Apo Grandagon 35mm Ultra wide & Toyo VX 125 ?

[CXC]

Paul, I guess my question should have been why bother with 120 in a LF camera.

Jerry, I use 80mm for urban stuff that I can't get very far away from. In the great outdoors, I rarely shoot shorter than 180, and 240 is the most used.

For really wide subjects, I prefer my Widelux, a totally different look, along with being appropriately narrow. If I point the LF 65 at anything more than 200 feet away, all I get is a bunch of sky and dirt, with the thing disappearing off in the distance. And you?

[Jerry Fusselman]

CXC,

What I cannot figure out is this: If you visited the same places I do, would you find a need to go much wider than 80mm on 4x5? And if I visited the same places you shoot, would my Ago Grandagons stay unused too?

Ah, but you use a Widelux, so you admit the desire to shoot really wide subjects, and it is just a matter of taste how to shoot them---rectilinear or not? Maybe we are not so different about the need to shoot wide subjects after all. We both see very wide subjects, except that I prefer rectilinear lenses to fish eyes and rotary cameras.

If you are interested, I think I can make two generalizations for when I shoot ultra wide. The first is that there are often large vertical walls, such as canyons or being up on a steep mountain or shooting buildings in downtown Chicago. In these cases, an 80mm lens on 4x5 seems inadequate. The second is that when I go ultra wide, I am more inclined to shoot 612 (35mm and 55mm), 617 (47mm and 80mm), 624 (110mm), or 4x10 (110mm and 150mm) than I am to shoot 4x5 or 8x10. That is, ultra wide subjects seldom look best to me on a squarish frame. I find 35mm on 612 far more useful than 55mm on 4x5.

[Kirk Gittings]

"Paul, I guess my question should have been why bother with 120 in a LF camera."

I have shot all my commercial architectural photography for many years on a 4x5 with 120 backs. Why? Convenience on road trips, film costs etc.