Is the market for used LF cameras growing?

[brent8927]

The digital revolution caused a glut of Hasselblad cameras and equipment at the time I bought mine. Now that surplus from professional photographers has been absorbed so the market is going back up for those cameras and lenses. If it was not for the digital revolution I would still be only shooting 35mm and I would not have my Hasselblads, Graphic, Graflex, WideLux and darkroom. I would only be thinking about them.

I also have the digital revolution to thank, though I bought my 501c around 2003-4, which if I recall was still really early in the shift for professionals (especially wedding photographers) from film to digital, so I don't think I had the full benefit.

 

[brent8927]

Is this based on direct experience or via third parties through reviews, blog posts and other internet born proclamations?
Because in my direct professional experience, images from digital cameras at around 50MP with good glass like Zeiss or quality tilt-shift types printed at 30x40” are pulling away from a good print from 4x5, at least in color.

My sole reason for shooting film in 35mm, 120 and 4x5 is the hand made black and white print, it’s well worth the effort.

As far as the price of gear creeping up, I keep track of it for insured replacement value reasons and the really good stuff like Apo Sironar S lenses is indeed creeping up. Hasselblad lenses seem to fluctuate by as much as -10 to +10 percent.

Top quality / modern darkroom equipment has become more scarce and the prices reflect that.

For example my first Saunders LPL 4550 XLG VCCE was $450 at an estate sale in 2013, it was in mint shape and came with four carriers and lens cones.

My second one was $950 in 2015 via a camera dealer in California, still in mint shape and about the same accesories as the above.

But my third one was a whopping $2,200 last week. Now it is literally brand new with the impossible to find stabilized power supply ($600 new ) but man, that hurt!

As for large format camera used prices, they are still dirt cheap so I bought both my Chamonix 45N2 and Gibellini ACN45 brand new.

It's based on what others have told me about their personal experiences. I've not run into any photographer who argued digital was superior to 4x5, but I suppose it's inevitable it will catch up someday. I don't talk with many photographers (non of my friends are really into it), so it's possible that day is here and I'm just not aware of it.

Either way, in my experience digital B&W can't compare at to B&W film--whether scanned or printed in a dark room. Color seems to be a different story, though I do feel color film also adds a much a nicer quality to colors than digital. For whatever reason the trend in a lot of the digital photography I see today is ultra-contrasty ultra-sharp appearing images. I guess maybe it's similar to the fad with Velvia--personally I was/still am more into the look of prints from Portra and Ektar.

 

[removed account4]

... I've not run into any photographer who argued digital was superior to 4x5, but I suppose it's inevitable it will catch up someday.

im sorry but there is so much that is wrong with this statement ,, sure the technology of "digital" will catch up to the resolution of film
but that isnt what photography is. at a certain technical " how big can i blow this up" argument i guess it is important. i have a local colleague who
stitches together enormous digital files to get even bigger digital files for trade show stuff for clients who rely on "details" but i think in the end it is all
smoke and mirrors because you can see one thing and your brain tells you its another. the classic example of this is
that dumb email that went around IDK 10 years ago that was all completely mispelled and it said something like " if you can read this, it is kind of funny
cause there isn't one word even remotely spelled correctly " and it was like 2 paragraphs long ..
personally i couldn't care less if digital can be as resolved as a 11x14 chrome / negative image .. i will never own a computer as long as i live
that has that much memory or hard drive / scratch disk space .. and what is the point, to take photographs of your puppy or cat doing something "cute"
or a sunset ? obviously these are meaningful photographs to a lot of people and i mean no disrespect .. in my lifetime i have been around 3 puppies
and a gaggle of kittens and the more sunsets and rainbows the better, it shows we are still on this planet ... but as far as i am concerned
puppies and unicorns farting rainbows isnt' really what photography is about.
its about something that cant' be explained. and you can do that with a scrap of paper and some light.

