20x24 color film?

[Drew Wiley]

ULF is great for alt UV contact printing processes. Take one look at Carleton Watkins' mammoth plate albumen prints and you'll be salivating to do the same. The only difference is that he was sponsored by an early transcontinental railway, had his own darkroom caboose, as well as whole mule trains of assistants when needed. Others used even far bigger cameras. I've seen frontier contact prints 4 X 8 feet wide; their tripod was called a scaffold which took carpenters three days to build in advance of any shot, replete with stairs. The biggest and most boring photo ever made was by turning a blimp hanger in Southern Calif into a giant pinhole camera, and suspending 200 feet of canvas in there, using paint rollers to coat that with liquid light, and then taking an exposure of the adjacent vacant parking lot with some burb buildings beyond.

I'm another person who has participated in Keith Canham's ordering pools, but only with respect to 8X10 film. Anything like 5X7 or 11X14 is likely to take quite a bit longer to accumulate the necessary minimum order from Kodak. Ilford cuts special sizes of black and white film once a year based on advance orders. But rather than a painting, Jimmy Carter had his official Presidential portrait done via a 20X24 Polaroid taken by AA. It would be nice if that kind of option still existed.

[Mark Sampson]

I think time has proven 8x10 to be the "sweet spot" for image quality, especially when balanced against the cost and effort of the ULF formats.
There is a recent thread here about "downsizing" from 8x10... looking through that will tell you where people think that "sweet spot" is.
And Tracy Storer, who is a member here, ran the Polaroid 20x24 studio for many years. i'd ask him about working that big.

[Drew Wiley]

If I were young and ambitious again, I'd make my own 16X20 camera and get into UV printing. But I cut my teeth on color printing, trend toward long focus lenses (a bellows nightmare where ULF is involved), and like the detail enhancement ability of large prints. 8X10 is my sweet spot, though that might not be the case if the price of color film keeps climbing, and I'm still able to handle 8x10 gear when my freezer stash of color film finally runs out, maybe when I'm 80. I've always liked the longer rectangle of 5X7 format; but 5x7 color film has always been dicey to acquire; and registration of 8x10 film (often necessary in color film masking, and a nice option for b&w printing control too) is more precise, though I have punch and register gear for both. And if I want a longer rectangle using 8X10 film, I merely need to crop the image somewhat when enlarging. I'm not going to buy another camera at my age, especially since I have three 8X10 enlargers plus my 5X7 one. More an more, I'm shooting 6X9 RF's anyway, which give me that nice 2:3 proportion in a nice portable package as I grow older. But gosh, 8X10's provide wonderful enlargements.

[FrancisF]

There is much good 20 x24 analog color photography going on - without film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2XBu0WjeK4

[Tin Can]

Yes sir

I see he has gone big, RA4 20X24 process in holder

https://youtu.be/l2XBu0WjeK4

[RETRO MoGraph]

Thanks for all the input folks!

[Joseph Kashi]

I took a look at the FB images of the film box labels and the expiration date appears to be 05/24.

[RETRO MoGraph]

There is much good 20 x24 analog color photography going on - without film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2XBu0WjeK4

I'll be honest: from a fun, hipsterish point of view, i thought it was cool, but the results........... meh ......... perhaps also because they failed to put anything interesting in front of the camera.

20x24 Polaroids on the other hand, some of those are amazing!

[Drew Wiley]

Back in Cibachrome days a few people shot it in camera for a direct-positive color print. Lots of added filtration needed.