35mm vs. Medium Format

Just recently I’ve been doing less taking of photographs and more looking at photographs, although I’ve looked at images before, I’ve never really looked. What I mean is I’ve studied images from a artistic, judgemental stand point but I rarely take time out to study in depth images other than my own, for things like type of camera, film, etc. Now at this point I can see many of you shaking your heads wondering how I could photograph for this long without this process, all I know is it’s been very valuable.

The biggest revelation for me is the difference in quality or overall format of 6×6 MF cameras, this struck me especially this week when reading a Charlie Waite book on landscapes. Charlie, is a recent advocate of the Canon 1Ds Mk2, and in recent magazine columns has raved about 35mm digital images. In this particular book he has a couple of examples of exactly the same shot taken with both MF and 35mm cameras, and I’m sorry to say that I can’t see where the 35mm comes close to the performance of film/MF combo.

In fact I’ll stick my neck out here, and say that I couldn’t find in the entire book a 35mm image that came close to the overall appeal of the MF images, most of the 35mm were far less stimulating. So I now have to ask myslef if I should allow myself to be disillusioned, if Charlie Waite cannot (in my personal opinion) produce any images using 35mm on par with his medium format work, what liklehood is there of me pulling that particular rabbit from the hat?

This is just one example, I’ve begun to notice the same trend when putting portrait and fashion/glamour photography under the microscope also.

We’ll see how this pans out.