View Full Version : Inquiries Into LF Camera
I know a lot of these have been posted; I have lurked and read quite a few of them myself.
I am seriously considering getting into LF, but I am frankly overwhelmed. I shoot 35mm and RZ67, but neither one gives me the options I want for instant film. I can shoot 7x7cm images onto instant film with the RZ, but its really not sufficient. I'd really *like* to shoot a full type 100 image at the very least, and preferably 4x5 images. I know that the true polaroid stock is gone, but I genuinely like the Fuji film, especially the B/W. (Also, Impossible Project says that they own a machine to start up 8x10 polaroid production again which they will do after they get their integral film settled down.)
I also have shot quite a bit of B/W film (Particularly love Ilford Delta personally) and there is a real attraction to shooting sheets (I assume you can't get 4x5 in rolls?) and 6x12 panoramics.
As far as my intended use. Well, so far its mostly macro, landscape and cityscape in film. I do fashion and beauty work in digital, but I would like to start adding some polaroid and B/W film to that, just haven't gotten around to it yet.
So with all that, please recommend cameras and lenses to me; I'll say that I want to stay at about $1000 USD for a bit, I can supplement later, but I don't want to exceed that in the initial stages.
Jack Dahlgren
1-Jul-2010, 16:03
Almost any LF field camera is OK for landscape and cityscape. For Macro work you will want a camera with longer rail/rails and may want a macro specific lens. For field work, many people use a range like 90, 150, 210 or something similar. If you are just starting I'd recommend a 135mm or 150mm as your first lens and add others as necessary.
Portability becomes an issue which determines which type of camera you want to get. You have not specified how you are carrying your camera around.
There really is not that much to say that isn't covered here:
http://www.largeformatphotography.info/matos-begin.html
Bob McCarthy
1-Jul-2010, 16:11
There is a clean Omega that is currently listed on the site. Fits your budget too.
http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?t=64083
bob
Go up to the button above that says "LF Home Page", and read the many articles there.
Generally speaking, there are four classes of 4x5 cameras. The smallest and lightest is the converted Polaroid, such as the Razzle and the Byron. These are Polaroid models with a standard 4x5 film holder and ground glass grafted onto them. For fashion work and for using a Fuji PA-45 back to hold their 4x5 instant pack film (which I believe but am not positively sure that these cameras do), cameras in this class have a lot of hipness.
Next up from that is a vintage press camera, like a Speed or a Crown Graphic. These are often more flexible but they are also bulkier. Installing a 6x12 holder or a Fuji PA-45 holder on a Graflok-equipped Graflex is no problem. They are also hand-holdable, which would be handy for instant film and fashion work depending on how you approach it, though large-format is usually a tripod-based form of photography. Landscapes are manageable with these with some limitation caused by the lack of full movements, but macro may be a bit more challenging.
The next class is the field or technical camera. These started out as variations on press cameras, but have since moved into their own class. Unlike press cameras, they provide full movements of the front and rear standards. They provide all the capabilities one might need, including support for roll-film and instant-film holders. But you give up hand-holdability with these cameras and tripod-mounting is the only alternative.
The final class includes rail-mounted view cameras, such as the Omega 45E mentioned by someone else. These provide the most flexibility, the most bang for the buck, but also the most bulk. These are absolutely limited to tripod use.
The Fuji PA-45 will fit under some spring backs, and there are 6x12 rollfilm holders that will also. But if you obtain a choice with a Graflok or International back (they are the same thing), then you are assured of maximum flexibility for film holders. For example, you can use the inexpensive Shen-Hao 6x12 Graflok-based holder instead of the imperfect Calumet slide-in holder or the expensive Sinar slide-in holder.
Macro will be your greatest technical challenge. You might find that it's better to obtain a different camera when you get to that type of photography, and until then enjoy the advantages of the reflex viewing for macro work on your Mamiya.
If you do wait until later on the macro, a Crown Graphic might be an alternative worth considering. It probably has the best blend of hand-holdability and flexibility without being optimized for either.
Rick "all choices are a trade-off" Denney
RK_LFteacher
2-Jul-2010, 08:54
Go up to the button above that says "LF Home Page", and read the many articles there.
Generally speaking, there are four classes of 4x5 cameras. The smallest and lightest is the converted Polaroid, such as the Razzle and the Byron. These are Polaroid models with a standard 4x5 film holder and ground glass grafted onto them. For fashion work and for using a Fuji PA-45 back to hold their 4x5 instant pack film (which I believe but am not positively sure that these cameras do), cameras in this class have a lot of hipness.
