Other cameras that have film-like quality?

Hi Truman

Thank you for that very thorough explanation of your approach, I appreciate you took the time and effort to put all that down in electrons. And I certainly agree that local suppression and enhancement of tonal/detail is a key part of expressing a vision. I do all my editing in Lightroom (never came to terms with Photoshop) and I find the gradient and brush tools are exactly what I need for local adjustments to hide certain parts of the image and emphasise others.

The thing that is puzzling me isn't so much the thinking or the process but rather how you identify that some tools (lenses, cameras etc) hamper the process. Because I see the tonal manipulation you are describing as primarily a post processing/editing exercise, I'm wondering in what way does the D200 (for example) make it harder for you to get to your intention? Is it something it is doing wrong that is impossible to work with or perhaps more that the default raw file leaves you with far more work to do than cameras you found more to your liking? Or perhaps it is something completely different....

Just trying to figure out what it is you didn't like about it, so I can see it myself. I didn't see it in your first set of examples, presumably because I don't know what you struggled to achieve. Maybe you can use the first D200 example you showed us, and explain what it about the frame that doesn't work for you?

Best

Dave