On 10/3/2010 5:15 PM, Ken Norton wrote:
>> You're sensing it. Rational doesn't have anything to do with it. If you want
>> rational to enter the equation, then let's get similar snaps with a good
>> digital camera and see what the prints look like after post.
> I guess the problem is that I haven't seen a good digital camera yet.
> Let me know when someone makes one. ;)
Well, I guess it's time. I wanted to let a little time pass and review my
experiences. I wanted to get home and see
again the prints I had sent ahead of me. I wanted to see the photo exhibition
"Debating Modern Photography, The Triumph
of Group f/64"at the Portland (Maine) Museum of Art.
Bob specifically refers to prints, not camera, not software, not printer, etc -
finished photographic prints. That's his
final product, the true measure of the quality of the process, from seeing the
subject out in the world to seeing it in
a print. I'm under the impression from your many posts and occasional rants
that such is the case for you, too. And for
Chris C.
Bob used to do some of his photography using a view camera with 4x5 film, so he
is no stranger to LF, let alone MF,
film. He now uses a Nikon D3.
We had the privilege of spending much of a day and all the evening with Bob and
Joan and getting the grand tour of his
small but lovely gallery, several of his quite large limited edition prints and
the studio where he creates the prints.
Fortunately, Carol and Joan hit it off, so Bob and I got to talk more about
photography than might otherwise have been
the case (or perhaps wise?). Carol and I also spent time at two different
galleries where his open edition work is on
display.
In the course of our travels, we visited several galleries, including one on
the main street of Bar Harbor devoted to
the work of only one photographer, another on the main street of Bridgton
devoted to the work of another single
photographer and two showing the work of a well known marine photographer, "
... the best", according to one gallery
owner (whose paintings I disliked)
I'm not going to argue here who's the best photographer. The marine shooter has
some pretty amazing shots taken under
sail and one of the other guys has some amazing captures of animals in the wild.
I will say that in my opinion, Bob's recent prints from the Nikon are finer
prints than any others we saw, including all
but maybe, maybe, a couple of B&W 8x10 contact prints in the museum show.
Always thinking that I'm going to get around
to hanging my own photography on my walls, I never buy photographs by others.
Two 8x12s (matted to 11x14) for ourselves,
another as a gift, a 6x8 (8x10) and two 3.5x5s (5x7) later, that's no longer
true.
To say that the web images on Bob's site aren't representative of the finished
prints is to state the obvious. It's only
when you see the prints in person that it becomes clear what a huge
understatement that is. The opening image on the
site gallery, Cuckolds Light <http://www.bobwhitmire.com/>, is nice on screen.
The original in person is jaw dropping.
I've been a fan since I first saw his prints. Still, I could fault some prints
technically, and did so to him, which led
to discussions in which I probably learned more than he did. One could see his
progress in moving from image capture to
print in come cases. In one case, smaller prints of a fall foliage scene seemed
less clear than larger ones. It turned
out that the smaller ones were left over stock made earlier. A rescan of the
film, reprocessing and reprinting led to
the improvement, even at larger sizes.
With these recent images, originally captured with the D3, he has upped the
ante. One of the open edition prints we
bought, Christmas Cove is, to my eye, an exceptional print in either the 8x16
or 12x18 sizes I saw. I can't directly
link to it, but it's on this page.
<http://www.bobwhitmire.com/page8/page6/page6.html> Things that are supposed
to be
sharp are simply sharp, without a hint of over processing, even to the 'eagle
eye' right up next to the print. Things
that are supposed to be soft are very naturally so. The tonal shading in the
boat hulls is beautiful and exquisitely
subtle. The muted colors are right on, to my eye and Carol's that have spent
quite a bit of time lately looking at such
scenes in the same area.
We spent over a week living with The Beehive, on the same web page. It's not a
spectacular image, but the, I don't know
the word, precision(?), the details of texture, detail, color, especially in
the water, are exceptional. The print is
too small to show grains of sand, and they probably aren't there at full pixel,
but the print 'looks' like they are
there to be seen if one could just get close enough. Maybe precision is the
word, but applying to the soft, subtle,
muted, as well as the bright, sharp and saturated.
And it wears very well. The longer I was in its presence, the fonder I became
of it. Alas, we had to leave it behind for
someone else to enjoy.
So, back from embarrassing Bob with not so faint praise ... Whatever you may
argue about images as they come out of your
DSLR or off MF film, the D3 (and yes, John, it is better in at least most IQ
ways than any E-thingie yet made) produces
images that, in the hands and work flow of a really good photographer, post
processor and printer, simply make one
forget about what captured them.
I imagine that in Bob's modestly proposed idea "... then let's get similar
snaps with a good digital camera and see what
the prints look like after post.", his finished prints would be better than the
ones from 6x7 film.
(No, this is not a pitch for Nikon. I don't think the D3 is the only DSLR with
which Bob could get these results.)
Opinionated Moose
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