Originally Posted by
Ole Tjugen
Now for my personal opinion on ULF, with no mathematics or optical theory:
I use sheet film formats from 6.5x9cm to 30x40cm. The smallest one is not LF according to the only viable definition I've seen (more than 100 square centimeters), but at least it gives me a "small format" basis of comparison.
I do mostly landscape photography. where you live it might be different, but around here the landscapes tend to be rather rugged and near vertical. This has the advantage that I can always find a mountain to stand on, so getting the whole scene at close to infinity is not a problem. But that again leads to a different problem: I have to haul the bl**dy thing up that mountain first - and by the time I get thereem the whole valley is fogged in!
I've come to the conclusion that the 30x40cm (12x16") camera is just too big and heavy to use more than 50m from the car. The 24x30cm (9.5x12" for the metrically challenged) is a neat compact German "Reisekamera" only marginally larger than my 8x10" - in fact it's thinner when packed up! I can carry this for quite a distance.
8x10" and the 18x24cm metric equivalent is a sort of "inbetween" size for me. When I enlarge smaller negatives I usually make 24x30cm prints, very rarely 8x10". So since I'm limited to contact prints from all the sizes mentioned so far - at least if I'm not paying someone else for the printing and/or scanning - the 8x10" falls between two chairs: Too small to be big, too big to make bigger.
So most of the time I end up using 5x7". Unless I know I'm going to need lots and lots of movements, or a very narrow field of view - then I'll use 4x5". Or I'll use 4x5" with barrel lenses, since I also have a Speed Graphic.
My personal conclusion after a couple of years of hauling LF around is this: 5x7" is generally good, and generally good enough for really large prints (I have a 5x7" enlarger). 4x5" is convenient when I need a focal plane shutter or all the movements of a monorail somewhere halfway up a mountain. 24x30cm is beautiful, and gets less use than the 5x7" only because A: I can't choose to enlarge it without paying someone else to do it; B: There's a limited selection of films, C: I only have three double plate holers for it, and D: The bellows is so full of holes it looks more like lace than leather.
30x40cm is too big for me - maybe it would have been different if the camera had been an antique German precision instrument like the 24x30? A Russian copy of an old German camera is in no way the equivalent of the original...
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