Travelling for a year; so which LF camera?

[eddie]

don't let these curmudgeons talk you out of doing what you want.....

yeah! what bob said!

the way i look at it you can always shoot digital.....digital is a great "old persons" camera. light and easy.......

you will make incredible friends shooting LF....trust me!

i shot "street portraits" in Rangoon while i w as there.....it was basically my own outdoor studio.....i had the locals bringing me people to shoot. it was awesome. i shot some 35mm to process and give away to the subjects....that just created more "work"/models.....it was awesome! i bet they still remember the crazy white guy with the camera!

eddie

[Robert Oliver]

how about one of the 6x12 or 6x17 "point and shoots"...

if my personal economy improves, I will get one so I can work quicker when my wife is waiting... she doesn't always have the same patience as I do when it comes to large format work.

[Robert Oliver]

I second the idea that you will meet some cool people shooting with the LF.... I met some really neat people on the John Muir Trail carrying my 4x5 because I was carrying a 4x5.

yeah! what bob said!

the way i look at it you can always shoot digital.....digital is a great "old persons" camera. light and easy.......

you will make incredible friends shooting LF....trust me!

i shot "street portraits" in Rangoon while i w as there.....it was basically my own outdoor studio.....i had the locals bringing me people to shoot. it was awesome. i shot some 35mm to process and give away to the subjects....that just created more "work"/models.....it was awesome! i bet they still remember the crazy white guy with the camera!

eddie

[Frank Petronio]

Since I'm living vicariously through this guy's potential adventure, here's what I would do: Carry the D700 he already has. If he has to bring the zooms then that's his burden, to me a wide and a normal prime would do better. (Actually a D90 would probably be better in terms of weight and bulk...) That allows him to shoot tons of color, low light, work quickly, pretty reliable (until the zoom sucks crap onto his sensor) and so on.

But then, rather than recreating the wheel by bringing some modern sharp medium format camera, I'd bring something funkier. Something vintage, with some character and bokeh and all of that. A fixed lens, nothing too precious or expensive.... Like an old German folder (6x9) or a Rollei TLR or something with a little funk, that will slow down the process and engage the people being photographed.

I mean a D700 is going to make plenty of technically perfect images. A Mamiya 7 will too. Perhaps the M7 would out perform the D700 if he spends the money on high-end $$$ scans, but if we're talking scanning 120 on an Epson, then gee, those files are going to come in awfully close to a D700 file... So why lug both?

If you wanted the ultimate image quality you'd be talking a medium format digital or a high quality 4x5 with the latest lens, backed up with $100 drum scans.... but I doubt you can travel easily for months and months with either of those, even if you could afford them.

Remember this dude is selling his bikes. He doesn't want to come home and have to pop for 200 $75 scans....

[Ivan J. Eberle]

I just spent a 3 month road trip by car to Montana where I took all the formats and most of the cameras I own from APS-C through 645 to 4x5.

The dSLR was a shoe-in primarily for wildlife and PJ, but it turned out far more useful for wide landscape shots than I imagined it would be, due to wind and weather concerns. The 645 was used a great deal as well, both because my least-distorting ultrawide is in this format and because of the dynamic range of neg film among all the snow and ice. Each format (and film v. digi) has it's strengths and weaknesses. Decisions as to what to grab on the way out the door on any given hike related to the subject content or conditions under which I was photographing.

A 4x5 was also used for a great many shots, but least among the three. When I chose to carry it afield, numerous opportunities were missed in rapidly-changing light that I would handily have gotten with either the dSLR or the 645. (And this is with a fast-deploying folding metal technical-press camera-- the monorail I also took saw no use at all!). I'd have been hamstrung with just one format, or just film/digital, there.

Right now I'm on another, shorter (3 week) trip back East to catch fall color. I had to pack relatively light (flying) so I brought only the technical press 4x5. Part of my reasoning was for the discipline, part of it because the photography is of secondary importance on this trip.

