[Leica] Another Leica vs medium format debate

["Gib Robinson" <robinson@sfsu.edu>]

Tina wrote:

>I contend that 35mm can also accomplish what is
> ascribed to large-format, but large-format cannot accomplish what is
> ascribed to 35mm.  Comments?

Perhaps you are simply provoking us to refine our debate.
I look forward to the arrival of my copy of Photo Techniques. Meanwhile,
my answers to your declarations flow from the logic of negative size:

No, a 35mm can not accomplish what is ascribed to a large-format
camera. People like Weston, Adams, & many others introduced us to
subtleties and details that can not be duplicated in 35mm. When I look
at 35mm landscapes by Galen Rowell I am not fooled into thinking
I am seeing a large-format photo and in my view he tries to use a 35mm for
a large number of landscape photos that would look much better and be much
more interesting  if they were printed from larger negatives. In 35mm they
are
cartoons or sketches of landcape. They put me off. I can't find my way into
them.

The quote you include from Mike Johnston seems mind-numbingly
simplistic:

"Great 35mm pictures are truthful impressions of the world: records,
observations, or reports of reality.....Great large-format photographs
express an individual's consciousness, and feelings and ideas about form,
beauty, and spirit."

I'm like Duh! ALL formats report both truth and fiction. That's also true
of the senses that we use to photograph and perceive them. As
a corollary, ALL formats "express an individual's consciousness,
and feelings and ideas about form, beauty, and spirit." I have a sense
of what he's trying to say, but his formulation doesn't get us there.

As for part II: "Large-format cannot accomplish what is
ascribed to 35mm." Of course not.

- --Gib