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gordy's image archive index

Life has been a little complicated and my photography focus has been putting together a photography kit and darkroom and not much time shooting. That's why there haven't been any additions to my image archive. This is an oldy but goody. I shot this in 1973. It was one of my first large format images. I'm excited about it because this was scanned from a 5x7 negative. My Epson 2450 will scan an area around 4"x9". Not quite enough for scanning a 5x7. I've been waiting for a new scanner that will scan 5x7 but that isn't happening. I scanned this in two sections and used Panavue Image Assembler to stitch it together. It worked great! I haven't cleaned it up yet. I didn't have the cleanest darkroom then and it's been beat up a little over the years but I wanted to see if I could scan 5x7. There goes another excuse not to shoot 5x7.

I've mentioned films size before. The larger the negative the better quality the print. There is better tonality and less grain. In car engines it is said that there is no substitute for cubic inches. In photography there is no substitute for square inches.

I've posted this before. These are the formats I can shoot or will be able to shortly. This graphic doesn't quite show the entire picture. Here is one that does. The graph shows the square inches of each format

As a point of reference, For around $3,000 you can get a digital camera that will do as good, or better, than 35mm. For over $20,000 you can get a digital camera as good as 6x6cm. Thats a long way from 4x5 or 5x7. Here is a section from the picture at the top. It's taken at the end of the Fire Dept Connection sign. The lens I used was nothing special and not nearly as sharp as my process lenses.

That's why I want to shoot large format.