 

[faberryman]

It's based on what others have told me about their personal experiences. I've not run into any photographer who argued digital was superior to 4x5, but I suppose it's inevitable it will catch up someday. I don't talk with many photographers (non of my friends are really into it), so it's possible that day is here and I'm just not aware of it.

And your point is?

Either way, in my experience digital B&W can't compare at to B&W film--whether scanned or printed in a dark room. Color seems to be a different story, though I do feel color film also adds a much a nicer quality to colors than digital. For whatever reason the trend in a lot of the digital photography I see today is ultra-contrasty ultra-sharp appearing images. I guess maybe it's similar to the fad with Velvia--personally I was/still am more into the look of prints from Portra and Ektar.

Reminds me of that Barbara Streisand song: "Feelings, nothing but feelings..."

 

[RalphLambrecht]

That's a good thing. It's way better than today's mega pixel race where photographers update camera every few years. I remember a few years back I bought some MF and LF cameras for very little money compared to today's prices. I knew the value of them from the 80's and I have a feeling that some photographers were dumping their old gear to go digital or upgrade their current digital gear. I thought the analog gear market would never recover. Again, if my predictions may be wrong. I bought a Burke and James 5x7 camera for $200 4 years ago.

couldn't agree more.

 

[brent8927]

im sorry but there is so much that is wrong with this statement ,, sure the technology of "digital" will catch up to the resolution of film
but that isnt what photography is. at a certain technical " how big can i blow this up" argument i guess it is important. i have a local colleague who
stitches together enormous digital files to get even bigger digital files for trade show stuff for clients who rely on "details" but i think in the end it is all
smoke and mirrors because you can see one thing and your brain tells you its another. the classic example of this is
that dumb email that went around IDK 10 years ago that was all completely mispelled and it said something like " if you can read this, it is kind of funny
cause there isn't one word even remotely spelled correctly " and it was like 2 paragraphs long ..
personally i couldn't care less if digital can be as resolved as a 11x14 chrome / negative image .. i will never own a computer as long as i live
that has that much memory or hard drive / scratch disk space .. and what is the point, to take photographs of your puppy or cat doing something "cute"
or a sunset ? obviously these are meaningful photographs to a lot of people and i mean no disrespect .. in my lifetime i have been around 3 puppies
and a gaggle of kittens and the more sunsets and rainbows the better, it shows we are still on this planet ... but as far as i am concerned
puppies and unicorns farting rainbows isnt' really what photography is about.
its about something that cant' be explained. and you can do that with a scrap of paper and some light.

I thought I more or less said the exact thing you just said, so I'm not sure what was wrong with my statement. I agree photography is much deeper than sunsets and other "snapshots." My photos all have a story behind them--it may be a story only I know, but it's a story nonetheless.

And your point is?

Reminds me of that Barbara Streisand song: "Feelings, nothing but feelings..."

My point was to answer another poster. I don't understand why that offends you, but if it did, I apologize. And as I said above, photography, to me, is absolutely about feelings and emotion. Isn't all art?

 

[Patrick Robert James]

A lot of it has to do with the fact that people who bought their LF gear over the last decade have no desire to sell it. They will own it the rest of their lives which creates an issue with supply, especially since they cherry picked the best gear because they could at the time. The good stuff was only a couple bucks more than the crap. Now that the good used gear has been taken, you are only seeing the crap, more or less.

Any yes there are advantages to film over digital, but I don't think there is a point to discussing it anymore. People are going to go with their egos and see what they want to see.

 

[wyofilm]

Regarding LF photography there is an amazingly large number of Youtube channels dedicated to a thoroughly un-modern subject. Usually (though not exclusively), their workflow is hybrid, where LF negatives are scanned. Then there are other, more general photography channels where to keep content fresh LF cameras are brought in. The LF channels are mostly relatively small in viewership (some are pretty big); whereas, some of the more general photography channels are pretty large. I would say that there is an increased exposure (pun, no pun?!) to LF. At least on YouTube the LF crowd are mostly under 35 yo.

Have these channels caused an uptick in LF photography? Easy to imagine, yes. For sure the intrepid cameras are getting good "air' time.

