After shooting 8x10 what did you switch to?

[giancatarina]

Moving, allways moving ... is it mandatory ?

[Jim Galli]

7X17, 8X20. I can speak with some experience but no finality. I have all three, 1114 717 820, and the 8X20 pleases me the most of the 3. I'll admit to buying a 12X20 and so far never using it. Maybe next summer. The film expense for the 12X20 has me stalled just now. How dumb is that after the initial expense of buying it. Plus I seem to have enough un-resolved issues with the 8X20 that it makes good sense to get through the total learning curve there.

[Chad Jarvis]

Add a 5x7 back to your 8x10. It's much cheaper than going ULF and a mighty versatile format. (I bought an 11x14 after 8x10, but I still shoot about 40% 5x7 vs. 59% 8x10.)

[Jim Rhoades]

This thread is a laugh if you know some of the writers. Michael Kadillak will write all day long about moving onto a 12x20. What he dosent tell you is just how big he is. Humping a 12x20 around Colorado mountains takes some size. Brian Ellis says he moved on to a 4x5. True, but whats that 8x10 lunk in his trunk? He could not give it up completely.

Me, I hope to find a 7x17 or 8x20 at a garage sale or something. I think we are all always moving.

[John D Gerndt]

I moved to 12x20 and found a difficult row to hoe. It is difficult to explain but I just ran out of room for processing the darn negs! I will build a 7 x 17 and try that but I would abort and go to 11x14 should the right example present itself. There is something that makes 8x10 a toss-off even in contact print form. I need something I can fall into.

The above in mind, I still like the 5x7 format the most as it is undaunting and yet large enough to produce good contant prints or pretty darn good 20x24 enlargments!

Cheers,

[tim atherton]

Why change again...?

As Stephen Shore (I think) said - "there are really only two formats - 35mm and 8x10 - everything else is a variation on one of those two".

.... ;-)

Seriously - you could take the next 20 years at least for mastering 8x10

[kreig]

Many years ago when I was much younger (100 years ago) I was very sucessful with 4x5. Moved up to 8x10 a few years ago and greatly enjoyed the experience however I have only made contact prints which seems limiting for such a big camera, but still a great format.

I "moved up" to 14x17 and have not yet been sucessful in setting up this camera in a safe or sane manner. I think the 14x17 format and resulting contact prints could be awesome but the camera itself seems to be in the way of photography. The camera is too big for a tripod and my design of a tiltable platform on a table has not met with any sucess at all.

You must decide what your goals are and then chooose your format.

[Michael Kadillak]

No reason to deny that the big unit (12x20) is a load. But if it were easy, everyone would have one. John has it dead on in that the most daunting task is in the darkroom. I can park the truck close enough for many shots that I want to take so far. But there are other shots for which mobility is the only solution.

20x24 trays for developing these big negs are clearly oversized for my darkroom sink (never in my wildest imagination did I see the need for these critters when I built the darkroom) so I needed to build a support lattice to develop them on top of the sink - not in it. Souping nearly 2 gallons of chemistry per processing run brings about its own set of operating logistics. Washing film this size and not scratching the soft emulsion (Efke comes to mind here) is another challenge. But when you get it all accomplished and see the results, you understand the attraction to something divergent.

It is truly anazing what a warped mind with a bit of external encouragement can do to a bank account. Ha!

Or as one old timer commented to me with the 12x20 set up. "For the love of God, didn't someone bother to let you know that these big ass cameras went out ot style at least 70 years ago?"

Cheers!

[Michael Mutmansky]

10x12.

I use banquet cameras a good bit (7x17 mostly) and have also used the 8x10 for contact printing for years now. Recently, I decided that 8x10 is a bit to much of an in-between format for my taste, so I decided to move up slightly into a definite contact printing format; one that would have enough presence on the wall.

The 10x12 format seems to do that nicely for me, and it is only slightly larger than an 8x10 in operation. It also has a slightly smaller diagonal conpared to the 7x17, so all of the 7x17 lenses will work well on the 10x12 without too much translation.

It's a new format for me, but I think that it will be a keeper for a long while. Now, my 8x10 negative feel sort of... small.

---Michael

[George Losse]

Rob,

I know how your feeling. Your becoming an addict just like the rest of us.

I had shot MF and 4x5 for a number of years before starting to shoot 8x10. Once you get over the shock of everything being so much easier to see on the GG, working with knobs on the camera that are not right next to each other and contact printing the negatives. Then it starts to hit you, if working with the 8x10 format is this good a feeling how much better is the feeling with 11x14, 12x20 or 16x20.

I know because, like others here, I felt it too. Lucky for me it was before this current ULF boom and there were still cheaper used ULF cameras around. I tried both 8x20 and 11x14 within two years of starting to shoot 8x10.

I only remember one trip with all three formats 8x10, 11x14, and 8x20 in the truck at once. That trip is what sold me on the 8x20 format over the 11x14. The 11x14 handled much like the 8x10 and I sort of saw that same kinds of images with the two cameras. So that made the choice for me to stay with the lighter, smaller and easier 8x10 format a simple decision. Since then the 11x14 has stayed in the studio.

But the 8x20 format made me see differently then I do with the 8x10. Not a new "vision" just different. That has been what has kept me working with it. Most of the time I go out shooting with both 8x10 and 8x20 formats, but in the last couple of years, I have been making more and more trips with only the 8x20.