Is the L/F for the more Mature

Evening all. Please no a affence at the title, i was wondering if it was the more mature of us. I say that because i look at it this way, years of skill in the photo world. Come to expect better results, no more of what they are looking for.

I think we all can see where this is heading.

Graham

I don't know, I have been involved with LF since I was 27, 30 years ago.
LF for me stands for deliberate photography, well thought and more expensive than MF.
Still love it dearly, 35mm has always been a hobby format to me.

Peter

I'm not so sure. I've seen a few youngsters out playing with their view cameras. Admittedly, they are few and far between. But then, LF photographers aren't exactly a common sight. Any time I set up my 4x5, it attracts a lot of (sometimes unwelcome) attention. Anyway, if you want to divorce "maturity" from age, then yes I think so. It takes a certain amount of maturity to appreciate the higher quality that LF can provide, and to NOT be seduced by the instant gratification of that newfangled electronic stuff.

Oh, but I do long for those younger days when I could have horsed this beast about without back bracing belt and medications. When I was in college some 45 years ago my student job was building a teaching slide library for the Architectural History Department at Johns Hopkins. I read International Phototechnics and dreamed that some day I might own a view camera. Now I am there, but those libraries are mostly built with smaller digital cameras and Photoshop. I must be more mature. I am sure I would have been embarrassed then by using a baby jogger to shuttle this thing about. What really matters is the joy this work brings to the artist and viewer at any age.

John Powers

I do not have a L/F but my wife say's it is time. But as you John, meds, for my Arthur and my hands and chest do play a large part of what i can do when i can.
I put a post on last night about up grade to a 6x7. Annemarie say's go for the 5x4, i can all ways carry it when the need is called for. Not really fair that, with all her gear as well, might be tonight i will order the Wista, i did think about the M7II but as above.
Would you call a 5x4 in the big stuff or just scrapping the side.
Could i ask do any one here use their L/F for prints for sale.

Graham

Graham.b said:

...i look at it this way, years of skill in the photo world. Come to expect better results, no more of what they are looking for.

I think we all can see where this is heading.

Graham

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I don't know...I shoot 4x5 mainly because it is fun and makes me think about what I am doing (as opposed to just mindlessly shot gunning as I tend to do with a 35mm SLR) and also because it is easier for me, with my feable skills, to coax a decent looking print from the big negs than from one of those tiny little 35mm negs.

I really wish I had bought a Crown Graphic all those years ago when I bought my first camera - a 35mm SLR.

So, no. I don't think that large format is only for the old..er, mature and skilled. I'm teaching my kids to shoot 4x5 with the Crown...they're 8 and 13...

jp80874 said:

Oh, but I do long for those younger days when I could have horsed this beast about without back bracing belt and medications. When I was in college some 45 years ago my student job was building a teaching slide library for the Architectural History Department at Johns Hopkins. I read International Phototechnics and dreamed that some day I might own a view camera. Now I am there, but those libraries are mostly built with smaller digital cameras and Photoshop. I must be more mature. I am sure I would have been embarrassed then by using a baby jogger to shuttle this thing about. What really matters is the joy this work brings to the artist and viewer at any age.

John Powers

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Oh, John... If I was only as nimble as you, "horsing" your gear around O'Neal Lake.

Cheers,

BradS said:

I really wish I had bought a Crown Graphic all those years ago when I bought my first camera - a 35mm SLR.

So, no. I don't think that large format is only for the old..er, mature and skilled. I'm teaching my kids to shoot 4x5 with the Crown...they're 8 and 13...

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Oh how many time's i have looked at that model, if we had everthing we looked at

for the mature of attitude and mind.

ann said:

for the mature of attitude and mind.

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So very well put, never tell them your age, but how young you feel.

Graham

I started with 4x5 when I was about 23.

I've been shooting LF since 1981, when I was 21 and still in college. I think you mature as a photographer faster with LF. It slows you down and makes you think about what you are doing and photographing.

