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Thread: What is the Most Difficult Large Format Photography

  1. #21

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    Re: What is the Most Difficult Large Format Photography

    Quote Originally Posted by Dan Fromm View Post
    Hmm. IIRC the standard monocular 'scope tube diameter is ~ 24 mm. There are inexpensive lensless "microscope adapters" for 35 mm SLRs. One might fit your basic student scopes. You could probably adapt one of the adapters to a Graphic board, but unless you can rig a beamsplitter for viewing you'd be shooting blind. How do you plan to manage that?

    I have two stereo scopes at home, a Unitron and a B&L and have the use of a Leica SMZ 125 in the museum where I have a courtesy appointment. Also have access to Wild M-5s and a variety of other stereo scopes there. Haven't been able to find a way to attach a camera to any of them. Their eyepiece tubes are all too large to mount a cheapie lensless adapter or the nice Nikon one with lens that I've had for years.

    FWIW, one of our visitors got what our curator emeritus said were "publication quality" shots by holding a cell phone's lens over a stereo scope's eyepiece. Remember, what matters is that you get usable images of your subjects. How you get them is secondary. Try y'r cell phone. My cheapie took poor shots through an eyepiece, but trying's cheap.

    Thinking of subjects, please tell us a little about the moving subjects you want to shoot.

    Now that I think of it, another problem for you to solve is mounting your Graphic so that it transfers no vibration to the 'scope.
    two of my student scopes are this type.
    Click image for larger version. 

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    the top screws off so i can just use direct projection straight up through my speed graphic with no obstructions. with the other monocular scopes i can just use eyepiece projection. i'll use the ground glass for viewing. i can switch off an led, load a film holder and trigger a flash pretty fast. i won't need to use the shutter and the flash should take care of any residual shaking from loading the film holder. i'll skip trying the cell phone. if i want digital photos i'll go back to using my dslr and the camera mount i made for the ao spencer. the subjects will be whatever i find in the nearest ditch.

  2. #22

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    Re: What is the Most Difficult Large Format Photography

    Quote Originally Posted by Dugan View Post
    8x10" stereo dry-plate tri-color action photography, using flash powder, underwater.
    well, i know underwater large format photography of moving subjects has been done with a graflex slr and if i remember right they used a massive amount of flash powder rigged up on a floating platform. panchromatic 8x10 dry plates wouldn't be easy or cheap to get, but it's doable. tri-colour's doable with three plates and a beam-splitter, or one plate and the rgb filter layer from an lcd monitor. stereo's easy. you just need two lenses, one with a blue filter and one with a yellow filter, or red and cyan. gimme six months, an unlimited budget, some nude models and a shark and i'll make it happen. :P

  3. #23

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    Re: What is the Most Difficult Large Format Photography

    Quote Originally Posted by maltfalc View Post
    ... i'll use the ground glass for viewing. i can switch off an led, load a film holder and trigger a flash pretty fast. ... the subjects will be whatever i find in the nearest ditch.
    Good luck. Whether you're quick enough is an empirical question. After you've answered it, please tell us what you learned.

    I last looked at such creatures when I was around 7. Our GP lent me a nice Zeiss scope ... Paramecia, rotifers, cladocerans, copepods, nematodes and such move quite rapidly. I never found a Volvox. You might want to think about sedating your subjects.

  4. #24
    Jim Jones's Avatar
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    Re: What is the Most Difficult Large Format Photography

    Increasing camera size also increases difficulties: http://robroy.dyndns.info/lawrence/mammoth.html

  5. #25
    Land-Scapegrace Heroique's Avatar
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    Re: What is the Most Difficult Large Format Photography

    From a psychology angle, my biggest difficulty is setting up, and deciding not to take the shot when the composition just isn’t there. It’s much easier to take a shot anyway for a false sense of accomplishment.

  6. #26

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    Re: What is the Most Difficult Large Format Photography

    Quote Originally Posted by Dan Fromm View Post
    Good luck. Whether you're quick enough is an empirical question. After you've answered it, please tell us what you learned.

    I last looked at such creatures when I was around 7. Our GP lent me a nice Zeiss scope ... Paramecia, rotifers, cladocerans, copepods, nematodes and such move quite rapidly. I never found a Volvox. You might want to think about sedating your subjects.
    volvox thrive around here. a bit of methyl cellulose will slow everything down if i have any issues.

  7. #27
    (Shrek)
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    Re: What is the Most Difficult Large Format Photography

    There are technical hurdles that can be solved with unlimited funds and time, that doesn't make the resulting shot 'difficult' per se, just expensive. Some that I would call difficult are the high-speed shots freezing bullets as they pierced balloons, that required inventing a whole new camera system, high speed triggers, etc. But this is using photography for technical purposes, not what we understand as photography, the art of.

    The most difficult shots I've ever attempted with LF were owls in dense forest cover. Then I got the idea of using owls in a bird refuge to capture the bird picking up a mouse from the forest floor, staged of course in a cage with the trainer. I had the contacts to do it, I had already shot many of the raptors at the St-Hyacinthe vet school east of Montreal. I just needed a portable flash system, a large enough cage, and a trainer willing to work half the night with me. And a few mice. In the end I had health issues and had to abandon animal photography altogether, plus with the Internet and everyone stealing your photos instead of paying for them, I had little incentive to take it up again. Much less in LF. I have done live turtles and frogs etc. in the years since, just for fun. Few zoos or aquariums will allow you to set up tripods and a LF camera, but I do know of one.

  8. #28

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    Re: What is the Most Difficult Large Format Photography

    Quote Originally Posted by LabRat View Post
    Action...

    How about re-creating Halsman's shot of Dali in the studio??? Where 'ya need assistants to throw cats around... (Tip: cats always land on their feet...) ;-)

    Steve K
    I always wondered about that. The cats of my acquaintance would have had a sense of humour failure before the third 'take'. Are there highly-trained stunt-cats available somewhere??!! Or possibly each cat performed only once, picked randomly from a large number of artistes . . .

  9. #29

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    Re: What is the Most Difficult Large Format Photography

    Quote Originally Posted by MartinP View Post
    I always wondered about that. The cats of my acquaintance would have had a sense of humour failure before the third 'take'. Are there highly-trained stunt-cats available somewhere??!! Or possibly each cat performed only once, picked randomly from a large number of artistes . . .
    I have an old saying; "For enough $$$, ANYTHING is available"...

    Steve K

  10. #30

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    Re: What is the Most Difficult Large Format Photography

    When I was a student at RIT enrolled in the BioMedical Photography program of studies, I did all my Photomicrography assignments with my 8x10. I remember standing on the lab countertop looking down on the GG of my 8x10 B&J Commercial view camera, and using my big toe to focus with the fine focus adjustment knob. No one told me at the time that doing photomicrography with an 8x10 was difficult.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Photomicrography8x10.jpg  

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