Why do you shoot LF?

markbarendt

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1-Detail
2-Movements
3-Ability to shoot 1 frame and go directly to development, no waiting to finish a roll.
4-Ability to adjust development without cutting undeveloped rolls; shoot 2, develop #1, make a print, make a decision, then develop #2.
 

Mainecoonmaniac

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LF photography distills shooting down to it's bare essence. No fancy digital displays on the ground glass. The image is in my face upside down and actual size. I tend to shoot less film and make the shots count. Sometimes shooting LF is quite meditative and most of the time, I'm struggling with an unforgiving beast. Always, I have to be mindful when I shoot with it. I think all photo students should struggle with LF. It makes them better photographers.
 

johnielvis

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previsuilization does NOT exist


and that's proof right there that there is no such thing as "previsualization".

most of the best photographs have been "happy accidents" as a matter of fact.

anybody says they can predict the future is LYING.

PERIOD.
 

LJH

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johnielvis said:
anybody says they can predict the future is LYING.

PERIOD.
Click to expand...

Aren't you predicting the future when you say this, making you a self-confessed liar, and therefore making this claim wrong?

PERIOD.
 

johnielvis

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LJH said:
Aren't you predicting the future when you say this, making you a self-confessed liar, and therefore making this claim wrong?

PERIOD.
Click to expand...

nope...a fact was stated (the future cannot be predicted), that is all. a fact is not a prediction.

people fool themselves into believing that they can have control, but they have none. nature and chance have to cooperate with the "controller". Most of the time, if the "controller" goes with the law of average outcomes, then his outcome will be pleasing--thus reinforcing the belief that there was some "control" being exercised.
 
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DREW WILEY

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I dunno about that barroom comment. Seem like a big Dorf and maple tripod would be a lot more
useful in a brawl than bonking heads with a little Nikon ...
 

Sirius Glass

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Fun
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More degrees of freedom
Negative size
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Because I can
 

markbarendt

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johnielvis said:
and that's proof right there that there is no such thing as "previsualization".

most of the best photographs have been "happy accidents" as a matter of fact.

anybody says they can predict the future is LYING.

PERIOD.
Click to expand...

I work on industrial machinery in the oil field every work day.

When I repair or adjust the machinery properly and the machines are "fed" the appropriate stuff, it works reliably, very reliably.

In industrial processes, there are no happy accidents.

Photography, the craft, is an industrial process. A given input, using a given process, and given materials, produces a given result. If we pre visualize and execute the tasks involved properly we get a given result.

Surely, in photography, we have all had happy mistakes, but in my experience they are normally the exception, not the rule.
 

removed account4

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hi mark
i couldn't agree with you more !!
it s just a process, like baking bread ...

me i would rather through as many unknowns in the process as i can
just to see what happens ( most of the time )
i can totally understand why someone else would do something other than that ...
... without chance, serendipity, human interaction, and "trubble" things get kind of boring

your milage may vary from factory specs ..
john
 

johnielvis

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you can't extrapolate that to every process--particularly an assembly line type process that 's been honed over many many years is in no way comparable.

for example, if you shoot the SAME picutre...same subject, same camera, same angle same film, etc...every day...all day, same processing chemicals, times, etc....hone that process, then you can get pretty good consistent results that vary very little...and you can determine very easily where the process deviates. This is why industrial processes seem to be "contollable"...they are just very very limited is all...

apples and oranges, dude--wishful thinking...all of the posts on this and all the other photographic websites are a testament to the unpredictability of the "process".

honestly...no happy accidents in industry...every great innovation in history has pretty much been through some accidental discovery...microwave, light bulb...

taking a honed process and extrapolating it to all other processes if foolishness. if you've ever had any experience in an industry which is weather dependent, you'll see just how unpredictable and uncontrollable things really are.

for example--the fire department....how about working in a hospital emergency room...how about electrical power utilities during a superstorm....

some industries are notoriously accident prone because the nature cannot be contolled--MINING for example--an ancient industrial process and it's still extremely dangerous due to all the things that cannot be controlled.

very very controllable? nothing left to chance?.....keep dreaming the dream

how many product recalls do we hear about in the news because they are public health threats--food poisioning...dangerous chemicals---design flaws that cause fires or sudden accelleration...battery explosions. All produced by industry which strives to have zero percent defects. How many more you DON'T hear about....only the public health hazards are the ones you hear about===there are many many more that aren't publicized.

these things are all around us --- OPEN YOUR EYES AND EARS to the world around you and SEE what's REALLY going on here.

