ABSTRACT
What is the best camera? Leaving obvious financial restrictions aside, Ansel Adams purportedly answered this question, “The biggest you can carry”. This answer does not come as a surprise from a great landscape photographer, who was well aware of the inherent benefits of a large negative. Alternatively, the optimum camera choice may depend on the photographic subject. Allowing the photographic application itself to be the guide pays tribute to the fact that camera versatility changes with negative size. As the negative format increases, the weight of the equipment typically goes up with it and electronic conveniences diminish. This gives smaller formats the edge, if speed is of the essence, but at the unavoidable expense of image quality. To prepare themselves for all possible photographic challenges, many photographers invest, therefore, in a 35-mm outfit for action photography, a medium-format outfit for studio and portrait photography, and in a large-format (4x5 or larger) outfit for architecture and landscape photography. These task-dependent equipment preferences are commonly accepted to be reasonable compromises between image quality and speed of operation.