I'd guess that LF is going to become harder and harder for me. Right now, GG focusing is easy, even pleasurable. Lugging gear is not exactly pleasurable but it's still relatively easy. Paying for film is also okay for now. But looking 10-20 years down the road.... yep I'll probably be doing AF small format. I hope that I will learn to enjoy high shutters peed shots of chickadees by then.

Of course it is well known that Brett Weston scaled down somewhat, later in life.

Now, in terms of thinking, well then yes LF is best suited to "mature" thinking. LF requires a meticulous, thoughtful approach, and it requires experience and confidence to previsualize a shot and walk away satisfied with a small number of takes. LF severely punishes ... physically, emotionally, and financially... anyone who can't see the worth of the photo before actually commiting it to film.

I too started shooting large format at the age of 23. I don't think it's for the more mature photographer, I just think it's for the photographer who understands its advantages and limitations and decides it would be right for them. Granted I don't shoot large format all the time, hardly much actually, as I'm sure alot of others here as well. If you were to shoot large format 100% of the time, that might take a patient and sometimes physically strong person, but not necessarily a mature person photographically.

ann said:

for the mature of attitude and mind.

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That would explain why I have yet to succumb ...

@ Graham: why don't you look at a Chamonix or Shen Hao ?
Those 4x5's are light jet get you the feel of 4x5 and the quality !
With those camera's you need a lighter tripod and as you know all those little extra weights add up.

Go for it !

Peter

It is "for" anyone who decides to use it, but I do think that you will benefit the most from it if you approach it differently than 35mm, and use it for the situations where it will help you the most; not try to force it to do the job of tools that are better suited to certain purposes. I think that lots of compositional and technical experience helps, as does quite a degree of restraint, patience, and forethought, but not necessarily "maturity". On the other hand, shooting large format is perhaps the best way to learn these things. Quite a paradox.

One way I think of it is in terms of emulsion cost and lab costs. For the average print, I want to spend no more than what I consider a reasonable amount of money. For me, when using 4x5 or smaller, if I can get one print that is just how I want it out of every 80 sq. in. of emulsion, I am happy. I often get more. Sometimes I get nothing! (With 5x7 and 8x10 especially, as you only have two shots with 5x7 and one shot with 8x10, I cut myself a little slack!) My general goal is to spend no more than $25 per good print, however. Sometimes I go over, and sometimes I go under. It averages out. For instance, a roll of HP5 is four bucks, so on the road from camera to print, I have $21 to play with to try and get that print. If I can't do it, I probably screwed something up. You don't need to play these games, but I find it is a good self check and self-disciplinary practice. So, when I shoot 4x5 HP5, at one dollar per sheet, I shoot with the mindset that for any given shoot, I am going to shoot four shots for every nine that I would shoot on 35mm; one quarter as many shots. I may even try to shoot half as much as this (1/8 the number of 35mm shots) if I will be lab processing; to save money.

I think it would be great if most school programs still focused on large format for at least the first year. It is the way Art Center still does it, but that is a design, technical, and commercial school, not an art school. Large format begins after the first term, in which you take basic photography using 35mm transparency film, and project to share your work. Most work for the next several terms is assigned primarily on large format. They do this not to force people down a large format path for life, but to force students to slow down, pay attention to detail, be deliberate, and to learn a lot about light, composition, depth of field, and how camera positioning and lens selection affect pictures...not to mention frugality and efficiency, given the cost and time consumption of large format.

Brooks makes large format a mandatory basic class, but I don't think they expect you to continue with it as much as does Art Center.

As for another local design school with a photo program, I am not sure what OTIS does.

I believe most schools that are design/commercial oriented rather than art oriented still force students to use large format for *at least* one term...but perhaps not for very much longer, now that a younger generation of instructors raised in the digital age is returning to teach. In my experience, these younger instructors are all extremely eager to do away with analog printing in schools; especially in color. In my experience, they seem to have a very cold and results-oriented approach to photography (achieve your end in any way possible; personal work ethics be damned, and process be damned), and a disgraceful lack of technical knowledge (for college instructors, at any rate).

