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Thread: Need Advice on 16x20 cameras and film from owners/users

  1. #11

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    Re: Need Advice on 16x20 cameras and film from owners/users

    I know where there's a copy camera mounted in a building/darkroom if you are serious about going bigger. I think the vacuum back on that is something like 30x30" You'd have to mount in a trailer for it to be portable. I really want it for doing life size group portraits as contact prints. No film holders, the back is the film holder. I have no idea what it weighs. It's got several feet of bellows. I doubt it'd make sense to come from presumed Toronto Canada to central TX to get it.

  2. #12
    Zebra
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    Re: Need Advice on 16x20 cameras and film from owners/users

    I shoot a 20 x 24 camera with a second reducing back for 16 x 20. As I have stated in other threads I use them both for wet plate and pt/Pd prints. I buy several boxes of film from Ilford for each format every year.

    There are many more reasons not to do it than to forge ahead. Money, space, ease, convenience, diffraction, lens availability, marriage, kids, global warming and of course the catch all the Kardashians. For God’s sake pin your ears back, channel your inner Man from Snowy River and jump off down the cliff while everyone else stands by and watches. A man, a woman, a person should have something useless in their lives that has no productive endpoint but exists inside them and only them as the logical path ahead. As Wendell Berry said ‘do something that doesn’t compute’.

    The payoff for me has been the experience. In portraiture something occurs between the sitter and yourself that is born out of the size of the camera. They understand they are collaborating with you not being taken from. A participation comes alive that my smaller formats don’t produce. Bonds are created and anticipation reintroduced to a immediate world.

    In landscapes detail and light take on a different impact to composing and there is a grand theater aspect to being under the darkcloth that comes alive. Process reigns over product from the beginning—embracing the size, the weight, the cumbersome nature changes the odds from outnumbered to a rich target field. It’s just in your approach. But man when it goes right the product is breathtaking.

    Or you could use an iPhone


    Monty

  3. #13

    Re: Need Advice on 16x20 cameras and film from owners/users

    I Have a Stianless sink and the 20x24 trays and the Film washer for 20x24 already . I did this for my 8x10 set up.

  4. #14

    Re: Need Advice on 16x20 cameras and film from owners/users

    Thank You for this insightful reply. It is definitely about being Impractical and Magical. I do already notice how people react to my 8x10 Mahogany and Brass 8x10 Wisner. I expect that to be more pronounced as the size of the camera increases. You are right many will not "get it". Yet there are musicians who play ancient traditional instruments. Play ancient music compositions. But with the ULF I can do Contemporary Images. I have been looking at Chuck Close today and his work with Ritters 20x24 Polaroid. Amazing. There are always trolls and nay sayers. You encourage me to "waste my time". But what else is time for except to be wasted?

    I have found a cache of 8 boxes of 16x20 Ilford in a local store . Cold stored and not yet expired. 8 x 25 is ... 200 exposures!!! Let's Not do the Math of the Co$t. Bah ! So inconsequential when the goal is to be Magical. Not for me as much as for the subject. To see themselves, to show others themselves. In analogue rendering of light energy on paper. Directly made. Not interpreted through a Bayer coded sensor.

    BTW I checked my Cel Phone. It cannot reach the area code where the Magic is.

  5. #15

    Re: Need Advice on 16x20 cameras and film from owners/users

    Quote Originally Posted by Tin Can View Post
    Any thread may drift, if you want 16X20 by all means go for it


    My project, in planning stage only is much bigger, as I work out how to do it with my limited budget

    Here goes, 14 X 72" film, you figure it out...
    Sounds like a Cirkut Camera??
    Last edited by Torontoamateur; 13-Nov-2019 at 18:29. Reason: oops

  6. #16

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    Re: Need Advice on 16x20 cameras and film from owners/users

    I use my Chamonix 16x20 and have a 14x17 back so I can shoot both formats. I can handle it myself as long as the walk is not over a mile.

  7. #17
    Tin Can's Avatar
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    Re: Need Advice on 16x20 cameras and film from owners/users

    Not saying, when it works I will show it

    I am not in a hurry

    Quote Originally Posted by Torontoamateur View Post
    Sounds like a Cirkut Camera??
    Tin Can

  8. #18

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    Re: Need Advice on 16x20 cameras and film from owners/users

    Quote Originally Posted by Torontoamateur View Post
    Ha Ha Ha ! I am not seeing much support for this format. I keep hearing I should go smaller...
    Age most probably has a lot to do with forum members advising you to go smaller, is so with me, will turn 72 next month. Years ago thought nothing of toting around an ULF camera far from the trail head. Many times took me 2 or 3 round trips to do this, but never once feared someone walking off with my equipment... always left a hand written sign with "please do not disturb, will be back in 20 minutes". Now as I previously posted, 11x14 is the largest format that I am able work with in the field. My 11x14 camera system I am still able to backpack in using a large Granite Gear case with my tripod over my shoulder, and plan on doing this for as long as I can. Currently a half mile hike in seems to be the farthest practical distance to hike in. Fortunately most of the destinations that I am interested in photographing are within this distance. For longer distances, just pack a D850 and make LF digital negatives to print from. I will be the first to say that (to me) they have a much different look than images captured with my 11x14. But after displaying 11x14 Platinum/Palladium prints made from 11x14 negatives and from the D850 both side by side in a retrospective show last year, not one of the viewers could tell the difference, even some LF photographers. Good luck with your pursuing the 16x20 format...

  9. #19

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    Re: Need Advice on 16x20 cameras and film from owners/users

    Would multiple exposures from 8x10 satisfy this urge to make enormous contact prints?
    The reason I ask is that I once got my hands on a ?72mm? super angulon on a Sinar Lensboard for 1/2 an hour and shot a picture of an extremely busy scene onto 5x7 Xray film---a wall of antique cameras, photo books, and accessories in a camera shop. The amount of information on that negative is crazy. I've never done it but I've thought about taking several 8x10's of a scene of interest and displaying them as group. Sort of like looking through a window. This idea is probably better for landscapes than portraits. But, it might give you some sense of the "presence" of the resulting prints before you get the huge equipment. It will do nothing for understanding the enormous camera, film holders, developing etc.

  10. #20
    Between here and there
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    Re: Need Advice on 16x20 cameras and film from owners/users

    Quote Originally Posted by Fr. Mark View Post
    Would multiple exposures from 8x10 satisfy this urge to make enormous contact prints?
    It just struck me reading this comment, that Matt Magruder does (or did, don't know if he still makes photographs) multiple exposures (wetplate, though), see examples:
    https://rfotofolio.org/matt-magruder/

    He's always been an inspiration that I come back to every now and then.
    "Be still and allow the mud to settle."

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