In the seemingly never ending march of increased mega-pixel sensors do we take time to step back and ask whether we really need them?

I have shot 6x6cm through to 35mm to early digital 3.3  mega-pixel through to 8 mega-pixel Dx and 12 mega-pixel Fx and back to 35mm film, 6x6cm film and 5×4″ film. Full circle and then some!

I have no doubt that both my D300 and D3S have different degrees of usefulness. The 1.5 times crop factor on the Dx sensor makes for a handy teleconverter when shooting wildlife, especially small wildlife but the almost ‘see in the dark’ capability of the D3S with noise free images when shooting at a default ISO800 takes me into a different league. That said, when I scan negatives taken on a Bronica SQAi or on the Toyo View 45C I am blown away by the quality.

I have just had some portraits printed professionally from files of scanned negatives at A2 size from both 6x6cm and 5×4″ and the quality is stunning.

So I seem to have the best of both worlds. The issue for me is deciding what to take on a shoot. I have to make the decision and stick with it. This has radically changed my shooting habit. Nowadays if I want to pack a camera that is unobtrusive, it is either the P6000 that is always in my day to day backpack or the FE2 loaded with B&W film. It is amazing how small and neat the FE2 is compared to a DSLR and there lies another issue. using both these cameras, I remain relatively in-cognito but recently I was out with the D3S and 200-400 zoom on a monopod and was visited by the police as someone had reported a suspiciois looking person. This in broad daylight and next to a railway line when the steam engine Tornado was about to pass through on a well publicised run. Then, on Sunday morning I was visited  after having set up my view camera near the dock gates at Felixstowe. Amazing, I was hardly skulking about the place with the red side of my focussing cloth visible. Are pro DSLRs and large format film cameras really so strange as to court the attention of the police or is it something more sinister?

Whatever, the 6 negatives when scanned will come in at around 1Gb each at 1200 dpi and I doubt I could ever get that quality from a digital back. One quality of film that non-photographers friends have pointed out is ‘three dimensional’. There is a depth to film based images that I have yet to see in digital so for now I will be shooting  a mix of formats based on the desired outcome. That means I have to plan and by planning I shoot less but more discernedly and that cannot be a bad thing.