Advice on further investment in LF equipment

[Mike Delaney]

Advice on more investment in LF equipment

May I consult the oracle once more? I started to get very interested in LF somewhat more than a year ago and have since invested a fair amount of my modest resources in a basic system with one lens, thanks to advice gained here. Now I’ve saved up enough for a second one (there isn’t much cheap used equipment over here; LF photographers are rare) and a scanner. However, I’ve been reading the threads on the future of film recently and have got worried about whether I’m investing in a sinking ship. I hadn’t thought that this might happen so quickly as some people are forecasting. While this is perturbing to all of us, as I’ve only just started and just a few months ago had the pleasure of seeing my first colour slides, the thought that the rug might be pulled from underneath me in a couple of years time is particularly galling.
I don’t want to begin another major future of film discussion, I’d just like to know what you would do if you were starting out now - jack it in and go digital or build up your LF gear in the hope that film (colour in my case) will survive another ten years maybe? Buying a big freezer and filling it with colour film doesn’t seem an option if I can’t develop it myself and the labs close too.

And a second - technically perhaps naive - question about the digital backs from Phase One etc: if such items ever became more affordable in 10-15 years time (?), could they be used with a 4x5 camera and LF lenses just like a roll-film holder, or would that not be possible? (Just hoping that there might be a way to stop my lenses going mouldy in the cupboard if film does dry up). Any comments or advice would be very appreciated!

Cheers,
Mike

[Leonard Evens]

Given the size of the amateur and art photography market, I think film will be with us indefinitely into the future. But if major film manufacturers stop producing the film, it is likely to get somewhat more expensive, and we will have fewer choices. Black and white film should be available at not unreasonable prices, but color film may get very expensive. Developing b/w film should remain possible at home. If worse comes to worst, you can compose your chemicals from scratch. Processing color may be a bit more difficult at home, but there will probably still be some labs which will do it. But you may have to ship your film to a remote site and pay premium prices to have it developed.

Similar remarks should apply to printing paper, but ink jet printing has advanced to a stage where it is practical to scan and print digitally. Also, there should be no shortage of labs which will produce large prints, either b/w or color, from digital images. The price of printing your own large prints at home should also come down.

At the same time, digital backs for large format should come down in price and improve in quality. As a worst case scenario, you may find you have to switch to a medium format view camera to take advantage of the highest quality digital backs. That may mean investing in new view camera equipment, but it won't mean learning a whole new way of doing things.

These, I think, are all worst case analysies. As things now stand, Ilford seems committed to b/w film, and as long as people like us keep buying it, there should be an incentive for them to keep making it. I'm 73, so I don't worry that much about the indefinite future, and I'm assuming that large format view camera photography will be around as a going concern for the rest of my lifetime, which could be15 years or more, if I'm lucky.

[Nick_3536]

At the same time, digital backs for large format should come down in price and improve in quality.


Why? How big is the market for LF digital backs? Rumour was when MF was selling well the whole US market was less then 100,000 units a year. The LF market must be a small fraction of that. How do you get any sort of savings from scale with such a small market?

The only reason LF film hardware prices are what they are is much of the R&D is older then both of us put together -)

[Brian Ellis]

"However, I’ve been reading the threads on the future of film recently . . . "

Then you know all there is to know about what the future holds, which is to say nobody knows, and there should be no need to start yet another thread on this tiresome subject.

[Ed Richards]

With the advent of Canon 5D, an affordable and high quality full frame DSLR, I think you need to really consider what you want to shoot and how big you want to print. Unless you need more movement than you can get with a TS lens, and you want to make prints bigger than 11x14 or 16 x 20 (depending on the subject matter), there are strong reasons to consider digital if you shoot color. This is doubly true if you have to worry about what things cost. You have to be burning at least $4 a shot, plus all the hassle of going to a lab to be doing color. This is going to severely constrain the number of shots you do. Then you have to scan and color correct - a tedious process that is not necessary with digital. For subjects with continuous tone, rather than really fine detail, it is hard to be beat a digital image.

