Postdoctoral LF

[Heroique]

So many here, including myself, have entered the school of LF by "graduating" from another format – digital, pinholes, 35mm, or MF.

When it's time to graduate from LF, where will you go?

Or is this the end of the line for you – the Ph.D. of film photography?

[Nathan Potter]

DSLR, but only due to old age mind you. After DSLR probably pen and ink drawing.

Nate Potter, Austin TX

[BrianShaw]

For my next "photographic degree" I'm thinking of pen and ink sketching too. Or stone lithography. Although... I must admit that mezzotint printing is quite fascinating too.

[C_Remington]

Alternate Processes

[Michael Clark]

Started out with Pen and Ink (Rembrandt's pen and ink studys are amazing ) with wash then to 2 1/4 sq. to 4x5 to 5x7 ,back down to 4x5 to 2 1/4 then maybe pen and ink. Wasn't very good with pen and ink but it was fun .

[Tin Can]

Since I have only just begun LF, I think I have plenty to learn and do for the rest of my retirement.

[Leszek Vogt]

I'm probably not getting this....why not be content with what you got and just improve on that ? I'm starting (pretty much) with 5x7 and work my way to 4x5....that is if I feel this calling. OK, maybe I'm just reading the book from the back cover :>).

Les

[Preston]

I have a PHD in LF--everything is "Piled Higher, and Deeper"

:-)

--P

[Drew Wiley]

When I'm too old to lug an 8x10 and big wooden Ries Tripod, I'll resort to an 8x10 and carbon-fiber tripod. .. Then to my 4x5 Norma and smaller Ries tripod... Then
to my Ebony 4x5 and its carbon tripod... Then to a 6x9 film back .... then to a pine box ?

[AJ Edmondson]

Tried digital after I retired... thought full-frame DSLR, 3880 and a couple of decent lenses would "cure what ails me"... nope, kinda felt like inflatable girl-friends, imported pick-up trucks and plastic parade saddles. Glad I didn't get rid of all of the LF equipment! Just came back inside from the darkroom and saw this. LF is the end of the line for me... nothing else works.

Joel

[Vaughn]

When I get too old to haul around the 8x10 or 11x14, I guess I'll just have to retire to the dimroom and print the backlog.

[Mark Barendt]

When I get too old to haul big cameras around, it would be fun to get a really big camera on a rolling stand and have my subjects come to me.

[Tin Can]

That already is my plan. This Deardorff studio 11x14 on BiPost stand is big enough.



When I get too old to haul big cameras around, it would be fun to get a really big camera on a rolling stand and have my subjects come to me.

[Jody_S]

I expect I will give digital a serious try some day. Not any time soon though.

[Jac@stafford.net]

[...]Or stone lithography.

Interesting because that was what I did before getting into photography. I moved to rural France with no lithography sources and turned towards a Leica. But that was fifty years ago.

[Martin Miller]

About a year ago I decided that the expense and film logistics of 8x10 was not sustainable, especially as I was getting more into color. I started experimenting with multi-row mosaic photography using a mirrorless half-frame digital camera. After deciding that it was feasible, I bought a medium format digital camera, Pentax D645, and a set of used manual Hasselblad lenses. I marked each of the lens barrels with extension distances and I use the Rodenstock depth-of-field-calculator just like I did with LF, using manual-only camera controls. My average image-capture time is a little longer than with the 8x10 but this may improve a bit with practice. This system allows resolutions higher than 8x10 when the occasion warrants. I have found it considerably more challenging than using the 8x10, but the logistics and expense problem is solved for traveling, especially by air. There are drawbacks as well as advantages. Any time a single-image capture is essential, I'm stuck with a relatively low-res image. This not a big problem for my area of photography so far but it is an occasional one. For me, however, the advantages far outweigh the drawbacks. The lack of view-camera movements has not been a major issue either, but I figured I could fall back on focus stacking if I had to, though this complicates the capture even further. Ditto for HDR images. I do miss composing the image on that big ground glass but found that using a Linhof 4x5 Technika viewfinder is a viable substitute. As for printing, I was already scanning my 8x10 film and printing with an Epson 9800. One welcome improvement over film is cleanliness. Hot, sweaty hands in a changing bag = laborious spotting in PhotoShop, and I was only too happy to give this up. Though I have held off selling my film cameras until I was sure about this new system, I now feel confident enough to do so as soon as I can manage it.

[David_Senesac]

One of the issues during the last 15 years with marketing prints captured on color transparencies by view camera work is in order to create quality large prints, one needs to have the media scanned by expensive equipment one does not usually own but rather is through a service provider. Most often that is a drum scanner. Then one must process the scan image with complex image editing software, that is most often Photoshop that regularly upgrades its application to create print files that can print on printer machines that seem to regularly evolve every few years change. Thus one must struggle to keep on top of the current digital technologies especially color management systems and computers. One can create large color prints without all the above expensive process in a traditional home analog lab like was done 20 years ago but then the quality will be lower, print size smaller, at a level where the myriad DSLR photographers are all marketing their work with superior work flows managed by current software applications.

