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This is a different (later) camera.
The one that you showed has parallax correction, via front drop, on the taking lens. Ours are older ones and do not have this. I wondered whether the kinked lens...

Ic-racer, these cameras do not take a flat lens board. In addition to the top hat for the taking lens, the lens board has a bend in the centre!
I don't know exactly what the angle is but I recon it...

Mine is exactly the same as that but it has a vertical viewing 'chimney' with a magnifier in the top.
It has a 180mm Xenar viewing lens and a 180mm Symmar taking lens fitted.
I am guessing that...

Yeah, I am aware of this. How many of you guys have been setting up a LF session, when you blast a couple of loose frames on digi just to check the lighting and they turn out looking better than the...

I think that this is important. The content and emotional impact of an image is far more important to me than whether (or how much) grain it has.
I generally feel that if the grain is sharp and the...

Hi from Manchester!


My experience with LF is that you never actually get it right, so for your first camera, I'd advise getting it cheap :D
When you understand what you need for the photographs...

I think that the board went quiet when it was split up into different sections.
It became too much effort to see whether anything had updated or not.
90%+ of the UK users are wet (film) and digital...

I would caution against tightening anything up too tight.
The F1 standards seem to be quite brittle where you tighten the front rise and where you tighten the standard to the rail.
They are...

I have done it.

I have always had issues with newton rings when scanning 10x8 on th V700. This was the main reason for trying it.
I have a sheet of betterscanning glass that doesn't eliminate the...

I'm sure that you've already got this covered but my main advice to anyone starting out is to plan your complete workflow and all associated costs before buying a camera.

How are you going to...

Wow, that is an absolutely incredible restoration!
I have been aware of Massimo's work for a while, now. It is interesting to see that he suffers from the same kind of problems that the the rest of...

I effectively do the same thing with wet plates. I can check exposure on a smaller piece of glass before starting with the bigger pieces.

Are they suggesting that the portraits at the bottom of the web page (and in the video) are taken using that camera at f32?

With that close in framing, I wouldn't have thought that I could get...

Hey Garrett, regarding the softness in the wet plate.
Was it shot on glass?

I usually shoot on glass using modern lenses (occasional petzval) but for some subjects I notice much softer details...

This assisted self portrait came from a session where I was demonstrating the operation of a large format camera to a new photographer.

Any comments or criticism will be graciously recieved and...

This is absolutely true, but the cost of a sheet of 10x8 is fundamentally different to the cost of a 120 frame so I can't afford to bracket and I really don't want to get my exposure wrong (not...

I'm guessing that they already do!
I just can't type the names in to search for them.

I'm certain that there are a load of guys that surpass the Dusseldorf school photographers (Hoefer, Ruff,...

I agree with everyone that this is a really nice portrait. The composition, light and tonality are lovely.

I'll swim a little against the tide and suggest that I slightly prefer the look of the...

That doesn't look like a big lens on there.
Has he removed the front elements?
Does removing the front elements produce a bigger circle?

Sort of. I have one. It is a very extreme wide angle.

It just about covers 5x4 with some brightness drop off to the corners. I wouldn't want to shoot colour film with it. There is a centre filter...

Hi Zheng, I think that I do know what you mean by this and I love it, too.
I think it's partly down to the exposure and partly down to the orthochromatic nature of the collodion.
Wet plates that...

If a toddler wants to become a great writer, they will spend what appears to be a disproportionate amount of their time learning how to read before are able to write.
If their reading never...

This appears to be available on YouTube in four parts.
Thanks for the heads up!

Use it for as long as it looks good. It should be fine for full and half body shots. Keep your eye out for bulbous faces and disappearing ears if you go closer.


Using camera movements is an...

Would it be worth buying a roll of the same film stock in 35mm or 120 and testing with that?
Or even test in 5x4 which will be cheaper than 10x8.

Hey, Ben, there are currently a handful of Meyrowitz photographs on display in the Format exhibition at Derby Quad (England, UK).
This year's theme is street photography and there is a lot of...

There are a number of factors that give a wet plate its distinctive look.

I suspect that some can be approximated (to some extent) in software but others are more organic in nature.
As previously...

Just do a search on Golden Busch in the US fleabay then we can see it in the UK.
I'm assuming that we are talking about that awe inspiring 20x24.
It looks absolutely beautiful.
I would love to see...

Wow, that's a great story.



It's an easy mistake to make.

I have a Brazilian friend who was working in a UK bank (true story).
A downcast man came in to the branch with a bank book asking...

Thank you for your help.

I made some more portraits using the Petzval and Efke IR 820 and an R72 filter. I posted one of them in December portraits.

The images appear softer focus and more...

Please don't stop posting, Stephane.

I can see from the comments that I'm not the only one that looks forward to your work.

As always, these are really engaging. I really enjoy the magnifying...

Dominika.
Efke Infra Red 820 with R72 filter.
5x4.
Unknown Petzval around f4.

As always, any criticism will be graciously appreciated as it can help to make future pictures better.

Roses.

5x4 Wetplate collodion on glass.
360mm (or 210mm) Symmar.

Would it be worth splitting the flowers thread out into months, like December Flowers?

I made a self portrait last night on Efke IR 820 Aura using an R72 filter using an unknown petzval which is probably about f4.
I posted the image into November Portraits today. I guess that the 0.5%...

I have been enjoying your magnifying glass images for a while now. They are absolutely fantastic.

Self portrait.
Efke IR 820 with R72 filter.
5x4.
Unknown Petzval around f4.

Any criticism would be graciously appreciated as it can help to make future portraits better.

If you're relatively new to this or simply prefer thinking about things like composition than calculations then it might be worth downloading and printing something like the QuickDisc...

There's a really interesting video of Martin Schoeller shooting a female bodybuilder on youtube. She can't even actually see him because of the huge bank of lights that he is behind but he still...

There is a Martin Schoeller video on YouTube where he is shooting one of his female body builders.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZTGXhWjAf4

He is so calm and smooth on that 8x10. He used to...

Whilst you can gain some flexibility in your B&W conversion in this manner (at large chemistry and film cost), you lose the ability to control the scale of your film.
For example, if you have a...