 

[ic-racer]

Why don't people take their digital discussions elsewhere?

 

[Alan Gales]

Is your maths right ? My B&W 5x4 high res scans are 250mb, my 10x8 1gb, that's close to a factor of 10x larger, colour scans would be 3 times larger. The issue here is software interpolation, when I did my Photography MA (2001/2) I shot one project with a 2mp camera and made superb A3 prints, most of the print quality came from the Canon printer driver.

You have to remember how most commercial images are used, mostly magazines or other publications, and of course website, bill boards etc are actually printed al quite low resolutions and can be made from 35mm images.

So scan a 10x8 B&W or Colour negative or positive and you'll very easily out perform a 100mp back.

Ian

Ian, I tried to google the article I read but I couldn't find it. It wasn't Luminous Landscape but by someone who actually liked film. They tested the IQ180 back (80 megapixels) to 8x10. The Phase One back fell short but not by far in their tests. In real world shooting the limiting factors with 8x10 being vibration from wind and diffraction from stopping the lens down too far sometimes.

Like I said. I have never used a 100mp back. It would be interesting to compare it to my 8x10 but I'd still keep the 8x10. I can't afford the $30,000 for the digital back and even if I could I don't think I would enjoy the process. I'd hate to have to tether it to a laptop just to see the effects of my camera movements.

 

[Sirius Glass]

If I were interested in digital backs, a digital Hasselblad back costs $60,000US which I neither afford nor justify. So why waste my time looking at digital 4"x5" much less a 8"x10" digital back.

 

[Alan Gales]

If I were interested in digital backs, a digital Hasselblad back costs $60,000US which I neither afford nor justify. So why waste my time looking at digital 4"x5" much less a 8"x10" digital back.

It's just a medium format digital back. You can put it on Hasselblad or a large format camera. I doubt they would ever make a sensor as big as 4x5 or 8x10. The medium format digital backs are not even as large as 6x6 film.

I'll never get one either. I just find it interesting. Must be the nerd in me!

 

[Sirius Glass]

If I were interested in digital backs, a digital Hasselblad back costs $60,000US which I neither afford nor justify. So why waste my time looking at digital 4"x5" much less a 8"x10" digital back.

It's just a medium format digital back. You can put it on Hasselblad or a large format camera. I doubt they would ever make a sensor as big as 4x5 or 8x10. The medium format digital backs are not even as large as 6x6 film.

I'll never get one either. I just find it interesting. Must be the nerd in me!

It would have to be 6x6 and affordable before I would even start getting interested. I stopped following the new Hasselblad releases years ago.

 

[fdonadio]

I doubt they would ever make a sensor as big as 4x5 or 8x10. The medium format digital backs are not even as large as 6x6 film.

I don’t think it’s feasible to make a sensor that big. And, even if it is, the price will be so high that only a handful will justify such an “investment”.

One interesting thing I saw is adapting a scanner to the back of a view camera. Works great for “reproduction” work and still life or product shots. Also makes for some “creative” stuff with moving subjects.

 

[gracjan]

View attachment 191607

I bet that's because nobody calls that a "digital photography" any longer. Digital is just a "photography" now, and it's rather us here who are distinguished by the rest of the world with a "classic" or "analog" attributes.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

I bet that's because nobody calls that a "digital photography" any longer. Digital is just a "photography" now, and it's rather us here who are distinguished by the rest of the world with a "classic" or "analog" attributes.

I hate to admit this, but in the earlier days digital photography, camera manufacturers made improvements to dynamic range and number of pixels. Now, my old iphone 4S does a pretty good job and I'm pretty happy with quick and dirty photos. I think a lot of photographers are really tired of the constant upgrading just for megapixels. As photographers shoot more megapixels, it opens up a whole can of worms like storing the RAW images and having the computer power to process the images. As you can see, with 40MP, a person can easily print a 16x20. The rest is just excess pixels unless you want to crop into the image.
https://improvephotography.com/34880/how-big-print-with-megapixel-camera/

I shoot both digital and analog. I look forward to processing my film whereas I dread doing post-production with my digital shots.