In my view, you will be able get 4x5 color film and processing for a very long time, but it will get ever more expensive and problematic. I live in a regional city in the US of 500,000 and any color I do has to be processed mail order. Once you make that break, then it really does not matter where you live, all the changes is the postage and delay. If you have local processing, you are lucky, it will not last unless you are in a major city like Berlin or Paris.

As for the P45 backs becoming affordable for your 4x5 system - it would not make much sense because you would want the digital lenses to take advantage of the resolution.

The game is different in black and white - you can buy film more cheaply and it is easy to process. If you want to do LF and money matters, consider ditching color.

[Ron Marshall]

I think color film will continue to be available for at least ten years, b/w indefinately, but the price will go up.

If you never intend to print larger than 16x20, a Canon D5, or its successor, may suffice.

[j.e.simmons]

Also consider how you will want to work. If you plan to be a pro and do commercial work, the Canon, or something else digital, would probably be the efficient way to go. If you like sitting in the dark, nursing along the development of a negative or a print, as I do, get what you think you'll need to do that. Do what you enjoy.
juan

[Mike Delaney]

Thank you to Leonard, Ed, Ron and Juan for taking the time to give me your advice - it’s helped clarify the situation and cheer me up!

Brian - this topic may be tiresome for some, but it’s important for me right now and I wanted to ask for some advice on my personal situation. And it’s nice to be able to do that here, to get friendly advice from people much more experienced than oneself. That’s what makes these forums in themselves a reason to continue with LF.
Cheers,
Mike

[John Kasaian]

Mike,

If LF is important to you, don't let anything stand in your way. There is no reason to. The worse case scenario is we'll be coating glass plates and printing on papers we've coated ourselves, just like the early photographers did and not a few still do.

With great sheet film and printing paper coming from eastern europe you're probably in a good position to take advantage these excellent materials.

Don't worry---if you really need that 2nd lens, I say go for it! Your best investment is not your gear, but what you can learn to do with it.

[Rory_5244]

I, at least, appreciate your post, Mike. I had the same conundrum. In my case, I have largely abandoned 4x5 slide film for the allure of 8x10 transparencies. My love for colour in 8x10 is completely illogical, of course, but, I found taking pictures with a Canon Digital Rebel so unsatisfying that I sold it. Investment-wise, I have found that I am quite comfortable using just one lens. I have 100 sheets of 100VS/Velvia 50 in the freezer (which is a lot for my 8x10 shooting), and A&I is still around to process my film. Right now, I am looking at a 5ft x 6ft Lightjet print from one of my 8x10 transparencies and well, seeing is believing. I have only taken 9 colour pictures with my 8x10 so far and, weirdly enough, 5 of those 9 are the best pictures I have ever taken, period. I can't explain it! Don't give in to the paranoia that you may have wandered down the wrong road: you haven't.

[Gordon Moat]

Hello Mike Delaney,

I have somewhere this great financial analysis paper regarding Eastman Chemicals and economic considerations of releasing new products. To make this short, the basis of releasing a new chemical (film) product is that it will be on the market 8 to 10 years. We could reasonably make an assumption that applies to Fujifilm too. So we have some very recent new product introductions in film, meaning that some of the colour film choices today should still be around in 8 years. Considering that film kept in cold storage could last a couple years past the expiration date, you should be okay for the next 10 to 12 years.

The issue of processing is tougher. At some point, it will be very likely that you will need to mail out your film to a lab somewhere else for processing. This could mean a few days before you see the results. I cannot answer whether that is too inconvenient, though some might find it too much and simply give up . . . I hope you will not come to that conclusion.

Digital backs have several issues when used on a large format camera. The first is the capture area, often 36mm by 36mm on older digital backs, and only 36mm by 48mm on the latest. These have never sold in much volume, though they do show up on the used market every once in a while. I have seen older 6 MP to 11 MP backs go for under $1000. These older backs often lack newer software support, or require an older computer to function. Considering that these might have sold for 20 to 30 times there current used prices, it still might seem like a bargain. There are also adapter plates or stitching backs to make multiple captures, which are then reassembled in the computer software later.

At some point there will be more things you can use for digital capture with your large format cameras. They will probably cost many times more than the rest of your gear, and require some fairly impressive computer gear to function well and quickly.

