One often reads that shooting landscape with the large format camera is a wonderfully contemplative activity, and that this style leads to images that one doesn't make with smaller formats. In fact, I've even written it myself in the past.

I've changed my mind about that, and as far as I am concerned, I find that using LF for landscape is actually much more stressing that using smaller formats. Many of the great color landscape shots are made during the short "golden hours". The light changes are extremely fast and dramatic. I find myself rushing to set up the LF camera, focussing, metering, while with the small camera I would already have the picture in the box and could relax a bit and enjoy the moment. There is so much which can go wrong with LF that one needs the utmost concentration. Mistakes are very frustrating. If I discover a better composition with the small camera, it is just a quick matter to make another exposure, and then move on. With the LF camera, it's another 10-15 minutes, while the light is changing. In addition, being often greedy enough to want to shoot a certain "quota" of images during the day, I find that I really have to rush all the time and move fast between the shots, because each of them takes such a long time.

I recognize that if you were just looking for patterns, especially in B&W, you could take all your time, but with pictures which involve interaction of landscape and light, that's just not the case, and I find using LF is certainly not contemplative. What do you think ?