Next up from that is a vintage press camera, like a Speed or a Crown Graphic. These are often more flexible but they are also bulkier. Installing a 6x12 holder or a Fuji PA-45 holder on a Graflok-equipped Graflex is no problem. They are also hand-holdable, which would be handy for instant film and fashion work depending on how you approach it, though large-format is usually a tripod-based form of photography. Landscapes are manageable with these with some limitation caused by the lack of full movements, but macro may be a bit more challenging.
The next class is the field or technical camera. These started out as variations on press cameras, but have since moved into their own class. Unlike press cameras, they provide full movements of the front and rear standards. They provide all the capabilities one might need, including support for roll-film and instant-film holders. But you give up hand-holdability with these cameras and tripod-mounting is the only alternative.
The final class includes rail-mounted view cameras, such as the Omega 45E mentioned by someone else. These provide the most flexibility, the most bang for the buck, but also the most bulk. These are absolutely limited to tripod use.
The Fuji PA-45 will fit under some spring backs, and there are 6x12 rollfilm holders that will also. But if you obtain a choice with a Graflok or International back (they are the same thing), then you are assured of maximum flexibility for film holders. For example, you can use the inexpensive Shen-Hao 6x12 Graflok-based holder instead of the imperfect Calumet slide-in holder or the expensive Sinar slide-in holder.
Macro will be your greatest technical challenge. You might find that it's better to obtain a different camera when you get to that type of photography, and until then enjoy the advantages of the reflex viewing for macro work on your Mamiya.
If you do wait until later on the macro, a Crown Graphic might be an alternative worth considering. It probably has the best blend of hand-holdability and flexibility without being optimized for either.
Rick "all choices are a trade-off" Denney
An Arca swiss used camera might be a great choice. Arca stands for All around camera and that is what they are. A 135mm or 150mm Apo-sironar-s is also a great starter lens as it performs better than most in a macro setup while still being excellent at infinity. Wide angles are terrible closeup as the chromatic abberation is really bad.
I use Arca and have taught on Arcas for years and all were pretty happy and they break down fairly small. Plus they are far more precise than most field cameras.
Rod
An Arca swiss used camera might be a great choice. Arca stands for All around camera and that is what they are. A 135mm or 150mm Apo-sironar-s is also a great starter lens as it performs better than most in a macro setup while still being excellent at infinity. Wide angles are terrible closeup as the chromatic abberation is really bad.
I use Arca and have taught on Arcas for years and all were pretty happy and they break down fairly small. Plus they are far more precise than most field cameras.
Rod
I don't really understand why this was in response to what I wrote.
But I also don't get the notion of recommending a multi-thousand-dollar high-end setup to someone just starting out in large-format photography, when such useful and effective choices are available for far less. Give the guy something to look forward to after he has a chance to really understand what he wants and needs.
And if using the camera hand-held in fashion work is a requirement, which Arca-Swiss model would fulfill that requirement?
The guy would blow his stated budget just buying the lens you recommended. Sheesh.
Rick "wary of the most expensive solutions presented as the answer to all problems" Denney
Jack Dahlgren
2-Jul-2010, 11:14
Rick,
Did the press or field camera come first? I know that many of the current field camera companies post-date the demise of graflex, but there are any number of folding field cameras which are a hundred years old or so.
I wasn't around at the time, but it is my suspicion that the press camera was an adaptation of the field camera designed to be more rugged and faster and hand-holdable.
Not that this matters to the original poster except that it may help him make a choice in camera type.
I started with a Speed Graphic (press camera) but always felt limited until I got a field camera. Now with two cameras I like the Speed better than before because I only use it when it is the right camera.
I agree that probably a crown graphic with a clean rangefinder would make a good and inexpensive starter.
NicolasArg
2-Jul-2010, 11:25
I have little experience, so take my advice by what it's worth.
If you don't intend to climb with the 4x5 setup, I'd get a nice used monorail camera. A friend sold me his beat up (a bit) Toyo for 100 dollars and it's really easy to set up and follow a complete book like "The Camera" while learning.
If you need a field later, you'll be more confident about the camera use, after all the things you learnt with the monorail.
If living in the States, I'd get a nice used Sinar or Toyo with a 150 or 210 Schneider/Fujinon/Nikkor lens and an Epson scanner.
Robert Hughes
2-Jul-2010, 12:03
OMG is that JustinB, "the" Justin B- ?
Expect the teenybopper quotient to go up to stratospheric levels in the next few days.
