If I photograph either with various cameras and ask which "reproduction" is best, then your preference is irrelevant. I could do various tests to show which camera made the best reproduction.
While I am sympathetic to this argument in principle and in spirit, it mostly doesn't work that way in the real world. I know, because I've spent a lot of time doing that. It's an imortant method to an end, but the end often isn't where you'd like it to be. No camera or printer is completely accurate, so we choose what parts of the accuracy we think are important.
There is a profession in France (but i don't know the apellation in english) that is called "chromiste" and his only job is to calibrate the colors in order to be accurate from the photo to the final printing.
It is really hard job...
Yes, it is. I learned those skills in Paris and honed them in the US.
Firstly; most film, and now digital, isn't accurate and isn't meant to be. It's meant to be pleasing to look at and sell photos. There are ways around that, but I won't go into those here. No photography or printer is fully accurate, you have to choose what you can live with and what you can't.
We could routinely make proofs that the artist could not distinguish from the original. Fairly easy with watercolors, very difficult with oil, acrylics are somewhere in between. But even when we fooled the artitst, it's rarely what they wanted. No, they wanted it to "pop" more. More contrast, more saturation, sharper. They wanted it better than the original. That bothered me for some time because I worked so hard for accuracy, but there are good reasons for it - some have to do with the faults of the medium, some have to do with ego. No matter how you measure and analyze it, the copy is never perfect and often lacks a certain "feel" of the original. That could be texture, reflectivity or other things. You have to make that up in subtle tweaks to the reproduction to achieve the same feel, to convey the same emotion.
So in making a fine art print, accuracy i
s important and needed - you can't be too far off or your work will be rejected. But the goal is rarely 100% accuracy. It isn't what the client wants and they won't pay for it. Some of that is because you simply can't be 100% accurate, so you fudge a little here, enhance a little there, to make up for the fact that the mimic isn't completely true to the original. Interestingly the closer the mediums, the more often a very accurate print will be accepted. Oil paint is an extremely rich medium and hard to match for "feel" even if you do match the color. It takes a lot of time and tweaking.
Accuracy or truth in images is important, but it's only someone's definition of accuracy, a choice of what to measure and what to match. It's still a kludge, though a highly skilled one. But then it has to sell, and that's a another matter.
🙂
