New to Large Format Landscape Photography

[Bernice Loui]

There are visual quality difference between 6x9 -vs- 5x4 or other film format size. Finished print size is part of this different, some of these difference can be perceived as "sharpness" or tonality or contrast range or film grain size or a host of many, many other factors.

At this point, learning to use a view camera is more significant than image quality alone as the skill and craft is in many ways learning to see images made in a different way, not just the view camera image making process.



Bernice

Thank you everyone for all the helpful information. I appreciate all the support and the willingness to help someone new to the forum and the format. I am taking a lot of this new information into consideration and doing more research. Each of you have brought some new things to my attention for me to explore. Anybody have ideas they'd like to share on the aesthetic photo quality difference between 6x9 and 4x5? I think I'll be going with a 4x5 camera but also shoot roll film with it in addition to 4x5 sheets.

Thanks again all!

[GG12]

There has been some wonderful information and advice given here, all of which seems spot on.

Another view from a less-patient person who deeply admires view camera work. When readiloads were around, it was all OK, but still a bit put off with sheet loading and processing. Have got a couple Grafmatics, but they are even more daunting, and aren't light. Its not just the traveling with 6-10 film backs, I'm scared of screwing it all up, dust, etc. Part of this comes from being half asleep sometimes when shooting, and not having a clear head in the wee hours!

Roll film is easy to deal with, and the backs easy to haul around. Lots of flexibility. And if the final print size is modest, say 16 x 20, prints from 6x6 negs, the images have quality not found in smaller negs. Of course, images from 4x5 are better yet, but with a commitment to the film backs and processing with some care. Yet composing on a 4x5 is a delight, movements so easy to work and fun too. Smaller versions, like 6x9 versions are less so. Roll film backs (6x9 and 6x12) on a 4x5 are easy, but its painful to see that big image on the ground glass and only get a part of it.

[DHodson]

I'm not that far ahead of you on this and still learning but I'd like to add one more vote in favour of 4x5 and that's that the larger negative scans better.

In my case, good enlargers and darkroom gear were challenging to find and expensive to ship. It took a while but eventually I found one and got my darkroom set up but in the meantime, I was scanning the negatives then cleaning up the scan and printing to an Epson 3880 printer. The larger negative was definitely a plus for this. A second reason for scanning was that I wanted to get into Alternative Processes (Kallitype) and scanning let me print out an enlarged digital negative on transparencies for contact printing without buying a really large format camera.

Good luck
Dave