Too bad you couldn't see the Nick Nixon exhibit that was at the MFA...almost all 8x10 contact prints and truly amazing.
Too bad you couldn't see the Nick Nixon exhibit that was at the MFA...almost all 8x10 contact prints and truly amazing.
I have moved into bigger and bigger formats over the years. I love MF for its speed and quality to PITA ratio.
I played around a bit with 45 then I took a workshop with Michael and Paula and suddenly realised 810 was the goal for me. I still love looking through the GG on my deadorff.
A big part of the fun for me is big camera, big lens, big tripod, big film etc.....all of it is large and rather easy to use. I get to slow down and think about what i am doing and why I am doign it.
I learned more in the 4 months so far of being a 810 shooter than I did in years of shooting MF and 35.
david
Wow, 44 posts. I'll comment and then go back and read some of them.
Why 8X10?
Tonality and unique lens characteristics.
Tonality is simply brute force. More real estate of film to spread what the lens is doing around.
Lens characteristic. If you like shallow depth of field and lovely bokeh (look at my web pages and it will be obvious, I do) even the base line 300mm f5.6 that people sell all day long for less than the value of the shutter if they threw the lens elements away gives a depth and bokeh that you can only begin to approach by paying $2500 for an f2.8 Xenotar in 4X5. That threshold is just the jumping off spot. Beyond that there are antique soft focus lenses and old petzval's etc. that can just blow away anything you can do with a 4X5. D3, 5DII, Photoshop, don't make me laugh.
So, to sum up, tonality and style, and an endless quest of more pretty old glass and seeing what it can do.
I don't right now but this thread is giving me the 8x10 shakes again....
Saw an Edward Weston exhibit last year, if that doesn't make you want to shoot 8x10 nothing will....
Originally Posted by Drew Wiley
I haven't been to Kaiser yet, but I did get to spend a few days at Camp Chawanakee (Shaver Lake) with Boy Scout Troop 223. I heard the mosqutos at Dinky are going to be memorable this year!
"I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority"---EB White
Another try.
I prefer reducing (yes reducing) things with a 10" lens rather than a 1" lens.
It's not the film. It's the big long lens that does the trick, you just need a piece of film behind the lens more or less equal to it's focal length to fit the whole scene in.
My wife made me; she says I don't spend enough on camera equipment.
"My wife made me; she says I don't spend enough on camera equipment."
Yeah right! I really can't imagine any woman saying that. It'd be nice if they did, but nah, never gonna happen. Mine already tells me I should change to digital because it's cheaper. And that's never gonna happen either.
Mike
8x10 (and larger) forces the photographer to see better. Even if it's a subconscious effect, the amount of work required to do 8x10 forces the photographer to filter out the poor images. Even so, I still toss a lot of stuff out.
I believe it was AA who said if you can get 12 good images in a year you are doing well. I believe 8x10 helps that along.
4x5 is small enough that those using that format tend to make more exposures than they need with the intent to filter out the bad ones after the fact.
All photographers need to see better. The comments so far tend to support this, especially the comments on how the 8x10 ground glass is a wonderful tool to use.
John
An 8x10 g/g allows me to see fine details that I might not have noticed on a 4x5 screen. "Filling the frame" is something I've learned too, with contact printing b/w. Now, working in color, a bigger screen helps me frame things, and even with good eyesight, an 8x10 screen is much easier to focus an image on than a 4x5 screen
-Dan
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