I'm amazed you'd choose that as a screen name, but welcome. Have fun!
bvstaples
2-Jul-2010, 12:11
One of the nice things about LF equipment is that it tends to hold its value. If you buy a used monorail for a few hundred dollars, you can almost always sell it for a few hundred dollars.
For what my opinion is worth (no laughing, please), I suggest you get yourself a Cambo or Calumet monorail. These are workhorse cameras, built like a tank (of course the drawback is they're a little heavier). I've seen these go for $100-200. You can get an decent Schneider 150mm lens for a few hundred more, and you'll need some holders, a dark cloth, a light meter, and a tripod. All in all I think anyone can get a complete kit for $500, maybe less if they're shrewd.
Another $50 for some film and you'll be shooting in no time. Of course, there's the whole developing thing, but if you're frugal, you'll have plenty left over from you thousand bucks to delve into that.
The one real drawback to LF in general is that once you have a few good sheets under your belt, there's no going back. That's when you find yourself scrambling for more money to invest in this and that.
G'luck!
Brian "stealing RD's sig line idea to say that having enough cameras means no more trade offs for me!" Staples
Did the press or field camera come first?
I was actually pondering that question when I wrote my first response.
I think the press camera came later, but not as a variation on "field" camera, but rather as an adaptation of existing "cameras" in favor of "portable cameras". I suppose the first Folmer & Schwing Graflex appeared in, what, 1902? And it was a while before it started to look like what we call a press camera.
Pretty much all large-format cameras of the day were bed cameras, and the bed design is the main feature field and press cameras have in common. Not all field cameras fold as do press cameras, but they all have bed designs instead of rail designs. The alternative to bed cameras in those days was the box camera, I suppose.
And I think that the technical camera (which has since merged with the field camera) may be a parallel development to the press camera, also with roots in the typical bed cameras of the early days. I suspect the first Linhof might be the original example of a technical camera, and it post-dates the Speed Graphic by quite a bit. The original Technika looks a LOT like a Graphic (to any disinterested observer), with the exception of rear movements and better front movements, which is what made it a technical camera instead of a press camera, I suppose. Maybe someone knows if Nicholas Karpf was visualizing an improved Crown Graphic or a much-more improved archetypal bed camera. There are guys here who know 100 things for every one I know on this topic.
An interesting question (to me) is: Who made the first monorail camera? I think it must have been Koch with his Sinar view camera, in 1947, which became the Norma.
The Polaroid design now being modified for 4x5 use is a variation of folding roll-fillm cameras. Despite that I have a 1958 Mockba imitation of a Super Ikonta, I am not knowledgeable of those beasts.
Rick "amazed by how much time he will spend on a really unimportant topic" Denney
OMG is that JustinB, "the" Justin B- ?
Expect the teenybopper quotient to go up to stratospheric levels in the next few days.
I'm amazed you'd choose that as a screen name, but welcome. Have fun!
Really, seriously you think I am Justin Beiber? Sorry to disappoint, but I am not him.
www.justinberman.com
Robert Hughes
4-Jul-2010, 11:57
Sorry to disappoint, but I am not him.
www.justinberman.com
Darn it! My daughter wanted your autograph! :D
Brian Ellis
4-Jul-2010, 15:37
If you were to read every message here from people who started out with a monorail for landscape work and then want to get rid of it and replace it with a field camera, vs all the ones who started out with a field camera for landscape work and then want to get rid of it and replace it with a monorail, you'd probably find 500 people in the first category and maybe 5 in the second. Which should tell you something about using a monorail in the field.
While I'm all for starting out with an inexpensive camera for your first one, the camera should be compatible with the kind of work you do. You will get very quickly turned off to LF photography if you hate the equipment with which you're working. Which isn't to say you'd necessarily hate lugging a monorail around but most of them are not designed for landscape and cityscape work, depending on exactly what you mean by "cityscape."
So far based on my research into them and your opinions, it seems like a field camera is the way to go. Now If I can just figure out *which* field camera, then I will be getting somewhere!
It seems like Shen-Hao gets a reasonable amount of good press on here, and they seem to be in my budget.
What I have no idea about from there is lenses, reviews of LF lenses online are much harder to come by than their medium/small format compatriots. I hear focal lengths, and they make fine sense to me. What I don't see much of is budget lens recommendations.
If you were to read every message here from people who started out with a monorail for landscape work and then want to get rid of it and replace it with a field camera, vs all the ones who started out with a field camera for landscape work and then want to get rid of it and replace it with a monorail, you'd probably find 500 people in the first category and maybe 5 in the second. Which should tell you something about using a monorail in the field.
