8x10 vs digital (a gallery comparison for your own eyes)
Are you going through Vegas to shoot landscape in the great SW?
If you get a chance maybe check out Rodney Lough Jr\'s fine art landscape gallery in the new state of the art \"City Center\" in the heart of \"the strip.\" Good chance you will come away with your head spinning with inspiration to shoot and maybe even be propelled to take your landscape photography to the next level.
Rodney is a fellow Oregonian (I met him in Oregon as we used the same photography lab) who shoots almost exclusively 8x10 (with a few P65 stitched images). In the past I had the privilege of viewing some of his 8x10 transparencies, but had not ever seen his finished landscape gallery prints. I have also had the great privilege of viewing (and scrutinizing) a host of world class fine art landscape printers work (such as Ken Duncan, Christopher Burkett, Fatali, Lik and others) and I can say with certainty that Rodney\'s print quality is the best I have ever seen, period! A treat for the eyes (especially if you can see 20/20 or better! ).
Timing worked out great as I found Rodney hanging out in his gallery (he is most often not there because he has excellent management) and I got to talk with him for about 45 minutes. I came away with a lot of inspiration to keep moving forward, as well as having learned a few things. One thing we discussed was 8x10 quality vs digital in large sized fine art prints. This year I am branching out into a variety of areas including 8x10, 4x5, medium format digital stitching, so since he had already done comprehensive testing I was very curious what his take on it would be.
He took me over to a couple of P65 stitched shots (5 stitched 65 mega Pix shots with very little overlap or cropping) that were 6 foot wide panoramas. We both scrutinized the finest detail in the print and both concluded that it looked quite good. But then he took me to a 50\" x 10\' (ten FOOT) panorama print (printed at the maximum size of Fuji Flex) and we compared detail. Remember this was a 8x10 shot cropped to panorama. We both obviously concluded that it was quite a bit better than the digital file! There was even greater fine detail in the 8x10. I\'m sold.
Anyways, I found Rodney Lowe Jr to be very down to earth and approachable. I found his work quite inspirational (especially his mastery of print making).
Since I find inspiration/passion to be, in many ways, the wellspring of life, I thought I would put this out to the landscape and print group to possibly benefit from. I think some of you who come through Vegas could time your trip to view his gallery in \"City Center\" before going out into the great SW to photograph, to add fuel to your own fire.
Mark
Jan 31, 2010 at 04:10 PM
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