Moving up to Large Format photography

FinoBlad

I've been doing medium format for about 6 years and thinking of going up to 4x5, anyone on the boards doing LF?

minnie_mouse

Hi finoblad,

I did L.F in college, I really liked it we used a sinar 5x4 basically it came in a box and you put all the pieces together. the quality was amazing. It takes a while to get used to.We used a polroid bw ( cant think of the exact no) and it gave you an alright bw neg and a bw polroid. You can rent them at dml as far as i know www.dml.ie

DadaKopf

I've been thinking about LF as well. Wouldn't mind a MF but I think I'd love to try out LF just because some of my favourite photographers use it (Depardon, Ros Kavanagh). If anyone has recommendations for a cheap kit, let me know.

It seems like a nice, contemplative way to photograph.

FinoBlad

hi minnie, was thinking of pos/neg polaroids alright, its type 55 i think you mean.

i do agree with dadakoph, theres a little more to it than the auto everythings doing the rounds

bigred

Hats off to you good sir. A true photographer you'll become. There's nothing more pure than Large Format. Get yourself a good meter!

FinoBlad

bigred wrote:

Get yourself a good meter!

My main camera is an old hasselblad so the meter found its way into my bag a long while ago, the old sunny 16 rule got a bit frustrating in the early days

minnie_mouse

Large format is defienly worth trying it. To focus you have put a blac cloth over you're head ( real old school) I used to rent out equipemnt in dml for da weekend and only paid 1days rent. i think renting out a 5x4 and darkslides could be about 80 euro altogether. Thats reminds me loading the darkslides very annoying you get 2 shots in each slide. I suggest if its you're first time use polroid, nothing because nothing more depressing then shelling out for delveloping costs for blanks negs.

fino type 55 rings a bell that was da name gunnes rder it in if u ask them.

FinoBlad

mmmh my creative senses are twitching...

whyulittle

Excuse my ignorance, but what is Large Format photography?

FinoBlad

whyulittle wrote:

what is Large Format photography?

Cameras are divided into groups by the general size of the film that
they accept i.e. 35mm, Medium Format or Large Format

Large format cameras usually use film that comes in sheets that is 4 inches x 5 inches wide [or 5" x 7" 10" x 8" or even larger larger (though the cameras can be modified to take smaller films).]

Modern manufacturers include;
http://www.linhof.de/english/index.html
http://www.sinar.ch/sinar/default.htm

but theres some lovely old cameras like;
http://www.largeformatphotography.info/cameras/pacemaker/

whyulittle

Is there any benefit to it, or is it just trying your hand at old techniques? Just curious.

DadaKopf

Much higher quality, but also a different style of shooting by virtue of the technology. Think of it this way - if a typical 35mm frame on 100ISO film is about 10 megapixels, medium format 6x6 frames are more than twice the size, large format is huge. Your quality is much, much, much, much higher and so is your enlargement potential.

But LF cameras can do all kinds of weird things, too, because they're completely flexible, you can effectively bend the light in order to distort the images, or compensate in difficult shooting conditions to produce a 'normal' looking image.

FinoBlad

whyulittle wrote:

Is there any benefit to it

Yes there is but to be honest its such a huge issue I couldnt type a reply. If you're still curious have a read of http://www.largeformatphotography.info/why.html