 

[removed account4]

I doubt they would ever make a sensor as big as 4x5 or 8x10.

hasselblad might not make one, but there is a guy in california
who makes them and is bringing them to market .. eventually
can't remember his name thought. and they aren't for wallet-lightweights.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

Now, this is interesting.
https://www.megapixelsdigital.com/digital-backs-on-wooden-field-cameras-fun-in-the-sun/

These digital backs are for rich cats. But take a look at the digital and analog comparison. If you shoot digital and your highlights are blown out, there is very little chance for recovery. If you shoot BW neg film, a photographer can recover highlights in the darkroom or event through scanning if your highlights aren't "bullet proof".

 

[Sirius Glass]

Now, this is interesting.
https://www.megapixelsdigital.com/digital-backs-on-wooden-field-cameras-fun-in-the-sun/

These digital backs are for rich cats. But take a look at the digital and analog comparison. If you shoot digital and your highlights are blown out, there is very little chance for recovery. If you shoot BW neg film, a photographer can recover highlights in the darkroom or event through scanning if your highlights aren't "bullet proof".

Yet another reason to shoot film.

 

[Chan Tran]

I don't know if the market is growing but shooting LF makes a lot more sense now than before.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

Yet another reason to shoot film.

So true. But realistically, I think shooting film isn't always practical. I have shot commercial work since the film days, but I'm sure it's all digital. I'm sure all commercial photographers have probably ditched their LF cameras. I was able to pick up a Sinar 8x10 P for about $600. I'm sure it was a commercial shooter that couldn't use it anymore. Back then, I saw few on eBay. Now, they're harder to find. But that does not necessarily mean that there's a demand or there's a shortage either.

 

[fdonadio]

So true. But realistically, I think shooting film isn't always practical. I have shot commercial work since the film days, but I'm sure it's all digital. I'm sure all commercial photographers have probably ditched their LF cameras. I was able to pick up a Sinar 8x10 P for about $600. I'm sure it was a commercial shooter that couldn't use it anymore. Back then, I saw few on eBay. Now, they're harder to find. But that does not necessarily mean that there's a demand or there's a shortage either.

It depends on so many factors. I shoot film, but I am a hobbyist. Hobbies are supposed to cost something and, in the end, it's not that expensive for me. I shoot 35mm, medium format and 4x5 — the latter mostly in black and white.

I don't see photojournalists ever getting back to film, as much as I don't see event, wedding and schoolbook photographers going back either. It's impractical and way too costly for anyone to be competitive in the market. For editorial work, film is feasible, but not always desired — especially by the editors, now used to check the results immediately.

For mostly everything else — "art", landscape, portraiture, architecture, etc. — film is a realistic option.

No need to say, but this is my opinion.


Cheers,
Flavio

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

For mostly everything else — "art", landscape, portraiture, architecture, etc. — film is a realistic option.

No need to say, but this is my opinion.


Cheers,
Flavio

My opinion too. That's why my opinion is analog photography has now matured into a fine art process like etching and lithography. That's fine by me!

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

If I were interested in digital backs, a digital Hasselblad back costs $60,000US which I neither afford nor justify. So why waste my time looking at digital 4"x5" much less a 8"x10" digital back.

If I had 60K (77K CDN....gulp) to get rid of, I'd throw it at large format film. That should keep me happy for quite a while...

 

[Sirius Glass]

Yet another reason to shoot film.

So true. But realistically, I think shooting film isn't always practical. I have shot commercial work since the film days, but I'm sure it's all digital. I'm sure all commercial photographers have probably ditched their LF cameras. I was able to pick up a Sinar 8x10 P for about $600. I'm sure it was a commercial shooter that couldn't use it anymore. Back then, I saw few on eBay. Now, they're harder to find. But that does not necessarily mean that there's a demand or there's a shortage either.

Shooting digital is practical for remote sensing from spacecraft which is what it was originally designed.