Warren--Yes, sometimes I shoot train photos on something other than 35mm slides. In my professional life I have shot in all film sizes up to 8x10, but never used 8x10 for train photos (always wanted to, but it was too inconvenient). At Chessie/CSX I also used 4x5's, Pentax 6x7's, Hasselblads, Fuji 6x17 panoramic cameras, and 16mm motion picture cameras. For "picture train" shoots I would use a pair of 6x7's with b&w and color negative films for give-away prints, and Nikons for 35mm slides.
Sometimes I'd shoot K-64 or E-6 in the Blad, depending on the subject's composition and final use of the photo. The Blad had THE sharpest and most expensive lenses that I have ever seen, but it was not really convenient to use for numerous reasons. (Lenses not as wide or as long as with 35mm cameras, slower maximum lens apertures, too damn delicate for rough location work, etc.) All of its square images had to be cropped for use on annual report covers, etc. Why go through all of that hassle with the Hasselblad and then have to crop the 6x6 image down to a 6x4.5 image to get a vertical or a horizontal image? The amount of film used in it could get really expensive and we really did not need to shoot 2-1/4 slides for everything since many photos were not blown up too much. You never knew what photo would capture someone's fancy, but you could not shoot everything on the Blad--that would have been expensive overkill. That's the main reason we used so much 35mm--it had the best ratio of quality vs. cost of film. We could shoot anything on 35mm and it would be perfectly good for a magazine cover or other good sized enlargement. When we knew in advance "This photo will be reproduced very large" or whatever, then we would use the Blad. If it was a mural-sized print, we'd use a 4x5. I did not want it when CSX paid for it, and when they sold off the cameras I was not about to buy it for myself. Don't get me wrong, it was a beautiful camera, but it just did not fit into my way of making photos. The Pentax 6x7's used up a larger piece of 120 film for each exposure than the Blad, and I figured if you have to lug that big stuff around you might as well get as big of a negative as you can. The 6x7 lenses are nowhere near as sharp as those for the Blad, but are adequate for most jobs at hand. These 6x7's are great for aerial photography (which we did a lot of for a transportation company, about 40 hours a year per photographer logged in helicpters), especially with their focal plane shutters to freeze the action better than the leaf shutters in the Blad, even at the same shutter speed. Only occasionally did we ever use the 6x7's for E-6 work--usually just for b&w and color negs. If we needed 120-size transparencies we used the sharper Blad. The 6x7's synched with strobes at just 1/30 second, so they were essentially useless for outside work where you needed fill-in flash. Again, the Blads did these jobs. I used to rent a Fuji 6x17 panoramic camera now and then from New York City at $50 per day, $200 per week, but a CSX company photographer in Jacksonville went out and bought one ($4500). What a waste of CSX money. I liked to shoot aerials with it mounted on my Ken-Lab gyro stabilizer. Tremendously impressive-looking images when spread out on a light table for the client to look at. It had a leaf shutter, and it required a special graduated neutral density filter (which robbed your exposure of light by a stop or two) to even out the exposure across that entire 2-1/4" x 7" piece of film. Only got 4 shots per roll of 120 film. Clients would specifically tell me to make panoramic photos, and then they would crop them down to normal 6x7 rectangles and lose that 6x17 effect. What a waste. Warren, the old adage states that all things being equal (lens sharpness, film used, etc.), the bigger the negative the better the photo. I would love for all of my cover photos to have the quality of an 8x10 transparency, but that is not prctical or even possible. For example, a photo made with a 500mm lens on a 35mm camera would have to be made with a 3250mm lens on an 8x10 camera to achieve the same effect. About the smallest format you can go to and still get good quality magazine cover reproduction is 35mm. Of course, that is depending on the sharpness of the lens, graininess of the film, etc. Since bigger is better, your medium format cameras will make for sharper cover images than 35mm format, again, everything being equal. Are you asking me if camera store employees are attempting to persuade customers into purchasing medium format cameras instead of 35mm cameras based on how the 120 transparencies look on the light table when compared with 35mm? If that is what you are asking, sure, I've heard them do that. In most cases the medium format camera will be more than the customer wanted or needed, but they are made to think that they need it by some fast-talking salesman. (If he can do it, a car salesman will sell you a Rolls Royce when all you needed was a Ford Taurus and all you could afford was a beat-up Yugo!) But if the customer learns what he/she is doing with that big toy, then they will be getting good quality snapshots. For the most part big cameras like that really are for pros and serious amateurs who are reproducing big prints or magazine covers. For 99% of all amateur shooting the 35mm camera will be just fine. Many pros use nothing but 35mm. I'll bet that you guys are getting tired of hearing from me so often. I know that I am! John B. Corns --> SPORRS: Serious Photographers of Railroad Related Subjects X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 971
