Large format motorsports photographer - What effect is this?

Leonard Migliore wrote:

MCLV wrote:

sybersitizen wrote:

MCLV wrote:

It's mentioned in the original article that the author scans the film.

It's possible to get blurred edges by intentionally allowing film to curve while scanning, though it wouldn't necessarily result in such sharp boundaries.

In addition, the author already replied that he does some adjustments in post.

Then it's far more likely that he digitally blurred the edges in post.

I'll add that the second photo has an awful lot of weird grain in the center area for a large format result. Looks like he actually applied digital noise there.

I was also surprised about the graininess. He likely uses a fast film but it still should be a large format negative. I have never shot on film, let alone in this format so I don't have any experience what to really expect here.

I used to shoot a lot of 4X5. You never get grain. It's just not something you worry about. The negative is too big to show any grain no matter how big you print.

Based on what I know, I would also expect smooth gradients and basically no grain visible due to low magnification of the negative. But that's not how images in the article look like. Do you have any thoughts about this?