Wedding photography and commercial photography tend to be two very different
types of photography which have very different needs and demands.
Most wedding photographers are selling prints and mostly small size prints
8x10 or smaller with a few wall size enlargements. They have used medium
format typically because the films were both large enough and suitable for
traditional retouching which 35mm film is not. Thus they might get away
with a high quality 35mm digital camera.
Commercial photographers, depending on how you define them, typically are
not selling prints at all. Typically they are selling images for
reproduction and publication in media produced by offset presses. While
they typically do not have their images reproduced in very large sizes, they
do need to display clearly and sharply fine details and not have blocked up
shadow and highlight areas. They generally have to maintain relatively flat
lighting so as to be within the contrast range of the printing presses which
is usually much less than what can be captured on film. Thus they have
typically used medium format and large format cameras and transparency films
to capture their images. With respect to digital cameras and backs,
commercial photographers would go for high resolution medium and large
format digital backs so as to be able to capture detail sharply and larger
density/contrast ranges and bit depths in order to capture subtle tones and
details within highlight and shadow areas.
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-filmscanners@halftone.co.uk
[mailto:owner-filmscanners@halftone.co.uk]On Behalf Of Robert Meier
Sent: Wednesday, August 15, 2001 11:52 PM
To: filmscanners@halftone.co.uk
Subject: filmscanners: film vs. digital cameras - wedding/commercial
photography
I have been talking with a few wedding and commercial photographers who
expressed their intention to go digital. Cameras mentioned were Fuji S1
and Nikon D1x both with 6 Mpixel. Now these same photographers, as all
others, say MF is absolutely necessary for the big enlargments. This
seems to be a contradiction as the digital cameras mentioned only
produce approx. a 6M*12bit=9Mbyte file compared to about
(2*4000)^2*36bit=274Mbytes for a 4000dpi scan or approx 1000Mbytes
assuming film has an 'equivalent' of about 8000dpi.
Assuming you want a 24x20 print @300dpi you need
24*20*300*300*8bit/channel*3channels=124Mbytes of data. The digital
camera gives you only 6M*8bit/channel=6Mbytes. This is about 124/6=20,
i.e. 19 out of 20 pixels have to be interpolated. That sounds quite
unresonable to me. Does anybody have any experience with that and
throughs their MF scannera away to go digital?
Also do you have any idea what the going hourly rate for wedding
photographer and commercial photographers is?
Robert
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