maybe it is simpler. maybe, we feel like we have struck the motherlode. we have stumbled upon and tripped the light fantastic, and in our sense of wanting to share it with the world, we extend our tripods, set our sights, and puff out our chests a bit too much. I think it is that we are so enchanted with the process .. it is so wonderful to behold, and that we want to share it with everyone.
Couldnt resist joining the fun. A small (large?) point everyone missed can't be allowed to rest: Serious MF and 35mm can be every bit as heavy or heavier than LF. A Nikon F5, no lenses weigh in at 1.3 Kg. Add to that an 80-200 Zoom and now you have a 2.6 Kg load. To cover the shorter focal lengths and macro, the weight goes up and up. By the time you have three lenses you are not far from the weight of a field camera and a set of lenses. In MF, same story, only worse. This downed on me when I weighed my MF and LF gear. MF = 30 lbs. vs. 22 for LF. The latest 350mm tele for the Contax 645 is a 'feather' at 3.8 Kg. (8.36 lb) pounds; any volunteer porters? (My Master Technika only weighs 6.1) Yes, Focal length range, (Fx/F Standard lens) which potentially is greater in 35 and MF accounts for much of the weight problem there. It may be said that by limiting the lenses in 35 and MF to the same range, 35 and MF come out lighter than LF. True but wrong: the very justification of 35mm and MF for the serious landscape and nature photographer is indeed this wider Fx/F range. This wider range is great for some subjects (wildlife, tele-scapes)) but for everything else it comes at the price of quality. Finally, in 35 and MF the lenses consist of a little glass and a lot of metal that takes the place of the bellows in LF. These "bellows" in 35mm and MF are expensive and heavy. In conclusion, any one wishing to brag of heroic/masochistic deeds can do so in any format. Julio
No, it isn't the effort, it's the prints. But you'd have a hard time convincing most people that large format photography is not as hard as it looks. I tried recently in Yosemite. I was set up taking a photo of shadows on a boulder near the base of Yosemite Falls when I heard four people walk up behind me and a man say "That's a serious camera."
They hung around while I shot, and I offered to let them look at the ground glass. The guy with the Nikon F100 around his neck took me up on it, and came out from under my jacket (substitute dark cloth) mightily impressed with my photographic skills. I started to give him a quick rundown on just how simple 4x5 cameras are, but his eyes began glazing over before I had a chance to show him my spot meter.
He wandered off muttering something to the effect of "I'll never be that good."
I should have run up to him and said "You don't know if I'm any good because you've never seen any of my prints."
The prints are what we're doing this for, and they're the reason we use large format. And with a bit of practice it really isn't all that difficult. I find follow focusing a swimmer coming at me far more difficult. Ever try to follow focus with your loupe on a ground glass? I usually just prefocus and wait for the action to come into the frame. Gotta get me one of them fancy autofocus cameras for sports.
Now that I start thinking about it, 35mm photography is much more difficult than 4x5. With a 4x5 we can laze around and wait until everything is perfect. If it an't, we just pack it up and go have a couple snorts of sungle malt. Seems that every time I shoot 35mm I'm expected to come back with good art no matter the conditions.
And on the same note. Was tucked under the darkcloth, trying to photograph the freezing waters of Lake Michigan in Feb. Came out for a breath of air. Saw a lady in a car taking my picture. Felt mildly curious and I looked around and besides me was another soul with a point and shoot, also taking a picture. The incongruity between my setup on a tripod, with loupe and spotmeter around myneck and this unencumbered soul with just the camera around his neck was too funny. More to the point, I think the lady had the nicest shot of the day. DJ
For me, the difference between my commercial/documentary work (on 35mm/6x7) and my personal work on 10x8, is two-fold.
Firstly, it is an 'escape' from the pressures of working at speed, covering all angles, meeting deadlines. It is a way of working which allows me to draw breath, relax and really look at things.
The 'effort' of carrying the equipment is part of the ritual too - and yes, in a strange and sometimes painful way, part of the pleasure. Apart from anything else, it keeps you fit!
Secondly, and of course more importantly, the final print quality is the main reason why we invest this effort. Because of the slow and, dare I say, 'contemplative' nature of the work, the attitude of the photographer to the subject matter can afford to be more subtle, or understated than in other formats.
The quality of the large-format print is such that delicate nuances and subtleties of meaning emerge from the detail. With the large-format image one can speak more quietly but with a depth and richness of tone not acheivable in other formats.
