Advantages of 35mm over MF/LF

[TheFlyingCamera]

Well, maybe at the cash register I'd be ok with someone mistaking my work for a Gursky or a Wall or a Crewdson, just so long as they didn't realize their error until the return privilege expired.

 

[PentaxBronica]

one problem is that people are too busy
trying to copy other people's style instead of
using a camera, any camera, and finding their own style.

i certainly couldn't care less about someone else's tripod holes
or techniques or gear to make images " just like them "
it isn't the equipment that makes the images, its the thing under the hood.

and forums and online communities don't help much.

its kind of laughable ...

Much the same reaction as I have when someone says they did a photography course at school. They often come out with some very odd ideas about exposure settings and with a style which is pretty much the same as the teacher's.

I'd like to think that I could get a reasonable image from a field camera, but it definitely wouldn't suit my style. As an example, I was in one of my favoured locations yesterday. It involves a roughly half mile walk from the car to a dam with a couple of hydroelectric power plants at the base (the whole lot built in the 1890s-1900s so the architecture is worth a good long look, you notice more details every time you go). Ok with a Bronica ETRSi and 50mm lens on the shoulder strap and a tripod over my other shoulder, but there's no way you could have set the field camera up in the middle of the stone bridge just below the dam to get a shot of the looming stone monster, or moved in seconds when someone else wanted to cross it!

 

[cliveh]

The following is a post by Mark from the thread - Advantages of MF over 35mm -

A medium camera will communicate to the opposite sex a level of confidence in your abilities that could never be gotten with a 35mm, no matter how long and wide the lens is. So if you are looking to pick up chicks or land a guy the MF camera will do better than a 35mm.

LF is the REAL chick magnet.

I think not.

 

[baachitraka]

why not?

 

[cliveh]

why not?

I think from the 60's onwards the statistics of use re 35mm/MF in fashion photography will show this not to be the case.

 

[Dave in Kansas]

I'm not so sure about that. I was in Colorado in about 1985 and had my new 4 x 5 field camera set up in a ghost town. A young guy and his attractive girlfriend rode by on their mountain bikes and we talked a bit. They couldn't resist looking at and feeling my camera. I sometimes think if the guy had not been there she may have followed me home.

Dave

 

[cliveh]

I'm not so sure about that. I was in Colorado in about 1985 and had my new 4 x 5 field camera set up in a ghost town. A young guy and his attractive girlfriend rode by on their mountain bikes and we talked a bit. They couldn't resist looking at and feeling my camera. I sometimes think if the guy had not been there she may have followed me home.

Dave

You or your camera?

 

[Dave in Kansas]

They were fondling my camera.

 

[cliveh]

They were fondling my camera.

Then I think you had a lucky escape.

 

[Diapositivo]

The following is a post by Mark from the thread - Advantages of MF over 35mm -

A medium camera will communicate to the opposite sex a level of confidence in your abilities that could never be gotten with a 35mm, no matter how long and wide the lens is. So if you are looking to pick up chicks or land a guy the MF camera will do better than a 35mm.

LF is the REAL chick magnet.

I think not.

I think probably Mark was making a pun saying "Bigger is better"... no matter how long and wide the lens is... small format... large format... that stuff.
Maybe I'm pervy...

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

The following is a post by Mark from the thread - Advantages of MF over 35mm -

A medium camera will communicate to the opposite sex a level of confidence in your abilities that could never be gotten with a 35mm, no matter how long and wide the lens is. So if you are looking to pick up chicks or land a guy the MF camera will do better than a 35mm.
[...]

Then clearly Pentaximus the 6x7 is not working. I believe big is better, but I can't get any bigger without breaking my back...somebody recently said here on APUG to me, "get an 8x10 next Gary, you know you want one..." The thought is haunting me...

 

[36cm2]

The biggest advantage I find in 35mm over MF or LF is that when I take a bad photograph (~95% of the time), I don't feel as bad about wasting film and money. The biggest disadvantage I find in 35mm is that when I take an excellent photograph (~2% of the time), I ALWAYS wish I had taken it in a larger format while I'm printing it. The remaining 3% of my photographs are just ok. And to me, that's exactly what 35mm is -- just ok.