I would urge that you also have some sort of small dSLR or point-and-shoot handy on a trip of your intended duration for the many times when the wind, weather and fast-changing light conspire to foil the use of large format.

[BrianShaw]

... a Rollei TLR or something with a little funk, that will slow down the process and engage the people being photographed.

That's what I used for my 1.5 years in the UK. The Rollei slowed me down so I could make some fine photos; the funk of my clothes and dirty laundry led to some interesting engagment with the people being photographed (or near things I was photographing)!

[BrianShaw]

p.s. I also travelled with a monopod, which led to lots of questions like, "If that camera support is 'something like a tripod' then how does it stand up with just one leg?"

[sanking]

But then, rather than recreating the wheel by bringing some modern sharp medium format camera, I'd bring something funkier. Something vintage, with some character and bokeh and all of that. A fixed lens, nothing too precious or expensive.... Like an old German folder (6x9) or a Rollei TLR or something with a little funk, that will slow down the process and engage the people being photographed.

I have owned a bunch of those old German folders, including the Bessa II which is about the best there was. These cameras make pretty nice negatives but they are a pain in the derriere to use. But you are right, using them will sure slow down the process.

Now, if I wanted something with a little funk that was fairly easy to use and would not break the bank as a good Mamiya 7II outfit will I would go for one of the 690 Fuji cameras, the Texas Leicas. In fact, you could buy two of them, one with 65mm lens and another with 90mm, and still spend a lot less than for used Mamiya 7 with a single lens. The last ones were the GW690III (90mm lens) and GSW690III (65mm lens) but the II version of both cameras costs a lot less and has the same lens. And these are totally mechnical cameras, no batteries, not even an exposure meter. And if someone ripped one off you don't lose a lot as the used price in bargain condition at KEH is around $500 or so, maybe a bit more for the one with the 65mm lens. And these cameras are very user friendly, unlike those old German folders. So you get a lot of funk but also the ability to make great negatives, maybe even a tad better than Mamiya 7 because of the slightly bigger negative (6X9 compared to 6X7).

Sandy

[sanking]

I mean a D700 is going to make plenty of technically perfect images. A Mamiya 7 will too. Perhaps the M7 would out perform the D700 if he spends the money on high-end $$$ scans, but if we're talking scanning 120 on an Epson, then gee, those files are going to come in awfully close to a D700 file... So why lug both?

Good point about the quality of scan. But the difference is that with the D700 you are stuck with a crappy 12mp file for the rest of your life. With the Mamiya 7 6X7 cm negative you can do quick and dirty scans on the Epson that will be at least equal to the D700, and you will always have the negatives that you can scan at higher resolution at any time, now or ten years from now. A high resolution scan with a top quality scanner (5000 spi) of a good 6X7cm negative is about the equivalent of 125-150 mp, and that is not 100 mp of crap but real effective resolution.

Sandy

[sanking]

Not wishing to bore people with more words about why some people like Mamiya 7II optics I am attaching two real image files. One is a full view of an image I made in Mexico last year with the Mamiya 7II and a 50mm lens, at f/16. The film was Fuji Acros and I developed it in two bath Pyrocat-HD and scanned the negative at 5080 spi with a high end type scanner. The tree you see is rather huge, one of the largest of its kind in the world (judge scale by the elephant ear plants you see in the foreground) and I am standing about fifty meters from the trunk.

The second image is a small section of the image that I have scaled at 8X10" size. If I were to reproduce the entire image at this scale it would be 144" X 180". Yet even at this size, and at a distance of about fifty meters you can easily see the veins on the leaves. To put this in perspective, you are looking at approximately a 64X magnification of the original negative.

Photographers who have used the Mamiya 7II and learned how to get the most of it will probably not be surprised that you can get this fine detail in the leaves at great distance. Those of us who have used 4X5 and 5X7 cameras and optics would understand that this level of quality is not easy even with these much larger formats.

Sandy