Recently, while looking for a certain photograph from long ago, I had occasion
to search through some old negatives from my college days. And this, as you
might guess, got me to thinking.
I have read here recently comments about photographs taken only a couple of
decades past and the fact that, considering they were taken with lenses of the
day on film that is far inferior to today's modern emulsions, they
nevertheless,
almost miraculously, do actually look fairly decent, considering.
And I have been more than once astounded to read here that digital photography
is already far superior to 35mm film, has even eclipsed medium format, and any
day now will be the equal of large format, at least 4x5, and soon 5x7 and 8x10.
Absolutely ****ing amazing! I am in awe of such astute observations.
To help prove (or not) the validity of these hypotheses and to illustrate how
marvelously photographic technology has progressed in the last half century or
so, I have scanned at 5400 d.p.i. a negative from 1959, shot hand-held, with an
Asahi Pentax K and Takumar 55/1.8 lens, on Panatomic-X film, probably developed
in Rodinol, a 50-year-old developer even way back then.
I know it was shot hand-held because I had to rotate and crop the original,
since I am embarrassed to post a crooked picture, even if for purely
illustrative purposes. Also, though I may have wandered around campus with a
camera sometimes, I was never geek enough to tote a tripod. Therefore, since
it's been cropped, it's probably only about 90% of the original negative.
In any event, this scan of ancient film, developed in a primitive developer,
taken in a haphazard fashion back in the dark ages should provide an excellent
starting point from which we can make a comparison of the great advancements in
technology since that long ago age of hair, tie-dye, folk singers and vinyl
records, when about the only thing digital was a finger, particularly when
aimed
at the government.
I have also posted from the cropped scan a small section comprising
approximately 1/225th of the whole. (I think that would be .025%, but I'm a
math retard, so maybe not.) This, I felt, would show just how really poor the
materials were we had to work with back then and illustrate with great clarity
the progress we've made and allow for definite, unassailable proof of the
superiority of digital photography.
I don't have a super-duper digital whatsis, so I will eagerly await the posting
of a similar experiment by one or more of you who do, that is, a whole shot,
then a 1/225th piece of it. Considering how far superior they are even to
today's film cameras and film, if the picture I took way back in 1960 were shot
today with one of these whiz-bang digital thingies, you probably could read
where it says "ElectroVoice" on the speaker in the bell tower.
I'm going to stay right by my computer, on pins and needles, waiting for that
digital example that will show just how pathetic and wasted our efforts were
"way back then." I'm confident it will be profoundly elucidating and just might
provide the impetus I need to cause me to lurch right out and buy an E-1, or
some such, which I can partly finance by selling all that film in the fridge I
won't be needing anymore. Then I'll have more room for beer.
http://home.att.net/~hiwayman/wsb/html/view.cgi-photos.html-.html
Walt
--
"Anything more than 500 yards from
the car just isn't photogenic." --
Edward Weston
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