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

One should not lose sight of one fundamental truth in the small format vs medium-large format debate: that the bigger formats (medium and large) present as the finished product a very considerable leap in resolution, flexibility of print size and a better tonal spread over the compressed frame of 35mm. This is one of the reasons why 35mm is dumped so early on by professionals who then move on to medium format (but I actually think they've foresaken some valuable skills by leapfrogging over 35mm) and, for those in specialties, large format. All this is not to say that 35mm cannot WOW a viewer, but a lot is resting on the shoulders of the photographer by way of skill and fitting the subject to the frame, combing visual aesthetics, compositional metrics and precise exposure — not that hard to achieve with solid practice. Medium and large format is more demanding to use working toward the finished product because such cameras lack automation that has been carried for a long time in 35mm — ever seen a Linhof with a motor drive or Program mode? Where 35mm wins outright is in portability, readiness, flexibility, speed and a huge variety of lenses as opposed to mostly primes for MF and just primes for LF and ULF. But despite all the gloss and clammer to handle automation, the best photographs do not need any of it — like the Pentax K1000, of which a friend created beautiful works many years ago that are still on display in his home even though he is no longer amongst us. So one format of camera will not be suitable for all conditions and requirements, all things properly considered. The more formats you have at your disposal, the better you are to tackle a great many more tasks that may not be suitable if your only format is 35mm.

 

[Diapositivo]

Automatisms only are needed in circumstances when one has not the time to think about exposure and focus. Those situations never happen in LF or ULF because the time it takes to set up the frame and the movements is long and, in general, the concept of "focus" with LF is on an entirely different plane (pardon the mediocre pun) and cannot be made automatic. Exposure is a matter of seconds.

If there ever had been a need for an autoexposure LF camera it would certainly exist.

If one has those few seconds at his disposal necessary to establish focus and exposure, manual setting is much less prone to mistakes or unintended results than any automatism.

 

[markbarendt]

Automatisms only are needed in circumstances when one has not the time to think about exposure and focus. Those situations never happen in LF or ULF because the time it takes to set up the frame and the movements is long and, in general, the concept of "focus" with LF is on an entirely different plane (pardon the mediocre pun) and cannot be made automatic. Exposure is a matter of seconds.

If there ever had been a need for an autoexposure LF camera it would certainly exist.

If one has those few seconds at his disposal necessary to establish focus and exposure, manual setting is much less prone to mistakes or unintended results than any automatism.

I disagree Fabrizio.

Automated functions can and are used very accurately and very reliably. What automation cannot fix is sloppy use, that is a completely different issue.

Automation can also improve exposure placement of the subject and background. Fill flash is a prime example. The reason I own an F5 and F100 is for TTL matrix balanced fill flash, something my FM2 simply can't do.

Auto focus helps make up for my old eyes vastly improving focus.

And while LF is not near as fast as 35mm and can include a long contemplative setup, that is far from required.

Many LF cameras include stops that can be set for certain focus distances, infinity or zone focusing and a step or two handles many situations very quickly.

Yes many of the f64 type crowd do end up with long shutter speeds but it isn't required. I regularly shoot LF as fast as the shutter will allow, like 1/400.

LF press cameras regularly have rangefinders, use Grafmatic holders, and even focal plane shutters, these automations make for very quick shooting.

4x5 cameras were the mainstay of the news industry for years, heard of Weegee?

One of the most famous photos ever was done in an incredible hurry on an 8x10 camera IIRC, Ansel Adams Moonrise.

 

[Diapositivo]

I certainly agree about the usefulness of TTL-flash for macrophotography "in the field" and usefulness of autofocus for people having sight defects.

As useful as it is in the field, also TTL flash tends to "revert to grey" and in a studio situation a known setup or incident light metering certainly works better than automatism. Automatism is intrinsically "second-choice" for its inescapable limits such as the light meter not knowing which is the reflectivity of the subject, or the background being markedly darker or brighter than the subject.

This paves the way for mistakes which are avoided with manual metering. The only "price" to pay is the time it takes, which is not much, but sometimes is simply not available. Hence my general idea: when you have time, manual metering is always more reliable. Automatism works well when there is no time for manual metering.

