Print size alone is not the only reason to shoot large format. And I'm not sure it's enough of a reason to carry many folks past the hurdles.
For one thing, making that big print requires some fairly significant provendar. When I ran my own darkroom, the biggest print I could make there was 16x20, and even that was an order of magnitude more troublesome than 11x14, which was my standard size print.
And if you are scanning and making prints digitally, 16x20 is a useful working limit. The Epson 3880 is fairly inexpensive, and much less expensive than printers with a 24" bed or larger. And an Epson flatbed scanner, which most folks have a hope of affording for home use, is good for about a 4x enlargement, or 16x20 from 4x5 film.
Pushing past those boundaries requires a very big step in investment.
And it's true that modern digital cameras, when used with absolutely impeccable technique and lenses in the four-figure price range, can make really excellent 16x24 prints.
If you already have a larger printing capability and your are looking to take advantage of it with large-format film, then that's another thing. But that's not usually the starting point for people whose first post sounds like yours.
But I'm not at all discouraging you from giving it a try. Just don't justify it on print size. Yes, a 4x enlargement from film, even scanned in a consumer flatbed, will always have a nicer look, for a lot of reasons, than a 17x enlargement from a 24x36 digital sensor, even if it isn't any sharper. The camera itself will, for remarkably little money, provide you with image-control possibilities not possible with small cameras unless you invest in seriously expensive tilt-shift lenses, and even those are a compromise on image-management breadth. There's just nothing like the ability provided by a really flexible view camera. But it's a low-production working model. It makes sense when you only make a relatively small number of photos, but really invest a lot of consideration into each one. For me, a good day of photography with the 4x5 camera is four or five exposures, and I'll expect three of them to make me happy. With my digital camera, I might make 50 or 100 exposures in that same sort of a day, and still expect three of them to make me happy. I might burn a whole roll of film in my Pentax 6x7, and still get three. That's sort of how it ends up with me.
I would suggest that light weight is a commonly expressed requirement, but one not usually based on the experience of actually using a large-format camera. Yes, there are many who backpack with their cameras. But there are many more who put their big cameras in a baby jogger and still manage to make it pretty far afield. Consider this: A well-made budget brand field camera will cost three times (on the used market) what a high-end monorail view camera costs. And people will ooh and ahh over the pretty wood. My view camera looks more like a machine than a piece of furniture, but it is a joy to use, even if the box that holds it is too bulky for wearing on my back.
But even more important is what makes a reasonable first investment on a format that imposes a lot of demands on the photographer, without the photographer really knowing whether he's up for those demands. Even Ansel Adams made many of his later photos using a Hasselblad. You could spend thousands on a large-format setup and have the best of everything, and still find that the format defeats you.
Forget 5x7, despite the enthusiasm of those who are adherents to that format. 4x5 and 8x10 each present many more options for film and supplies. (I thought once that I might be interested in 6x17, and I have explored 6x12. But seeing in that panoramic format requires special insight, I have found. I don't usually have it, and I just feel more comfortable with 4x5 most of the time.) 4x5 is preferred if color is your thing--8x10 color is four times as expensive. The cameras are more expensive, the lenses are more expensive and there are fewer options, and the lack of depth of field can be a daunting challenge. In return for living up to those challenges, one gets an acre of ground glass for focusing and composing, and that's quite an experience to use. But start with 4x5. As they say in amateur telescope circles, if you want to grind a 12" mirror, grind a 6" mirror first. What you learn from the smaller project will save you more time and effort than it costs when attempting the larger project.
Taking all these things into consideration, my usual recommendation is to start with a decent but inexpensive monorail view camera, put a couple of decent lenses on it, and then go make photos. See if the process appeals to you in practice rather than just in theory. See if you are happy with the results. If not, sell it and no longer wonder if you are missing something. If it grabs you, then you'll have real experience on which to make your next buying decisions.
Don't forget the cost of the accoutrements. The tripod, for example, can't be the lightweight off-brand on sale at the local camera store. It really needs to be beefy for 4x5, and positively massive for 8x10. You'll spend as much on a good tripod as what a high-end used monorail camera costs these days. You'll also need a meter, though you can use a digital camera for a while. And you'll need to fit lenses to lens boards (really easy if you have any handiness at all). Cable releases, case, focusing cloth, loupe, film holders--these things add up even if you start with makeshift stuff. Then there's whatever you need to realize prints.
For those of us who worked up from crappy old cameras, folks just starting now have a real advantage in being able to start with a camera like a Sinar F for just a few hundred dollars. An F2 is now my main camera, and in real dollars it's the cheapest view camera I've ever bought. It's also the best by far--such is the nature of the used market these days. So, one starting out with a modest expenditure as a test of interest is not constrained to buy low-end stuff, unless you want pretty wood and polished brass.
If you want to use short lenses, then a monorail camera like the Sinar will serve you best. With the correct bag bellows, I can focus a 47mm lens on my Sinar using a flat lens board. That's too short for most folks, but 65mm lenses are a piece of cake. 65 is a challenge for many folding cameras, though. (There are folding-camera options that do have that flexibility, such as a Linhof Technika, but those options are expensive.)
One more thing about 4x5's advantages over 8x10: If you really do end up using short lenses, recognize that really short lenses for 8x10 are rare and expensive. Short lenses need a wide angle (two separate concepts for large-format photographers) to provide enough coverage for at least some movements, and wide-angle designs (such as the Super Angulon) have mostly been made for 4x5 applications. Thus, one can get a used 65mm or 90mm f/5.6 Super Angulon for several hundred dollars--these are respectively somewhat less than half and a little over half the diagonal of the 4x5 film. In focal lengths of similar relationship to the format diagonal for 8x10, 210mm Super Angulons are extremely rare, and 165mm Super Angulons are still uncommon and quite expensive. And even these are not really as short with respect to the format. Lenses in those focal lengths that are more common and affordable won't have the same coverage.
Rick "noting that much of the discussion in the home-page articles is from a different film-availability perspective" Denney
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Originally Posted by welly
) 4x5 ($.0795). To be fair, the results for HP5+, were graduated more expectedly, with the 8x10 as the lowest. Go figure.
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