4x5 Resurrection

I have been thinking about my 4x5 a lot lately. I placed it in storage 2 years ago, and before that having only used it sparingly. I have a plethora of lovely film cameras that are just gathering dust anymore. I have come to the conclusion that my dependency on a digital process is debilitating.

When digital cameras were just getting to the point of "integrateable" into a workflow, many men and women of the lens would simply not have any of it. But as it became cheaper, better and faster, most came around to the dark side. Those were pretty tough benefits to argue with. No processing times, although I loved my lab and the guys who worked there - Color Services, I miss you, and you probably miss me or at least my money :) No scanning, this is where I should have bought a scanner instead of an DSLR, I had to go to my friend Tyler Matson's house to scan my negatives, despite the fact that it was usually at the least convenient times. Plus there was no dust retouching. (I was just never that clean to scan and not get any dust)

When I shoot any more I no longer rely on what I know as much as I use to. Why should I? I can just look at my LCD after every picture until its right. Just like every other I-just-got-a-camera-for-Christmas-I-can-be-a-professional-photographer-too. My light meter mind as well be buried with Ansel Adams, and who needs one when you have a histogram.

So, I called up my brother, had him dig out the camera -thanks btw. It is now on its way to my house. Now all I need to do is dig up my old B&W processing stuff, and buy a scanner.

A little food for thought, a $2,700 Canon 5D Mark II has 21.1 megapixel CMOS censor. A $2,200 Nikon CoolScan 9000 can scan 35mm and 120/220 films at 4000 dpi. Which means a 35mm negative scanned at 4000 dpi would translate into a 21.4 megapixel camera. (36mm x 24mm @ 4000 dpi = 5669 px X 3780 px) And if you were to scan a 6x6cm 120 negative, that’s the equivalent of an 89.2 megapixel camera. So break out your Hasselblad and buy a scanner, and rub your 89 megapixels into every DSLR owner’s faces.