Roger, I don't know your age, but after 5000+ posts, you should see clearly that a larger format doesn't mean a better image. A sharper print doesn't mean a better image. "Don't ever confuse sharp with good..."
If a Salgado beautiful shot was -instead of taken with a Leica- taken with a larger negative, it wouldn't make that image any better, not even 1% better, and that's getting real. Sorry for you... Then let me ask you your way: Are my photographs on your screen sharp enough for you?
Clearly you don't understand my point about technical quality. In fact, I'm not sure you understand the meaning of the words 'technical quality'. Go back and re-read my post. I WAS NOT TALKING ABOUT AESTHETICS. I apologize for using capitals but you appear to have a highly selective way of reading others' posts.
If you feel like attacking my credibility, here's some ammunition, I'm 59, and I've earned a living from photography (and writing about it) for about 30 years. I've written three or four dozen books, many on photography, many of them illustrated with my own photographs. I've worked officially for the Tibetan Government in Exile, both reportage and portraits of resistance heroes (and one heroine). I started out in advertising in the mid-1970s and I've used most formats from Minox to 12x15 inch. You can also visit my website (address below).
Are your on-screen pictures sharp enough? Yes, for on-screen pictures. But there's a big difference between a 600x900 pixel image and even a half-page image in a book, and the same difference again between the picture in the book and (say) an 11x14 inch print.
I see from your latest post that you refer to 'minimal differences in real life for most printing sizes'. Well, yes, if your make prints small enough, it's hard to see the differences. And often, as you say,
aesthetically it doesn't matter. But even at 6x9 inch/15x22.5cm there's a big difference between rollfilm and 35mm, and a clearly detectable difference between 24x36mm and 18x24mm. TECHNICALLY!
My point is simply this: dropping to from 24x36mm to half-frame (or any other small format) won't allow you to shrink a 35mm standard-cassette film camera much while retaining such features as interchangeable lenses, a meter, a decent rangefinder base, etc. My own belief, apparently shared by the manufacturers, is that the market for a slightly smaller camera with detectably worse TECHNICAL image quality is negligible.
If you don't think the image quality is detectably worse, fine, that's your privilege. I fully take your point about Salgado, though my favourite of all his pictures -- the mine workers, shrunk to ant-size by the scale of the mine -- might actually be even more fascinating with more detail, i.e. a larger format.
To reinforce my argument one last time, I am separating AESTHETIC quality and TECHNICAL quality. Aesthetic quality is often independent of format, though not always. Go to Arles, or indeed anywhere you can visit a wide range of exhibitions, and you'll see some pictures where the detail captured by a large format is essential to the aesthetics of the image: Richard Petit and Pierre Gonnord spring to mind. But for a given standard of manufacturing and optical design, technical quality is very closely related to format size.
Cheers,
R.