I'm not disagreeing with your principle, but in the year and a half I've been reading this forum, I guess I've missed the data to which you refer, certainly at the ratio you describe.
I think a distinction needs to be made between those who backpack their cameras and those who don't. The category called "landscape" is rather nonspecific, encompassing what remains after architecture, portraits, street photography, fashion, studio, and commercial work have been removed. If the camera is outdoors and the subject isn't a building, then it's a landscape. There is quite a bit of landscape work that I do in my own yard, and most of the rest of it I do out of the back of my car, or (hopefully) out of our motorhome. My backpacking days are long behind me.
For me, the difference is how long it takes to set up the camera. Some field cameras are rather fiddly, and actually take longer to set up than a monorail. Some monorails set up very quickly.
I like the fact that I can take one camera case that will handle everything from a 47mm lens on the 6x12 format to a 12" lens on 4x5. A lot of monorail cameras don't have that flexibility, but several do. Field cameras with that kind of flexibility really are rare.
But I absolutely agree that each choice is made as a response to some thinking about the requirements, which emerge from the anticipated activities. But if those activities can't be predicted yet and therefore the requirements aren't really understood fully, it makes a lot of sense to start with an inexpensive view camera and gain some experience before making the decision.
You said that people may be put off by the perceived struggle of using a monorail camera in the field. But I wonder how many might delay their venture into large-format because they think they have to start with a $1000-plus field camera, which is expensive enough to demand extended consideration of features. During that wait, they can spend a coupla hundred on something like a Calumet monorail, and get that money back when they are ready to select a field camera. Then, they will make their final choice based on real field experience, and they will understand their needs more fully. All the lenses and most of the accessories they might buy will still work later, and it's essentially a zero-cost rental with a largish security deposit.
They might just find, as I have done, that the monorail design suits their sensibilities just fine. But they will not have suffered one bit even if they sell it and change to a field camera design. Better to do that than to spend months or years trying to decide which expensive field camera to buy, and then discover that the camera selected turned out not to be quite right after all.
Rick "thinking the one-purchase-for-life model can cause buyer paralysis" Denney
Bob McCarthy
5-Jul-2010, 11:33
I guess I'm one of the 5 people who switched to monorail from a folder. Sure seems like there are more of us than that.
One trend I've noticed is buying Sinars so one can use the Sinar shutter with barrel lenses. Opens up a who new world.
Having many cameras under my belt, I don't find many of the many forms of view cameras disqualifying for ant activity.
The real bargain today is the basic view camera used for sale. You can buy a used Sinar F for $200. That's a steal.
B
I guess I'm one of the 5 people who switched to monorail from a folder. Sure seems like there are more of us than that.
One trend I've noticed is buying Sinars so one can use the Sinar shutter with barrel lenses. Opens up a who new world.
Having many cameras under my belt, I don't find many of the many forms of view cameras disqualifying for ant activity.
The real bargain today is the basic view camera used for sale. You can buy a used Sinar F for $200. That's a steal.
B
I know this has mostly been left to settle, but in considering what you all are saying about view cameras, am I going to be at a drawback if i was to use a sinar over a toyo view camera to start out? Sinar accessories are expensive based on other threads here, and they wouldn't be compatible with anything save perhaps the new Shen Hao XPO if I decided I wanted a field camera in the future?
Thanks!
Justin
I know this has mostly been left to settle, but in considering what you all are saying about view cameras, am I going to be at a drawback if i was to use a sinar over a toyo view camera to start out? Sinar accessories are expensive based on other threads here, and they wouldn't be compatible with anything save perhaps the new Shen Hao XPO if I decided I wanted a field camera in the future?
Actually, Sinar accessories are really quite inexpensive on the used market, especially considering their quality.
Lenses mounted on Technika-style boards will work on many cameras--those boards are probably the most universal among modern cameras. Lenses on Sinar boards will work on all Sinars (going all the way back to 1947), many Horseman view cameras, and the XPO (which will also accept Technika boards). The I have a couple of Horseman lens boards that I use with my Sinar. And there are adapters that would allow you to mount any Technika lens board on a camera that accepts Sinar boards--the stock XPO comes with such an adapter.
Considering all possible accessories (and not just lens boards), the Sinar is probably the most modular and interchangeable of any of the brands, with Cambo being pretty similar.
Do this test: Go to ebay, and search on "Sinar" in the Cameras category. Look through the results. Then do the same search with "Toyo".
Toyos are fine cameras, but Sinars were so much the professional standard that there is just tons of used Sinar stuff being sold these days.
Rick "who switched from Cambo to Sinar to gain flexibility" Denney
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