Scanning film can be infinitely lower cost over a longer period of time, unless you are doing a very high number of images each year, though there are ways to work that to an advantage too. It is easy to imagine that scanners of some type will always be available, due to all the film that has yet to be scanned, and due to all the illustration work still being done by hand.

I still do oil painting, which is about as dead a technology as any technology could become. I have to go to a speciality art supply store to get paints or brushes. It is not convenient because it is not close to where I live, even though I am in a big city. I also have to pay $10 to $15 per colour tube of paint, buy brushes at $30 to $50 that wear out after five paintings, and store lots of interesting chemicals (mostly toxic). As a worse case, photography could become like oil painting, few suppliers, higher prices, more that each individual needs to accomplish.

So . . . large format photography . . . . no worries.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio (http://www.allgstudio.com)

[John Bowen]

If your primary interest is Black and White, you should take solace in the face that JandC has recently announced that they will begin coating their own film stock and papers. John at JandC probably has the best hands on intellligence going when it comes to the demands of large format photograpers. If John is willing to make a large investment in the future of large format photography, then so am I.

[Ed Richards]

To paraphrase John,

If taking pictures is important to you, don't let LF stand in your way.

Use the equipment that lets you take pictures and make the prints you want. If you just like to mess around with gear, then do that, but do not let the gear and its expense get in the way of pictures.

You are going to be scanning anyway to make color prints, unless money really is not an object so you can use labs for color prints as well as film processing. (You need to make prints to learn to make good prints, so just making a print every so often is not going to do it. 100 decent sized prints will amortize a pretty nice printer, and 100 prints is barely enough to get a feel for what you need to do to print.) Thus you need the computer anyway, and you need a lot less computer to process 5D shots than to run a scanner and process LF scans. Ironically, however, 35mm lenses cost as much as LF lenses, so there is less economy there, except that you can get a good zoom and cover a lot of range.

[Mike Delaney]

Very many thanks to all for your replies! Ten years sounds like an encouraging period of time in which to make use of my equipment. I should be able to organise a bigger freezer by then too. I would like to print big and try and sell something one day (even if that’s a bit optimistic), and film LF does still represent the ultimate in quality apart from non-affordable digital backs - so although a good DSLR is highly tempting for its convenience and cost advantages and I’d love to have one for those shots I miss when I’m too slow, I’d feel I was compromising too much if I only went that way. But perhaps I’m underestimating the 5D’s capabilities.
mike

[Brian Ellis]

Mike - My point was that since no one can really tell you what to do, and since there are already probably at least a a thousand messages in the archives dealing with this topic, all you need to do is check the archives and you can find there everything you could ever hope to learn about what people in this forum think about the future of film. In fact the archives would be a better source since there you'd find thoughts not only from current participants but also from others who are no longer around. I apologize if I came across a little testy but I've participated in this forum for a long time and I've seen these "future of film" threads so often that they really do seem tiresome and frankly pointless. Still, there's certainly no harm done by another one and if you got something out of it then that's good.

[Mike Delaney]

Thanks Brian.

[steve simmons]

There are no true 4x5 digital backs. Most are really designed to go on a med format view camera. Better Light, which is a scanning back, is roughly 2 7/8 by 3.75.

No one knows for sure, but there are new people getting into lf all the time and lots of film available. Relax, start a new interest if you want to do so. If you want to see a list of available sheet films go to

www.viewcamera.com and then to Free Articles. There is a list of the films as well as several articles that might be helpful to you.

steve simmons

[MJSfoto1956]

One could argue that there really aren't any true "medium" format digital backs either -- none of the current crop fully cover even a 645 film area (although a few are starting to get "close") much less a 6x7, 6x8, or 6x9.

For me, an ideal digital back would fully cover 6x8, offer 5600 x 7466 pixels @ 100 lines/mm and work with any RB67, RZ67, or Fuji680 body (and of course a trusty 4x5 graflok back as well).

Unfortunately, don't hold yer breath -- camera manufacturers want to sell you their new "digital" lenses (think Canon or Hasselblad) and such a back as described above would enable you to continue to use your old lenses. Perhaps the Chinese might take the risk...

