Mr. Brauer uses a 4X5 field camera, drum scans the transparency, and creates a digital image file that he (I assume) edits and then prints. I have sat in awe in front of my computer screen analyzing every aspect and detail of his work finding it both compelling and inspiring. His 4X5 scanned images result in a digital file of somewhere in the neighborhood of an equivalent 200 megapixels of resolution at 300dpi!!
In my email I asked if doing the same process with my medium format Mamiya 645 would yield better resolution and clarity that my 10.2 megapixel Nikon D200. He responded that it likely would since the effective "capture" area of the transparency was nearly four times that of my camera's sensor. He also noted that my Mamiya's lenses were probably better optically speaking than those of my Nikon. I was a little stunned by this thought as my Mamiya cost me no more than $250.00 from a friend, and just ONE of my Nikon lenses was around $2,000.00. I had to put this to the test.
I picked a spot up Big Cottonwood Canyon in the Wasatch Mountains, just east of the Salt Lake Valley. Donut Falls was my destination. During the short hike in to the falls I walked slower than I normally would, the whole time scanning the scene for something worthwhile to shoot. Eventually I made it to the falls after nothing lower on the trail struck me as noteworthy. The falls weren't much better.
I set up my Mamiya with an 80mm Mamiya Sekor lens atop my Manfrotto tripod and searched through the viewfinder for something to shoot, all the while forgetting that what I was really here for was to experiment with film versus digital image resolution and clarity. I could have just stayed home and photographed the dog doing its business on the lawn. What I mean is, the subject really made no difference! But why not try to make it something pretty while I was at it right?
I shot the whole role of film and dropped it off at the processor the next morning. An hour and a half (and one mowed lawn) later I picked up the film and was excited to see just how good things turned out. As I sat at the light table looking through the loop at my film, a brief urge to sell all of my digital equipment surged through me. I excitedly cut out one of the images and handed it to the girl at the counter and asked her to scan it at their highest resolution possible. She dutifully took my order and charged me for the work.
Today I got the link from them and downloaded the resulting 116mb TIFF file. I loaded the image into Adobe's RAW tool and read the image info. I was shocked to see that this scanned image was the equivalent of a 40 megapixel digital file! So, it would seem, I have a film camera in my arsenal that shoots an equivalent 40 megapixel file when scanned using their process! I am jazzed!
There is a drawback though. Film costs about $2.50 a roll, processing is $5.50 a roll, and scanning at this resolution is $11.50 per scan. $19.50 (before tax) per image just to create a digital file from film isn't very cost effective at all. And this doesn't include any printing, mounting, or framing.
I read somewhere that shooting with medium or large format film requires a lot more intuitive creation of an image. What I read implied that the intuitive process really meant "make sure your shooting something important because this is gonna be expensive".
Below is the image created from my medium format Mamiya 645. Its transparency size is 6cm X 4.5cm (hence the 645). After scanning, I edited first in Adobe RAW correcting some color and sharpening a bit, then brought it into Photoshop where I added an edge burn. Hope you enjoy this one. I will surely do this again, but on a more important or visually interesting subject.
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