Personally I'm an old Silicon Valley hi tech worker of 4 decades in several small and large companies usually in engineering groups that has continually been stressed by changing electronic technology during that time forcing me to continually educate myself as technology rapidly expands and evolves. The kind of mentally difficult science and technology I've crammed into my head over the years is mind boggling and photography per the above has been likewise. Thus even though I've gone from 35mm SLR's to 6x7 to 4x5, in the current digital era, just keeping up is difficult enough without having to move on to something else. But yeah before I'm too old to work in the field anymore, I may go to a full digital camera workflow and even though I already understand much of those processes already, there is enough that I don't that it is enough to give me a headache just considering the notion.

[Drew Bedo]

I would think ULF is the Post-Doctorial level in film photography.

The complexity or difficulty of every aspect of the process goes up exponentially as the area of the Ground Glass increases. Someone on this forum will post the formula (I think there is a square or cube root involved and an exponent with a logarithm.)

And ULF leads into the older contact printing processes; Albumen, Wet-Plate Collodian, Platinum, and Daguerreotype (with or without Mercury).

So then, Post-Doc? Surely any alt process contact printed in a size 11x14 or larger is the photographic equivalent a Rhodes or Fulbright.

[dasBlute]

just like Walker Evans, use a Rollei :)

[Bernice Loui]

They will bury me with this old Sinar system, pile of lenses, boxes of film and 5x7 darkroom stuff..

-After so many years of doing LF, there is no substitute for me as a creative image making too.


:)
Bernice

[bob carnie]

Hi Brian

I spent a weekend with stone lithography, though super cool the process is very demanding, the stones are a couple of hundred pounds apiece
I am very turned on after this weekend to four colour photo gravure , where the heavy pigment ink sits in the plate and is squeezed out.

the stone process is by far the most hands on process I have witnessed.


For my next "photographic degree" I'm thinking of pen and ink sketching too. Or stone lithography. Although... I must admit that mezzotint printing is quite fascinating too.

[rdenney]

just like Walker Evans, use a Rollei :)

Or Ansel Adams, with a Hasselblad.

In my case, large-format was not an advancement on smaller formats, but rather a tool that worked in situations when smaller formats didn't. If I get to the point where I can't do large format any more, I'll just have to leave those problems unsolved and focus on other problems. I was barely beyond beginner (in the whole process, at least) when I started doing large format as a freshman in college.

For me, graduate school is becoming a really good printer. And I'm afraid that ship has already sailed. But at some point in my life, I have to start doing something with the images I've made. There may be some gold in them thar hills that I've not yet panned for.

Rick "constrained mostly by time" Denney

[Drew Wiley]

I at least have someone who has volunteered to carry my extra week's worth of food on next summer's backpack, which is a favor of equal value to lugging some
of my LF photo gear. Guess I'll have to start a conversation with some of the physics grad students up at UCB, and see if any of them can explain exactly why gravity is a function of time, namely in the sense that it's effect steadily increases over time. E = MC squared (effort = backpack mass times codgerhood). Oh well, shouldn't complain ... I got in some good hill mileage with the pack over the holidays, but never even unpacked the view camera. Ironcially, a few days later I went out and got a bunch of nice shots right next to the road. Fun either way, but I prefer walking.

[Kodachrome25]

When it's time to graduate from LF, where will you go?

Odd...I think you are looking at this wrong, these are tools and as much as I like 4x5, I still find medium format to be my most productive tool. I guess I never "Graduated" then because I make the image the top priority, not social perceptions of gear based value judgements.

[Vaughn]

...Guess I'll have to start a conversation with some of the physics grad students up at UCB, and see if any of them can explain exactly why gravity is a function of time, namely in the sense that it's effect steadily increases over time. E = MC squared (effort = backpack mass times codgerhood)...

There is no gravity...the earth sucks.
Getting old sucks.
Great photographs have a negative suckage.
Try to balance the equation...

[Heroique]

Odd...I think you are looking at this wrong, these are tools and as much as I like 4x5, I still find medium format to be my most productive tool. I guess I never "Graduated" then because I make the image the top priority, not social perceptions of gear based value judgements.

I wouldn't worry too much about not graduating – there's always the GED! :cool:

[Brassai]

When I'm too old to lug an 8x10 and big wooden Ries Tripod, I'll resort to an 8x10 and carbon-fiber tripod. .. ... Then to a 6x9 film back .... then to a pine box ?

You mean, a pin hole camera? :D

[jnantz]

ill just make photograms in the sun

[Drew Bedo]

" Anything more than 100 yards away from the car is just not that interesting"

Edward Weston

[Kimberly Anderson]

I kept thinking this all day on Tuesday. I was working on my post-doc in LF. Shooting the 12x20 about 3/4 of a mile from the road. In deep snow. Downhill from the car. In the wind. In the snow. For several hours. Two days in a row. THAT is my idea of working on a post-doc in LF.

107586

107587


" Anything more than 100 yards away from the car is just not that interesting"

Edward Weston