About Joe Cornish and the scope of the Large Format Photography Forum

[neil poulsen]

There was a time years and years ago when no commercialization was permitted on this forum, and that included selling equipment, LF or otherwise. So, rules can change.

A subtle difference, versus a contentious discussion of how the current rules are wrong, it makes sense to instead have an encouraging discussion of why and how the rules might evolve.

[bob carnie]

Bob, I firmly believe that it doesn’t matter HOW a person arrives at the end result, it’s the result that matters. Though I’ve chosen to rely less and less on digital tools, I do so only because I prefer to be intimately involved in the technology at every step, know my materials and understand them sufficiently to enable to control them as I wish. For me, things like inkjet printing - though miraculous and wonderful - are a bit too “black box” for me to really enjoy using. Now, if I could easily make 58 x 90 inch salted paper prints that have all the same properties as what I currently make in 8 X 10 inches, then I’d do it!

That would be quite a feat.. I wonder how large a hand print could go, I have made 24 x36inch gum over palladiums , I do not want to ever go larger than that.

[paulbarden]

That would be quite a feat.. I wonder how large a hand print could go, I have made 24 x36inch gum over palladiums , I do not want to ever go larger than that.

I expect you'd be limited by the paper size, and the Hahnemuhle Platinum Rag I've been using most seems to max out at 50 inches x 30 feet (roll). Mind you, a four by six foot salted paper print would be pretty awesome, if you could make a negative that large!

[bob carnie]

I expect you'd be limited by the paper size, and the Hahnemuhle Platinum Rag I've been using most seems to max out at 50 inches x 30 feet (roll). Mind you, a four by six foot salted paper print would be pretty awesome, if you could make a negative that large!

technically a neg would be possible if you use a calibrated epson printer or make a pinhole camera back that big ( I think that has been done with pinhole and wetplate) The largest digital neg I have made is 30inch x 40 inch


On a second note Paul , how hard is it to learn salt printing compared to lets say Pt Pd, I am curious as the best colour prints I have ever seen in my life were in a show at the AGO or ROM, they were late 1800 salt prints that were then
hand coloured with transparent pigments. I fell in love with them and when I make my gum over pd I am always thinking in the back of my mind I want them to be as nice as those 150 year old prints.

Bob

[fotopfw]

Evidently. Which makes no sense, and amounts to telling people that they're free to post, but only if they own a Ferrari.

Which is true on a Ferrari forum and a lot of other forums on specific makes and models of camera's.

[jnantz]

That would be quite a feat.. I wonder how large a hand print could go, I have made 24 x36inch gum over palladiums , I do not want to ever go larger than that.

you might have to use / coat a thin Japanese paper and do chin collée to splice sections together seamlessly on a denser substrate.

[paulbarden]

technically a neg would be possible if you use a calibrated epson printer or make a pinhole camera back that big ( I think that has been done with pinhole and wetplate) The largest digital neg I have made is 30inch x 40 inch


On a second note Paul , how hard is it to learn salt printing compared to lets say Pt Pd, I am curious as the best colour prints I have ever seen in my life were in a show at the AGO or ROM, they were late 1800 salt prints that were then
hand coloured with transparent pigments. I fell in love with them and when I make my gum over pd I am always thinking in the back of my mind I want them to be as nice as those 150 year old prints.

Bob

Bob,
I can't make that comparison for you, since I've not done Platinum/Palladium printing before. I've found salt printing to be quite challenging, but I've learned a lot and gotten to the point where I can consistently make very good prints. It is my understanding that Pt/Pd is much easier than salted paper printing. The latter requires a very specific type of negative (if made in-camera) that has very open shadows ("voids" as some call it) and some pretty serious highlight density. I followed the instructions in Ellie Young's document on controlling the color traits in salt printing: expose FP4 at 100 ASA and develop in PMK 2:4:100 at 72F for 12 minutes. Yeah, the negatives are quite something, but they make amazing salt prints.

I've tried to make digital negs on my Canon Pixma Pro 1000 and the results have been inconsistent and/or horrible. The Canon pigments just aren't suited to making digital negatives. The only time I ever got a good salt print using this technology was when I made two identical copies of the negative (on Pictorico) and sandwiched them together. It was a total pain, so I went back to making in-camera negatives. I find that much easier, because I'm able to control the technology more easily than the printer + Pictorico tech.

Salted paper prints can be amazing. I wanted to pursue Albumen print making 3 years ago, but gave up on that because I found it very difficult to get the materials to behave well for me, so I went on to salt printing instead, and find the results extremely satisfying, and the process is fairly easy to control.

[Corran]

There was a time years and years ago when no commercialization was permitted on this forum, and that included selling equipment, LF or otherwise. So, rules can change.

A subtle difference, versus a contentious discussion of how the current rules are wrong, it makes sense to instead have an encouraging discussion of why and how the rules might evolve.

I do think there is potential room for discussion here on this.

"We would also consider a digital back with a nominal sensor size of 4"x5" or larger to be LF"

How about a scanning back of 4x5 inches or larger? How about a DSLR on a sliding mount that takes a grid of images and once stitched together has a collective "sensor size" equal to 4x5 or larger? To me, FWIW, I think these should qualify as LF. Oren has already mentioned the LargeSense digital back and that it would as well.

Others have mentioned resolution as a defining characteristic. I note that we have subforums for darkroom equipment, as well as a subforum for digital hardware related to LF photography. These are unique items that people have interest in even if they are somewhat tangential to LF photography. - I could also imagine a subforum for digital capture using LF techniques and their particular idiosyncrasies (movements and technical cameras designed for small format cameras). I don't know what you would call it, but there is certainly some heritage there that pertains to the LF ethos.

[Mark Sawyer]

For all the furor over formats being "banned", I can't see anything that's been banned, just moved to a more appropriate part of the forum.

The high-end cell phone cameras now have pixel counts (108 mp) that technically rival large format, (4x5 is usually considered around 75 mp). That doesn't make cell phones large format. Being large format makes a camera large format.

BTW, "large format" now means a big inkjet printer as much as it means a big camera...

[Ari]

Some digital people who have never shot film (AKA digital natives) call the current 50/100 mp Hasselblads and Fujis "Large Format". Go figure.
I switched to digital last summer, and I have no interest in going back to film. Not because of the cost, but for the trouble.

I can pack a small bag with two bodies and three lenses, shoot color, B&W or infrared, and print as large as I like the same day.
The cameras are as enjoyable to use, to me, as 8x10 ever was. Find the right camera and it can happen.
I've also stumbled into digital view cameras, and adapting a multitude of lenses, so it's a very interesting time to be a working photographer.

But I've found a couple other places where I can post, ask questions and keep up with "Large Format digital" (ha!), and it isn't here.
Nor would I desire to change anything about this forum. It's about film and large cameras, dammit!