Sean Esopenko

Extreme Tonal Range and Resolution with Large Format

August 29, 2010

Today I developed my own b&w 4×5 for the first time. I had a couple sheets processed by a lab when I was in Hawaii (where I bought the camera). They were pretty grainy after I scanned them in but I shrugged it off to the fact the film was ISO 400. I just finished scanning in some shots on the same ilford 400 film I used before but developed myself. Wow! Just wow! The lab must have been using some super high contrast development process because I fell in love instantly with the hand processed negatives.

The grain was almost non-existant at 1200 dpi. I upped scanner to 2400 to finally see some grain. And the tonal values! This jpeg doesn’t serve it justice, the tonal values are amazing! I can zoom right in at 100% and see this:

See that resolution? 10092 x 7045. That’s 71 megapixels! It makes me wonder what kind of image I’d have shooting iso 100 or iso 50 film!

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