Hello and some questions - from an almost converted LF photographer in Sydney

[jp]

What did initially surprise me is that some of you have said that you're not detail junkies (but in far more eloquent terms of course). Perhaps this is due to me having spent so many years in the digital world where pixel count takes up a lot of bandwidth and far less conversation around tone and emotion takes place. I will reflect on that one - my presumption was that image detail and quality would be more of an incentive than it appears to be. There is something quite refreshing in that.

In the next week or so I have the opportunity to head out with both an 8x10 and a 6x17 and a few experts in the field to have my first experience. So I think that format will be the next question - 4x5 or 6x17 potentially. Given a love of the natural world and opportunities to travel to remote places (we do a lot of long distance 4wd camping), landscape opportunities are just begging for large format!

The detail things. It's like if we were all car junkies. We could be street racers BS'ing each other all day about whether we had 800HP or 900HP on our nitrous blown engines; It's all sufficiently overkill to be enjoyable. With LF, we use overkill to address concerns about grain, detail, etc.. An 8x10 camera with a 100 year old uncoated tessar and normal film is going to be overkill for detail, as long as we do our part right. At a certain point you get like rolls royce and simple call the power from a 6L V12 "sufficient".

You can photograph landscape with either system, and 6x17 will be more portable, and portable cameras are more apt to get used. But 8x10 you can photograph your children; just in a different way that complements the d700. With the 8x10, I setup the camera and scene, and then bring in the kids and put them in a pre-focused and composed spot. I don't make them stand around while I adjust things and figure out what I want for a photo. You can look through my posts to see 4x5 and 8x10 images of my daughters. It's a nice challenge; everyone did it that way at one point in history. You can have many lenses choices to feed the sickness with 8x10 as well.

[deldridg]

Welcome aboard!
1. All the above, plus the sensation of being quite literally "hands on."
2. Yes.
3. Never, ever be dependent on batteries. I'd die before consenting to get a pacemaker (not the Graphic one!)
4. Share the really good ones---never on the internet though. If the image is something I enjoy, I figure others will enjoy it too. Bringing happiness to others is important.
5. Take me back to the time they were taken, sort of like time travel.

Hi John,

yes, I'm also drawn by the appeal of hands on. More and more I see we live in a world of abstraction, where much of what we attend to appears "real" until someone turns a big switch off. I love the concrete, physical world and perhaps a big 4x5 in my backpack will feel like a block of concrete after a while... (or my wife's backpack!).

As for your nostalgic comment in 5, I love the potential to create timeless images - especially of my kids where nothing in the frame (other than clothing no longer made of rawhide) suggests a particular time-frame. Looking at many of the shots posted in this forum gives me the same sense - especially the soft focus variety.

Cheers and thanks,
David

[deldridg]

... but I am a man in great need of help!

I think you just described all of us except for the few female members!


1. For me it's both the process and the result. I agree with Brian about looking at that big 8x10 ground glass.

2. The only 35mm I shoot is a Stereo Realist which I shoot for kicks. I shoot digital for sports, ebay and snapshots. The sport shots can be really satisfying in a different way. I also own a Hasselblad and those images can be just as satisfying. I shoot it hand held. Anything on a tripod I would rather use 4x5 or 8x10. So I guess to answer your question would be to say that smaller formats can be just as satisfying. Each format has it's place.

3. To spend more time on each individual photograph. By slowing things down I find I get more keepers. Of course this does not apply to shooting sports. Shooting at 5 frames per second on my Nikon D300 does have it's place.

4. I own an Epson V750 flat bed scanner so I can scan up to 8x10. I don't do my own printing and the largest that I have had a couple printed is 16x20 so far. I have a small house so I don't have a lot of wall space. One of these days I'll get a negative drum scanned and go really big.

5.My wife half kidding says it's a sickness. Did you notice I said half kidding? Does that answer your question?

Hi Alan - yes, yes and yes! I've shot sports professionally (motorsports) and these days prefer to wander around for my own benefit with a hand-held meter and a 645 with waist-level finder, hand-held. I need to buy a 4x5 or 6x17 to make use of all those lovely tripods I've bought over the years...

Glad I'm not the only crazy one here. In fact I've just returned from picking up an almost mint Bronica 100-220 PE lens from KEH to add to my MF collection. On camera it looks like I'm carrying some kind of missile launcher - will have to be careful if I'm ever near the airport! I must be mad... nothing convenient there.

We too are running out of wall space. We went a bit silly some years ago with large canvas prints of the kids/holidays. Maybe one day they'll have to give way to some spectacular enlargements, if I'm ever able to take a few!

