Canham MQC 5x7 and Fujinon-W 180mm
Canham MQC 5x7 and Fujinon-W 180mm
Hello Doremus,
How different we work
Good illustration of how different image makers apply their art, craft, technique and more.
Being one of those non-cropper folk, images made are always right to the film holder guides as they are used as part of image framing.
Choice of focal length is strictly driven by foreground -vs- background -vs- overall composition as to how the overall composition of all
items in the image organized into a given composition. Lighting also figures greatly into this as Photography is much about light, shape,
form, texture (one of the prime reasons for LF) and all that.
It could be the favoritism towards a normal to wider or shorter than normal lens is partly due to the way we see foreground to background object and perspective wise. Or the way one sees the world relative to human vision is easiest to translate to a print 2D image. As images made using either extremes of wide angle or telephoto, these image perspectives are not as easy to visualize. IMO, the extremes of these focal lengths are more difficult to visualize and apply effectively. For the 5x7 view camera, focal lengths from 72mm to 600mm and a number of Sorta Focus lenses are easily available for image making.. yet the most often used remains slightly longer than normal, slightly shorter than normal applied to the full film holder frame no crop, with variations of every item in the image in focus to very selective focus.
Bernice
5x7 Deardorff and 10 3/4" Dagor. Always packed and ready to go. This has been my standby since about 1960.
Tool for the job... Have several camera system kits in cases , bags, or photo packs... Grab the kit best for different situations...
One "crossover" feature is all cameras have an adapter board so lenses from different cameras can interchange, but just have to remember to pack other lenses, meters, filters, film in specialty holders etc... Cameras go from light/heavy, wood, metal, flatbed, technical, press, monorail, studio etc... Some kits like to shoot outside, some up close, some with long/short lenses, some a large studio rig with heavy lenses etc...
No one perfect camera, except one you use and bond with you can set totally by feel...
Steve K
I am still looking for a nice Deardorff 4x5 Special.....Had one...sold it...regret it every day!
Bernice,
Interesting discussion!
I agree that focal lengths that more closely approximate the angle of view of the eye are, in essence, more "natural." Very wide and very narrow angles of view from short and long lenses respectively change the relationship of foreground size to background size in ways that telegraph to us that the resulting image is somehow "different" from normal, if we define normal as the perspective we naturally expect so see with the naked eye.
However, vision and visual perception have a complicated relationship, and what we perceive is really a compound image resulting from our scanning the scene in front of us and constructing a mental representation of what the eyes register. This imagined image that we perceive is influences to a great extent by how we actually see, i.e., that angle of view that our eyes naturally have. It is the first way we learn to perceive and, therefore, the most "natural."
Nevertheless, we can learn to visualize with different angles of view, especially after being exposed to them by using (and getting used to) wider and longer lenses, but also by viewing images made with extreme focal lengths and, like the artists of the Renaissance, by studying and drawing perspective projections of scenes using different angles of view.
Once we've trained our minds to expand the way we visualize, working with multiple angles of view in our expressive palette becomes second nature and just as "natural" as what we call "normal" perspective. And, the expressive possibilities of using more extreme angles of view can be added to our toolkit.
There are also more purely practical reasons to use extreme focal lengths. Getting everything into the frame in close quarters requires a wide angle of view. That's why shorter focal lengths are the standard for things like interior architectural photography. Conversely, zooming in on and isolating a distant object - something our eyes do very well - is difficult with standard focal lengths. Longer lenses step in here to frame what we need and get rid of what we don't.
Although my most used focal length (for 4x5) is the slightly-wider-that-normal 135mm, I carry, and use, lenses out to the extremes (75mm - 450mm for 4x5). When I'm photographing in the slot canyons of the Southwest, my kit is weighted to the wide: 75mm, 90mm, 135mm. When I'm in the wide open spaces, I'll switch out the 75mm for the 300mm or the 450mm.
That said, each of us has an idiosyncratic, often subconscious, preference for some angles of view; ones that communicate best what we're trying to say with our work. I guess mine tends toward the wide
Best,
Doremus
Circumstances have had a recent influence on equipment choice and preference. I was looking for a way to move up from 4x5 where I had settled because the 120 square format camera didn't suit how I see, but 4x5 didn't suit my current living circumstances in that I have no room for a suitable darkroom and contact prints were unsatisfactory.
Circumstances landed a Kodak 2D 5x7 in my lap, opening up the ability to contact print in my home, but not with the preferred aspect ratio of 4x5. Further circumstances dictated an inability to convert to 8x10 (cost and well, cost) for that preferred aspect ratio, so I've compromised in that I've accepted the 5x7's wider image and am by necessity learning to work within that frame since I'm only able to contact print.
What doesn't change (for me anyway) is a preference for a longer focal length. What/how I see has historically and consistently benefited from foreshortening and mostly tends to need to be brought closer, whereas how I render it is more easily adapted, ie learning to incorporate more information for a wider or taller rectangle. My wide angle and "normal" lenses are really only seeing use when I'm shooting something outside of my norm, esp the WA.
On a side note, included in the "inheritance" that handed my the 5x7 was a very fancy 36cm Nicola Perscheid that offers a very nice luminous soft-focus @ f4.5 and f5.6 but which goes against what I've been practicing for 40-some years, ie tack sharp images. Learning this lens's capabilities has been another shift in perspective, learning how to take advantage of its inherent characteristics.
So to break down what I've learned, you can indeed teach an old dog new tricks, but only if the dog is willing. Interesting dialog, thanks for the question.
Doremus,
A odd combination of long term habit, mild OCD and I suppose masochism compels me to print film edge.
I will also impose my will on toilet paper orientation in the homes of others (it comes off the top, damnit) and then straighten out the pictures on their wall.
And volume is 31 or 33 or 35, never 32 or 34. I don't trust even numbers. This is how I stay sane.
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