This is not to deny the other formats their own unique abil
There is the objective quality of the image (what Strand meant by "a picture" I guess), and then there is a personal quality, what it means to the photographer. I think the effort which has gone into making the image enhances greatly the second aspect, although it is often not relevant to the first one. But since most of us photograph for our enjoyment, the second aspect is very important. There are situations when LF does enhance the objective quality of the image (for instance a large print of Misrach's sky series has a beauty which is totally absent from smaller reproductions). However, the circumstances which let the image speak for itself are pretty rare. After all, how many prints have you seen in person, rather than reproduced in a book or on a web page ? Maybe the "LF speak" is meant to make up for this deficiency. I don't need to tell people who view my prints (a modest 24x30 standard size) that they were LF because they appreciate the detail, but for someone who seems the work elsewhere, I'd like them to know it as LF.
A second thought is that this doesn't have anything to do with LF. All photographers like to talk about the effort involved into making the image. There are no credentials required, no barriers to entry in photography. Everybody could have made the same image by chance. But this wasn't chance in my case, since it took me so much effort.
To answer Micah's original question, in my own case "effort" is certainly not what makes LF photography attractive although use of a big camera does provide some satisfaction to an exponent of an old fashioned earn-your-own-way, DIY work ethic. After 30 years of fairly serious 35mm, with some b/w processing and enlarging, the exciting cause of my own turn to LF was simply a desire to produce a better 5x7 or 8x10 b/w print. Some study suggested 4x5 as an attractive format, but my initial plans ran aground on the realization that I would need a new enlarger and lens that might equal or exceed the cost of the camera itself. But a way out of this dilemma opened up when I read in Charis Wilson's biography of Edward Weston that at the time of their meeting in 1934 all of EW's 8x10's for sale in his studio in Carmel were contact prints (Through Another Lens, pp. 5-6). That was good enough for me. I upgraded the camera and decided to do contact prints in the style of this great artist.
But there is a more personal, autobiographical dimension to my decision to take up this (as it must seem to many "outsiders") arcane, even obsolescent artistic endeavor. It is this dimension that to my surprise I have found absent in this and related discussions in this forum, since most shooters stick to the technical merits of LF or comment on more philosophical issues but hardly ever explain what got them into LF in the first place. In my own case, my father was a professional studio photographer and besides his routine commercial shooting of portraits of children in a trailer back in LA, he also did some nice darkroom work of his own. A 5x7 and tripod, film holders, and evening loading of sheet film in a closet are among the distant memories that finally after nearly 50 years prompted me to try to figure out what he was doing. An additional motivation was the prospect of returning at least in our minds, after many years in a foreign country and now in Pennsylvania, to the West Coast of our birth and early years--our homes, a university community, and the landscape. Further reading revealed that among the more immediate founders of American LF photography were Adams, the Westons, Cunningham and others whose biographies and subjects so closely coincided with our own experiences, even if a generation or so ahead of our schedule. But it could have been Arizona or New Mexico, or Pennsylvania, or New York City, or anywhere else that our art form has been practiced.
But I agree that much of the reason for going to such trouble, expense, and, yes, effort in pursuit of our craft has to do with its technical features. For me it's all hand work, and there is great satisfaction in following the entire process from previsualization to framed print. Photography is creative in contrast to many merely passive hobbies or pastimes; it produces a tangible result that you can display in home or office or make a gift of. Out of necessity where large or heavy gear is involved, LF makes for companionship; and during the short time we have been taking the rig out we have enjoyed the frequent, sometimes well informed and usually well- meaning questions posed by strangers--an excellent opportunity, I might add, to spread the gospel of LF photography.
So, my own reasons for doing LF photography are largely a function of my own space-and-time circumstances, but above and beyond the personal element, we have found shooting to be a satisfying and rewarding activity. Process is a lot of it, but frankly I'd find something else to do if I couldn't have produced a decent print after a full year of peparation. Results do count, but at the same time our goals our modest: a few well-crafted prints to hang of the wall that give us--not critics, or a potential buyers, or web-browsers-- some personal satisfaction even if our whole Weltanschauung is hopelessly dated. Because I don't have to shoot LF for a living, I can enjoy the luxury of seeing photography as a hobby. Like oil painting, pottery-making, or playing the oboe or banjo, LF doesn't make a whole lot of sense in a technological world, but the big camera still gets respect and it's not so eccentric as to isolate the photographer from other human beings. All the best, Nick.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks