Compiled by Q.-Tuan Luong for the Large Format Page
My experience, through viewing at exhibitions and in my own work, is that there is a very subtle difference between the two. It's not that enlargement from 4x5 is not sharp; it is fine. However, the 8x10 seems a little more "lifelike". For example, a contact print is the best way to "feel" snow or sand in a print. You can sense the granular surfaces. I have several fine prints from 4x5 that contain snow/sand and they do not convey the same sense of surface texture. I am not sure how one would go about measuring these characteristics, but they do exist. George Papas
I use both 4x5 and 8x10. I can generally see a difference in B&W 11x14 prints in the 2 formats and can almost always see a difference in 16x20 prints in the 2 formats. These observations come from looking at lots of prints of different subjects made on the 2 formats. In the few cases where I've made photographs of the same subject on both formats, I couldn't see anything in an 8x10 print from each that indicated anything superior about the 8x10 contact though the prints are never completely identical. I have made a few 1:1 enlargements from 4x5 negatives and compared them with 4x5 contact prints (I've never done this with 8x10, though I may have to give it a try now) and always prefered the enlargements (I found it impossible to make the prints identical). From those experiments, I think there must be some visible difference between enlargements and contact prints that someone could learn to recognize. I don't think there is anything magic or superior to a contact print (I actually found the 1:1 prints through an enlarging lens sharper than the contact prints but I'm sure it depends on how close the light used for the contacts is to a true point source). I was also using a condenser enlarger at the time and the different grades of paper required make matching prints harder. My prints were on the same paper (probably Ilford Multigrade FB, or Oriental Seagull graded, it was a few years ago). If the prints are on different papers, the differences are likely to be even wider (I've never been able to make truely identical prints on any two different papers). John Sparks
Its impossible to argue with someone else's experience. I can't see such a difference [between 8x10 contact and enlarged from 4x5] in my own work. I can see differences in quality as the size of the negative goes up for a given size enlargement. Certainly the difference between 35mm and 6x6cm is quite obvious in an 8x10 print. I can see some difference (but much less than in the first case) in comparing 6x6cm to 4x5 but I am not sure when looking at old prints whether a photo was taken on 4x5 or 8x10 for an 8x10 print. That's just my visual judgement. I do not at the moment have an 8x10 enlarger. It would be interesting to make 1:1 projection prints and compare those to contact prints. There are a few folks out there who have the where withall to do this and I am interested in observations. I also suspect that some of the "magic" quality that contact prints are supposed to have are historical memory, so to speak. When projection paper first came out around the 'teens, it was Bromide emulsion which did not have very good tonal quality. It was distinctly inferior to the mostly Chloride contact papers available then. Modern enlarging paper is a far cry from this stuff. I don't think any purely Chloride paper has been made for decades. Kodak Azo is a Chlorobromide paper, like all Kodak papers for over fifty years. Richard Knoppow