Cheers and thanks,
David

[deldridg]

Quote Originally Posted by deldridg View Post
1. So, my first question is – how does large format photography satisfy you the most?

Relaxation and the creative process combined. Simple enjoyment. Large format, mostly 8X10, is a seperation from the utilitarianism of other "needed" photography. For me at least, the whole soft focus lens thing is a seperate little world (that almost nobody cares about) that computers cannot duplicate. And some of the work is truly lovely.

...

Some sense of satisfaction I suppose. Like a journey, it's fun to pause at a hilltop and look behind you at where you've been, and look ahead at all the possibilities.

Hi Jim,

there's a great calmness in your words - this I seek! Leave those swarming crowds in their frenzied digital world and find a quite place of reflection and live in the process. Sounds good to me.

I'd love to see some of your soft focus images - having just done some image retouching for my in-laws of family photos from the early 1900s and before, I found myself gazing in wonderment at the character and life in those old shots.

Thanks for your words,
David

[deldridg]

simple. tactility. the tactile nature of the resulting images... magic.

Hi there JW,

I've never really thought of it that way. Perhaps it's a bit like the kind of reaction I have when looking through a viewfinder camera at the beautiful three-dimensionality of the projected image on the ground glass, but having that level of image on paper. Sometimes I get very lost in that viewfinder - it's a beautiful thing. If that tactility could be hanging on a wall or two, I'd be very satisfied.

Cheers and thanks,
David

[deldridg]

Hello David from another Sydney resident!

...

Slow down.

As another Sydney resident, give me a shout if you want to head out with a 4x5 or 8x10 camera sometime to give it a go!

Cheers,

Welly (Alastair)

ps. I'm running a large format blog aimed at the Australian community at http://largeformatphotography.com.au - take a look if you so desire!

Hey there Welly (or "g'day" as every Aussie is expected to say...),

Thanks for the shout and kindly invite. I will take you up on your offer when I get a chance between running my business and managing 2 little kids (and my wife of course...). (For the record, I'm not really a bored homebody posting endless messages on forums - it's that I'm not 100% well today so am taking it a bit easy and attempting to respond to everyone's generous words.)

Thanks for the tips on printing - post production is a whole other area. Fortunately I'm pretty well connected in that department with access to fabulous advice and printing so fingers crossed I'll one day shoot something worth the effort and cost. Otherwise it would be far too much for me to learn at the level I'd expect of myself.

As for your site - I will be mentioning it to some of my fellow photographers, many of whom shoot LF at the Primrose Park Photographic group in Cammeray. You've put a lot of effort in and I'm going to enjoy reading it - hope to be crook again tomorrow! Hehe

Cheers and chat soon,
David

[deldridg]

The detail things. It's like if we were all car junkies. We could be street racers BS'ing each other all day about whether we had 800HP or 900HP on our nitrous blown engines; It's all sufficiently overkill to be enjoyable. With LF, we use overkill to address concerns about grain, detail, etc.. An 8x10 camera with a 100 year old uncoated tessar and normal film is going to be overkill for detail, as long as we do our part right. At a certain point you get like rolls royce and simple call the power from a 6L V12 "sufficient".

You can photograph landscape with either system, and 6x17 will be more portable, and portable cameras are more apt to get used. But 8x10 you can photograph your children; just in a different way that complements the d700. With the 8x10, I setup the camera and scene, and then bring in the kids and put them in a pre-focused and composed spot. I don't make them stand around while I adjust things and figure out what I want for a photo. You can look through my posts to see 4x5 and 8x10 images of my daughters. It's a nice challenge; everyone did it that way at one point in history. You can have many lenses choices to feed the sickness with 8x10 as well.

Hi JP,

Loved looking at your posts just now. Being able to successfully and beautifully portray children in such a unique and emotive way is very inspiring. A great selling point for my beloved - thanks!

Lately we've been trying to live to 'sufficiency' but my crazed passion for acquiring lovely old gear is proving difficult to overcome...

Cheers,
David

[JW Dewdney]

Hi there JW,

I've never really thought of it that way. Perhaps it's a bit like the kind of reaction I have when looking through a viewfinder camera at the beautiful three-dimensionality of the projected image on the ground glass, but having that level of image on paper. Sometimes I get very lost in that viewfinder - it's a beautiful thing. If that tactility could be hanging on a wall or two, I'd be very satisfied.

Cheers and thanks,
David

Oh yes! Most DEFINITELY you can get an incredible sense of tactility in a well done photographic print. After many years of working with larger format cameras I've decided this must really be the aspect that keeps it magical for me. The sense that you could almost reach through the frame and touch what's there - of course I can only say this for myself - for others - other things may draw them in. Contact printing is even better this way I find too.. (more dimensional to me somehow)...