2F/2F, what a script and how do you reply to this. When i was young, i was told life is of numbers and i have lived to it very closely. With your on the road with $25 is a thought to be reckoned with. I do try and go with this a shot must count, for the light, time place, if i can go home with a couple of rolls of 120 and get 3-4 prints of them after i have proccesed them and under the lamp, that is a good result.

I never if it much thought when it comes to money. A strange thing that when we are told to put penny's back for the rainy day. 7 years ago i was that person, then at 42 i had a heart attack, and then the onset of Arthur a long most parts of the body, getting the bank roll to level at the end of the week became a second thought, and living for the next day became a little more important to me. To try and get all those little things that you thought you had plenty of time for, well maybe time which is the most important item we do not own.

Your chatch on schools, well if only they were like that in this country, i wanted to do photography (fashion) and landscape, i was told we do not know of or where you could start. Well that put a wall in front of me right away. I wonder how many other children of the classes of 76 left wondering what they were going to do after their dream of after school was let down by un helpfull employment adviser or careers officers.

Graham

Graham.b said:

I do not have a L/F but my wife say's it is time. But as you John, meds, for my Arthur and my hands and chest do play a large part of what i can do when i can.
I put a post on last night about up grade to a 6x7. Annemarie say's go for the 5x4, i can all ways carry it when the need is called for. Not really fair that, with all her gear as well, might be tonight i will order the Wista, i did think about the M7II but as above.
Would you call a 5x4 in the big stuff or just scrapping the side.
Could i ask do any one here use their L/F for prints for sale.

Graham

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Graham,

Only after I had gone through the learning process with each did I learn that the Mamiya RZ67 I had, then the Linhof Technikardan 45 and finally the Phillips 8x10 all weighed the same equipped as I had purchased them. Forgive the obvious. There is no comparison in negatives.

My understanding is that the Chamonix is a close copy of the Phillips. I would suggest 8x10 and forget 6x7 and 4x5. You will want to go there anyway, so why wait? Many people here and on the LF Forum say very nice things about them. I have not used one, but would suggest that you look there based on my Phillips experience. The Phillips has just gotten too expensive.

John Powers

i don't think it has much to do with youth or maturity.
i bought my first lf camera when i was 21 ...
and from the looks of things, i don't really act my age either ...

vive la resistance

Toffle said:

Oh, John... If I was only as nimble as you, "horsing" your gear around O'Neal Lake.

Cheers,

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Thanks Tom, but if I remember you went off with your wife each night and didn't see that I went to bed right after dinner and could not stay up by the fire with the youngsters. It was the only way I could get up the next morning.

John

John, to go to 8x10 well, i do not have the room to put that sort of enlarger any where to print, i have 3 at the mo. But to get the 4x5 i would have room for. I would lose the 35, keep the 645 then put the 4x5 where the 35 was. My D/R is 13x7ft. Most of the post i have read all say the same, just go to the top and save money.

Graham

Graham.b said:

John, to go to 8x10 well, i do not have the room to put that sort of enlarger any where to print, i have 3 at the mo. But to get the 4x5 i would have room for. I would lose the 35, keep the 645 then put the 4x5 where the 35 was. My D/R is 13x7ft. Most of the post i have read all say the same, just go to the top and save money.

Graham

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Graham,

Take a look “8x10 black and white photography is like dark chocolate ala mode.”
Dead Link Removed
My darkroom is only 11’x13’. Don’t say no until you have really looked.

John Powers

There is nothing like a 8x10 or larger contact print. Nothing.

There's nothing like enlarging an 8x10 to 20x24 or 30x40 or larger.

I just wish I had an 8x10 enlarger so I could make enlargments. Till then, I'm sticking with 4x5.