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Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
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The Phoblographer Explains: Why Does Large Format Film Look So Good?

Chris Gampat
No Comments
02/01/2016
2 Mins read

large-format-video

Photographers who shoot smaller formats like Micro Four Thirds and APS-C always aspire to one day shoot full frame 35mm. Why? The quality just looks better. If you’re a 35mm sensor or camera user, you probably aspire to shoot with medium format for the same reason. And again, the same reason applies to going from medium format to large format. In the photography world, bigger is quite usually better.

But what makes it better? To figure this out, I talked to reps at both Kodak Alaris and Fujifilm USA.

“In photography, if all things are equal – including the type of film (e.g: Velvia 50), the camera and lens selection and the degree of enlargement – the imaging result would be the same.” says Justin Stailey, Sr. Product Manager, FUJIFILM North America Corp. “However, if the resulting image is a standard size for all three film formats, then we see the effect of the degree of enlargement.” Basically, he says that it only really happens with larger formats.

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Essentials Medium Format Beginner (3 of 6)ISO 1001-125 sec at f - 4.0

Kodak, however, says something a bit different. “Actually, the dynamic range and color gamut are the same in all film formats.” is what Kodak tells Audrey A. Jonckheer, Director of Worldwide Public Relations for the Imaging Division. “The only difference in larger format is the size of the negatives.” Kodak continued to state that it is important to remember that to get an 8×10 print from an 4×5 negative, you only need to magnify it 2x, versus 4.4x for a 6×6 (square format) 120 film, and 8.8x for a 135 negative. To that end, prints from the larger formats tend to look better because they’re blown up less in proportion. “Images captured with a high end 35mm camera often exhibit the best image quality, because the lenses are typically sharper.”

So let’s look at the formats.

 

 

The-Phoblographer-Infographic-on-Film-sizes

Now that we’ve got that in mind, let’s run with this logic.

  • If you were to print a 60 inch by 42 inch image, the large format image would need to be enlarged less than a 35mm film image would due to its size and its task to fill the space.
  • If you were to print a 60 inch by 42 inch image, the 35mm format image would need to be enlarged even more to fill the space. Why? It’s a smaller format.

So what does this all mean?

If you’re printing an 8×10 image, then a 35mm film format image will have a bit of degradation because of the size. But if you’re printing an 8×10 image of an 8×10 piece of film, you’re not blowing it up at all–so it’ll be at its fullest quality.

Then there are other obvious things like depth of field, bokeh, lens coatings, etc. Full frame 35mm film cameras have lenses that are technologically the most advanced so far, so that can give them an edge in some ways.

enlargement film fujifilm kodak
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Chris Gampat

Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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