Monochrom SL2-Who Would Buy?

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I love SL 601 & SL2 - but will never buy a Monochorm; it‘s far better having the coloured shot and doing b&w in pp

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On 12/10/2020 at 3:22 PM, Jon Warwick said:

It’s an interesting point. In my case, i think I do see better tonality of greys off a Monochrom sensor vs color conversions, and it will likely push me in the direction of an SL2 Monochrom if it was released, but admittedly think the general digital aesthetics are more similar than they are poles apart, and that both colour and Monochrom digitals have a quite different aesthetic versus 35mm film specifically. When one goes increasingly bigger in size of film formats, I find they tend to look more like the digitals due to higher resolution and less grain masking any of the details. This thought came to a fore recently for me when I was sorting out some family photos taken around 1900. I assume the photos are directly off large plates (some photos are c 12” x 8”, and presumably with zero enlargement factor in those days). Resolution is soooooo high on these old photos that it feels like it’s more than the eye would naturally see, and the print is complete free of any grain .....aesthetically these old images look digital to me for those reasons. It’s made me reconsider my personal view of what aesthetics mean in photography, and how there is an example of the very most “analogue” process of around 1900 (using plates and zero loss from enlargement factor) looking aesthetically to my eyes exactly like it was taken off a modern day digital!!

 

Indeed, digital has entered the territory of large format film, in a way. I do very much admire Edward Weston and Ansel Adams contact prints. On the other hand, digital has become too perfect in order to enhance aesthetics through "lesser" quality, like in grainy 35mm b&w film or film´s other scope of qualities that are hard to digitally emulate.