acutance and there is no way to avoid
enlarging grain when doing big enlargements, so medium format always
wins there. and when a camera with tilt is used for a landscape,
you can shoot at a less diffraction-limited aperture, so obtaining
significantly sharper results. this applies to macro work as well,
but medium format macro work is very difficult and tedious.
If a flower fills most of a 35mm frame at 1:3 magnification,
you will need 0.78x or almost 1:1 to fill the same fraction of
a 6x9 or 6x7 frame. This means DOF is much shallower, vibrations
and all sorts of problems become magnified more (and medium format
SLRs have lots more vibrations to magnify), and the image will be
darker from a higher bellows factor loss of light, not to mention
the likelihood of a smaller max. aperture for the medium format lens.
All in all, it is much more difficult to do macro work in medium format.
I've learned to have a healthy amount of respect for the commercial
photographers who make those beautiful closeups of small products
for brochures or fruits and vegetables for ads etc. using large
format monorails.
J. Albert
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