Show me what you can do with LF! (That you can't with smaller formats.)

[sully75]

For taking portraits of people, strangers in particular, they have no idea how a LF camera works, so they are always sort of off guard and don't do their usual "it's a photo" pose. I like doing portraiture of strangers quite a bit, and if you carry around a LF camera, people will stop you and ask you about it. Then you take their picture. And it's awesome because they don't think you are a creep, because they stopped you, not vice versa.

Also, it's just fun to look through ground glass. Much more pleasurable than a viewfinder.

Developing and scanning suck ass to me. That I could do without.

[Shen45]

The real problem is..........much of what is special in LF is in the fine detail, smooth tonal transitions, etc.--aspects THAT YOU CAN"T SEE IN A 600 PIXEL JPEG ON A SCREEN! I suggest you head to New York and look at some real prints in galleries that show LF work.

[AnselAdamsX]

John NYC what does it take to get on the roofs in NYC? I'd love to get a shot of the Chrysler building with my 8x10

Chris

See comments on the first photo first...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/3394602...n/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/3394602...n/photostream/

[Brian Ellis]

Brian.

"As much" of an advantage that one can obtain by using the tilt/shift controls on the type of view camera that features full front and rear movement capability.

(Why do I need to defend my statement? Was it that inaccurate?)

There's no need for you to defend your statement. It wasn't attacked and it wasn't inaccurate. If there was something in my response that caused you to think otherwise my apologies, that certainly wasn't my intent. I was just trying to make the point that the relevant consideration is the relationship between the amount of rise/shift and the size of the film/sensor, not the absolute amount of rise and shift. And I wasn't clear which you were asking about.

[Vaughn]

I could not have made this print with a negative from a typical roll film camera. I could make the image, but not the print.

Nor for any of my other platinum prints or my carbon prints...I contact print, so a 35mm neg makes an awfully small print! LOL!

[John NYC]

John NYC what does it take to get on the roofs in NYC? I'd love to get a shot of the Chrysler building with my 8x10

Chris

Friends and acquaintances! It is harder than it seems... because the friends and acquaintances have to have good roofs, which is just by chance.

I have been working on this project for more than a year in fits and starts. This particular roof belongs to a now good friend of mine that I made doing this project. He is also a member here on the forum. His 360 roof does include the Chrysler building, although not an unobstructed view. A shot of that will be forthcoming on my stream, but I am headed out of town for a while and haven't scanned it yet.

[rdenney]

Here is an image that can only be made with a large format camera, according to several intimations in this thread:

Picture showing effects of front rise

Here's another couple:

Picture showing effects of swing

Another picture showing effects of swing

And one more:

Picture showing tilt and swing

Am I arguing that these can only be made using large format? Uh, no. The first three were made on a small-format digital SLR. Only the fourth was made using large format.

If you can't tell the difference, the reason is because of what Kirk said. Movements are not what define large format. Movements can be achieved, albeit with some difficulty and often--though not always--with considerable expense, using tilt/shift lenses available for small and medium formats.

What defines large format is what you see in a large print. where the detail and rendering go beyond what is possible in a smaller format.

Also, what defines large format is the ability to get the above effects, with no compromise on image quality, without spending two or three thousand bucks per lens. So, I guess I should show a picture of the stack of bills one still has in the wallet after buying a 4x5 monorail view camera and several lenses, rather than buying several tilt/shift lenses for a multi-kilobuck DSLR. That would be a picture showing what you can do with LF that you can't with smaller formats.

Rick "who used a Canon 24mm TSE lens on a 5D for the first three pictures, and a Sinar 4x5 with a 6x12 holder for the fourth" Denney

[Ronan87]

TS lenses can be had for $400-$500 FYI.

Sure they never came close to my Nikon TS, but heh, it got the job done (thats the point right!?).

[Roger Cole]

Developing and scanning suck ass to me. That I could do without.

Hum, are you just developing film and scanning negatives? I love darkroom work, in fact I often enjoy it more than shooting, but it's mainly the printing I enjoy. Film developing I rather like but it's not particularly fascinating.

To each their own I suppose, but then again if I only developed film and scanned the negatives I probably wouldn't get that much out of it either.

[Frank_E]

my insights will simply repeat what has been said above but I will give my example anyways

I suspect that I have been serious about my photography for a lot less time then the other posters. I am one of those people who started with a DSLR and then migrated to film and LF

some years ago I ran across Meyerowitz's book Cape Light. I just fell in love with the various images of soft light taken from the porch or with the porch. Here is one example from the book

http://cottagefarm.blogspot.com/2010...eyerowitz.html

the example I am referring to is the last image taken on a porch

several years later I encountered a situation where I had the opportunity to shoot a similar scene with my DSLR, and at that point in my learning curved didn't know what equipment you needed to get this type of shot properly. I quickly learned what I couldn't do with a regular DSLR that didn't have TS lenses.