[cosmicexplosion]

i just plain do not like at all one bit, not even for a second, the digital look blown up.

small it all looks similar to me, digital printing has come a long way, and i cant see pixels in small prints, amazing really,

but poster size and yyyyyyyuuuuuuuuukkkk


you can achieve great things, but you must be prepared to wrestle!

[Halford]

Hi David, from another Southerner -- this one based in Cape Town, so warm greetings on this beautiful winter's afternoon!

Thank you for posting such thought-provoking questions. As a relative LF newbie, they've made for an interesting reflective exercise, both looking at others' answers and thinking about my own:

1. So, my first question is – how does large format photography satisfy you the most? Is it in the sheer quality of the images you create, is it in the intricate manual process, is it the exclusiveness of the rare breed to which you belong, is it that you don’t get what you want any other way (ie. with MF/35mm etc.) or is it in the owning and using of such classic and beautiful equipment etc.? In other words, what is it most about large format photography that makes you go to all that trouble?

Some of your replies to earlier comments really resonated with me. I spend 8 hours a day working at tasks which are totally abstract -- they have no reality in the physical world and exist only as transient states in a computer. For some people, this is fulfilling, but for me it leaves a hunger for the physical, tactile and embodied that verges on a spiritual hunger. We relate to the world as physical bodies with physical senses, and it means so much to me to be able to relate to my hobbies / crafts / wannabe-arts in the a physical, tactile way.

For me, LF presents opportunities for this kind of physical involvement in imagemaking that digital tools (or, for that matter, relatively automated smaller-format film photography) do not. I feel much more responsible for the image that gets made on and from a piece of LF sheet film, when I have -- using my judgement, my will and most importantly my body -- chosen exactly how the image gets made, down to and including precise control of the plane of focus.

Of course "owning and using ... classic and beautiful equipment" is part of that too in a sense. My 4x5 monorail was built in the 1940s and has crossed the world, and been part of the life of photographers before me. There is a kind of transcendence of time and a sharing of experience that goes with that. OTOH I have placed an order for a new 8x10 field camera that, although new, will be built by hand by a craftsman, creating another human connection that a consumer commodity -- no matter how high quality - just can't.

2. Secondly – given the amount of time and effort required to produce a single frame in LF, do you find that you value your work in different ways to the outputs of more conventional (and convenient) approaches (ie. 35mm)?

Hmm, I'd still say differently rather than more. I still think that my all-time favourite personal image is one I took on HP-5 in 35mm, so of course compared with any LF image it's grainy as hell and lacking in detail, but encapsulates the way I like looking at and experiencing the human relationship with the natural landscape.

But -- the LF picture-making (and I'm still very much a newbie, so there's every chance that something new in LF will displace my little grainy 35mm frame as a personal favourite) encourages me to see more photographically, to see better, and hopefully to use digital and smaller-format cameras better too. I hope. Maybe it's too early to tell.

Of course I have been absolutely awed at the tonal subtlety that can be captured on a big piece of film compared with a little one

3. What are the main (perhaps “artistic”) lessons you have taken from LF which you have been able to apply elsewhere?

(Okay I think I accidentally answered that one early)

4. What do you do with your images? Do you feel the need to print them all at vast sizes so you can “walk into” the details, do you archive the negs/trannies and enjoy them in private with the light-box – marvelling at the detail with your 4x loupe, do you precision scan them and store them digitally (I think 4x5 @ 4,000dpi is about 320 Mpixels, yes?)?

Well I don't yet have the means to print them at vast sizes. In fact at this point I still don't have a LF enlarger of any kind (hoping to change that soon), so I'm stuck with scanning, and/or contact printing which isn't all that satisfying for 4x5 negatives. I have contact printed a couple on Ilford postcard paper and mailed them to people, which is a fun way to share them.

To the horror of purists, I do put some up on flickr to share too -- I have friends all over the world and it's a handy way to share them.

I am hoping to have a LF enlarger later this year - hopefully then I'll give some larger prints a try.

5. Finally, what do your images do to you?

Well as another poster said, lots of them disappoint me -- but even the disappointments can (and should) help and guide us toward improvements in both technique and vision.

More seriously, I find that imagemaking can be a contemplative -- almost a devotional -- task. It helps me to be more closely aware and mindful of my relationship with the world -- both human and natural.

Also, it's geeky and involves fun toys.


Also, David, I propose a toast to your supportive wife, along with my patient and supportive partner, who puts up with my endless photo-mumbling

Have a great day / evening,
Hal