the Better Light influence
changing times
There is no doubt in my mind that a digital image made with a 4x5 scan back can be far better technically than one made by either instant capture digital or traditional photography.
The intricate and time consuming manipulations required in traditional photography become routine mini-tasks in digital photography. And high-end digital offers the image maker an almost unbelievable amount of additional finesse.
Commercial photographers should be able to deal successfully with the required change in balance between art and technique. Often they do not need to think about art because an artist already has. But I am not so certain about fine art photographers. It might be difficult for artists already skilled in traditional photography and its accompanying darkroom processes to acquire mastery of all the controls that digital photography offers while still maintaining their primary emphasis on art. Modifying an established work method and acquiring a major amount of computer expertise is not easy, and an artistic temperament might not be suitable for absorbing boundless computer power.
Film, especially color, predetermines much of the image quality for a traditional photographer, but digital photography puts the image maker in greater charge of quality in the final image, whether black and white or color. High-end digital imaging offers the most complete control of image capture plus the benefits of instant feedback - being able to verify immediately if "capture" is satisfactory. Even better and more specialized are high-end scan backs, which are currently only for 4x5 view cameras. Scan backs have no interpolation or unnecessary image-capture post-processing, both of which tend to obliterate fine detail.
But even uninterpolated data will not yield that detail if parallelism is not excellent. A photographer who uses a scan back may need parallelism even more, because parallelism enables accurate focusing to superimpose the focal plane on the image plane in order to maximize the detail that is recorded.
endorsements
Since the development of Better Light scan backs for 4x5 view cameras, images made by either traditional photography or digital instant-capture simply do not compare favorably to a Better Light image. Resolution in a large print from a Better Light scan back is absolutely amazing. I suggest you see for yourself at http://www.sjphoto.com . Although large prints do the best job of showing the resolution, sharpness, tonal separation, feeling of depth, and smoothness of tones that a scan back and a grainless image offer, the sjphoto site offers the next best kind of viewing. Stephen Johnson (sj) expertly balances his traditional photographic background with thoroughly refined computer expertise.
Not only can digital scan back photographers make images that are, at the very least, technically superior to any others, they also are extremely fortunate to have the premier manufacturer of scan backs, BetterLight http://www.betterlight.com , easily accessible to them. The combined staff at Better Light offers a pool of talent that is beautifully balanced between traditional photography, computer expertise, and engineering.
Michael Collette is the inventor of scan backs and founder of Better Light. He augments that all-important balance with understanding other people's needs and is only a phone call away.
I believe that in their respective fields, Stephen Johnson and Michael Collette are perfect blends of old and new photography.
I have had both feet in traditional photography for over three decades, but technological changes have made high-end digital photography, especially scan back photography, the wave of the future. If I was photographing today, I would go digital.
Bill Ziegler