[Chris Strobel]

So the quality with a Canon 5D will be just as good as a 4x5 or 8x10 chrome up to 16x20?


With the advent of Canon 5D, an affordable and high quality full frame DSLR, I think you need to really consider what you want to shoot and how big you want to print. Unless you need more movement than you can get with a TS lens, and you want to make prints bigger than 11x14 or 16 x 20

[Mike Delaney]

Thank you Steve and Michael for your comments regarding digital backs!

[Ed Richards]

Depends on the image - if there is fine detail that matters, then you are going to see a difference with a smaller print. If the image depends on smooth tones, bigger prints will look very good indeed. Now, that means no cropping, absolute attention to detail about exposure, and sharp lenses, and that you do not need any real movements. But then chromes are the easiest to be beat with digital because of the dynamic range problems. Take a scene with a wide dynamic range and negative film is going to beat digital if the digital camera only gets one shot. It it is static, so you can take multiple shots, nothing beats the dynamic range of digital for COLOR. Start cropping or shoot at sub-optimum conditions and the print size shrinks. Shoot pictures that do not depend on file detail, and digital really shines.

[Chris Strobel]

Ed, I asked this because I've had a 20d for a year now, and had a 5d for three weeks while my boss was on vacation.I had seriously considered getting the 5d, but after playing with it for that time I really could not see any difference between it and my 20d in my 13x19 prints, but I do see a difference between my 4x5 drum scanned images and my 20d.So I decided to keep my 20d and took my savings and bought an 8x10, film holders, film, 8x10 film tubes, three lenses, 8x10 black jacket cloth,and the big Ries tripod with the money I was going to spend on the 5d body.I was inspired by the prints I saw by Christopher Burkett shot with 8x10 chromes while up in the Carmel area.I've never seen landscapes that dropped my jaw like those did, even some of the landscapes I've seen done with the 1ds Mk II didn't compare as far as detail and clarity.Soo I'm just a little confused here

.I
Depends on the image - if there is fine detail that matters, then you are going to see a difference with a smaller print. If the image depends on smooth tones, bigger prints will look very good indeed. Now, that means no cropping, absolute attention to detail about exposure, and sharp lenses, and that you do not need any real movements. But then chromes are the easiest to be beat with digital because of the dynamic range problems. Take a scene with a wide dynamic range and negative film is going to beat digital if the digital camera only gets one shot. It it is static, so you can take multiple shots, nothing beats the dynamic range of digital for COLOR. Start cropping or shoot at sub-optimum conditions and the print size shrinks. Shoot pictures that do not depend on file detail, and digital really shines.

[Ed Richards]

You should definitely see a difference from the 20D, even if it is not as good as 4x5. Raw files? Sharp lenses (preferably primes)? Tripod? Optimally sharpened in PS? Sharpening is the most critical step - Canon digital images are soft because the hardware in the camera does not sharpen the raw files. They need significant sharpening. You also need detail in the pictures to see the difference - pictures of clouds will not do it.:-)

An 8x10 in a large print is going to beat any digital. If you are just looking at the chrome, that is deceptive - you would need to print your digital to film to get the same look, and if you did it would be mighty sharp from the 5D - to the eye. Magnifiers do not count, they are like big prints.

Since I am staying with 4x5, I have no particular brief for digital. However, it is so much easier and cheaper than film that it deserves serious consideration from anyone who is not sure what they want to do. It is really easy to invest in LF gear and then discover that a year later you are not shooting any pictures. A 5D or a 20D makes a lot better picture than any camera left in the closet or trunk. At $15+ a shot, 8x10 color does not encourage shooting a lot of images - less than 200 shots = the cost of a 5D, and 200 more will buy some nice lenses. A lot of folks will respond to this cost by not shooting many pictures, which is not terrific way to get good images. They would do better work with a 5D.

[Jim Ewins]

Sorry Mike, but unless you wish to go Pro, investment is the wrong word. If it is a hobby, as it is for many of us it is just an expendature. Spend what you can afford and have some benefit from.