Yes many, many years ago 4x5, and later MF, were used for news (I am thinking about the scene in La dolce vita when Ms Steiner understands something awful happened in seeing the paparazzi taking her picture in the road, and they all had either LF or MF cameras) and even before LF camera were used for news as well but those times are since long past.

When working with B&W negative there is ample room for exposure mistakes (avoiding underexposure) and I suppose paparazzi of the time greatly exploited the film quality. They really did not need accurate exposure for that kind of work.

Focusing was not a problem, the paparazzi would only take pictures at a certain "fixed" distance (probably around 2 meters). I think they did not focus at all for paparazzi-style work. When they used flash, they used bulb flashes which gave them a huge amount of light (again: close aperture, zone focusing).

The large format advantage for news I imagine was that the photographer could use very sensitive film (for the time) therefore closing the aperture enough so as to be able to prefocus by sight with acceptable results.

It's interesting that war photographers used mainly 135 or maybe Mf at the end of the fifties while news photographers used LF and some of them MF, but probably none of them used 135.

 

[markbarendt]

Actually the TTL flash on the F100 & F5 work with manual camera settings as well as auto.

It is not the automation that adds errors, it is sloppy or un-educated use that is the issue.

 

[Diapositivo]

Actually the TTL flash on the F100 & F5 work with manual camera settings as well as auto.

I don't understand what you mean. I mean if flash exposure is set by the camera or flash is "auto". If it is set by the photographer (setting flash power, flash distance, aperture) is "manual". Even if the camera is on M setting, the TTL-flash exposure is ("automatically") determined by the innards of the camera, and it falls prey of the usual exposure traps: background very different from foreground, subject very different from middle grey.

An interesting auto-flash exposure certain modern cameras have is flash metering subject to AF distance. That is really brilliant or, should I say, bright . Instead of relying on TTL metering, the camera sets flash duration based on AF measured distance, relying on the fact that the flash lightens the main subject and that the main subject is in focus (two very realistic assumptions). This way the flash duration will be proper even if the subject is not in the centre of the frame and even if it is quite black or white.

It's the same logic which was behind the flash exposure of cameras like the Canon Canonet with dedicated flash (better said: with a flash with guide number equal to the dedicated flash). The camera can be set in a way so that the focusing (precisely done through the rangefinder) also determines the aperture.

I am not really "against" automatisms. It's that their usefulness are limited to particular situations IMO.

 

[markbarendt]

The smart TTL I'm describing on the F100 & F5 use the focus info and focus point (left, right, center, up, down) to adjust the flash. The flash compensation can also be set to address say a white dress or black tux.

My point is that the issue isn't the tool.

 

[Yashinoff]

Noticeable grain if you want it.

 

[TareqPhoto]

Can someone summarize the advantages of 35mm over MF/LF out of 12/13 pages in one post please?

 

[markbarendt]

Can someone summarize the advantages of 35mm over MF/LF out of 12/13 pages in one post please?

You are welcome to try.

 

[Stephanie Brim]

Can someone summarize the advantages of 35mm over MF/LF out of 12/13 pages in one post please?

Advantages for both MF and LF

* Larger negative means less magnification needed for larger prints.
* Less visible grain.
* Interesting choice of image formats (6x4.5, 6x6, 6x7, 6x9, 6x12, 6x17, 4x5, 5x7, etc)

For LF:

* LOTS of perspective control via camera movments
* Contact prints are large enough to hang if you shoot 5x7 and up

Disadvantages:

* Equipment is heavier in most cases
* Max 16 shots per roll of film
* Lenses are slower and there are less options for available light shooting

For mainly LF

* Enlarging 5x7 and over is an expensive proposition
* Film cost is much more
* Messing with film holders means that you work at a much slower pace for the most part.
* Finding decent daylight developing solutions for 4x5 and up that don't require huge sums of money take a certain knowledge of rocket science and perhaps wizardry (kind kidding here...and kind of not)

I'm sure others will think of things, but this sums up for me. I chose to make the disadvantages into advantages for the most part.

 

[Pioneer]

Think about all the arguments that people have been making in favor of d.....l for the last few years and that about sums it up.

 

[litody]

Just use the the right tool for the job. What was the question again?