Just buy a russian camera....you'll see
 
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johnielvis

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this is why people seem to shoot LF....to throw as many unknowns and make it as difficult as possible--so that there is some "challenge'

it's the same as golf...bunch of middle aged people bored with life trying to get that childhood feeling of discovering the unknown back after a lifetime of predictable processing the same stuff day in day out...no chance for happy mistakes on the assembly line honed process that your regular job/life complex has become.

so it's all golf...tiny ball hit a huge distance to go in a tiny hole....even a machine built specifically to do such a task would not have a 100% successful failure rate due to all of the artificially introduced uncertanties to "the process". If golf were an industrial process there would be a trench going downhill guiding the ball to the hole--see..money at stake. Which is why digital wins out for the professionals..film just can't compete due to all of the accidents that happen due to the uncontrollability/instability of the fim photographic process.

even with all the helps and fixes and varialbes that digital takes care of, photohgraphy is STILL very difficult.
 

PKM-25

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johnielvis said:
and that's proof right there that there is no such thing as "previsualization".

most of the best photographs have been "happy accidents" as a matter of fact.

anybody says they can predict the future is LYING.

PERIOD.
Click to expand...

Don't agree entirely, Chance Favors the Prepared Mind. My best case for "Happy Accidents" have been when I put chance in my favor....period.
 

LJH

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When was your opinion ordained as fact? "...fact is not a prediction" is a contradictory statement. How can you have "fact" before an event? It only becomes fact after it occurs. Until then, it is wholly speculation/prediction. Perhaps you need to put your OPINION to the test based on mutual exclusivity.

Of course you can predict the future. I predict that the sun will set tonight. I predict that it will rise tomorrow. I predict that the Aspens in Grand Teton will turn yellow this year.

Most convincingly, I predict that you will argue this post.

PERIOD.
 

johnielvis

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ahhh yes...haters be hatin'

people don't like the truth and that's also a fact

all these control-positive people here brings to mind pee wee herman crashing his bike and then getting up and saying "i meant to do that"
 

BradS

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johnielvis said:
ahhh yes...haters be hatin'

people don't like the truth and that's also a fact
Click to expand...


look in the mirror. people react negatively to you because you're being offensive, abrasive and abusive. We're mostly just trying to have some fun...play nice or go away.
 
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johnielvis

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more hater's doin' what they do....

state a fact that people don't like and suddenly it's deemed "offensive" by some self-appointed spokesperson for all.....when was the election that appointed a spokesman?
 

markbarendt

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You are mixing up the distinctions between deliberate creative work (art/science), our inexperience/ignorance, and professional/craft work (industry). Three very different things.

The craft of photography is a mature industrial process. While individually we may have a lot to learn about this craft, there is truly very little that is unknown by the collective. This is especially true of "off the shelf products".

There is no question in "Kodak's" mind about how TX or TXP or Portra react to given inputs, none.

I actually spent 8-years in underground mining. Got to see first hand the unpredictability. The "wild cards" there are two fold.

First is that we craftspersons/miners could not see through the rock so we were occasionally surprised by what we found, the engineers weren't. The exploration had been done years before, the properties of the rocks and the general position in the world were all knowns. These were minor variations and there were established ways to deal with the changes, basically just an "ask your boss" situation.

Second, and by far the more dangerous, are the people around us. Sure the guy sitting in the powder magazine having his "last cigarette" because his wife just dumped him, or the guy that isn't at his best because of his hangover and lack of sleep, were definitely problems, but respectively rare and minor ones. The bigger issue is management pushing the known technical limits to meet the contract/profit requirements regardless of the risks.

Not a happy industrial accident here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crandall_Canyon_Mine

Different industry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster

The happy accidents scientists and engineers have, when they find something unexpected because of research along a different line, are more interesting and benefits may ensue and as with the light bulb can be pretty benign, but happy isn't the rule.

Dying as Marie Curie did wasn't http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie

When photography was "newer" there was much true experimentation and the side effect of the chemicals involved weren't known. Today we use "Pyro's" pretty safely, but "we" killed and sickend a fair numbers of people to learn those lessons.

Even "your" Russian camera, like my Holga and shutterless Petzval can be learned and even mastered for effect as we build experience with the tool.
 

johnielvis

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markbarendt--true, all of it--and it was the main point--it was some other poster who confused photography with nuts and bolts industrial processes....the other posts just were to show that there IS a difference, as you pointed out

The artistic "process" of creative photography is very different from industrial photography like they used to do in the printing industry...industrial photography is very controlled and CAN be pre-visualized (not 100% but very close)...however "never done before" artistic photography is, by it's very nature, unpredictable and cannot be previsualized with anywhere near the same accuracy in general.

even the pros use polaroids to proof shots to make sure they "got it right".

people don't like that idea for some reason.

It would be interesting to know how many people who say they have mastered "previsualization" have ever described some of their more "experimental" "work" as socalled "test shots"....puh leeze...you can't have it both ways
 

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Hey guys, quit feedin' the troll. We have ignore-lists for the express purpose of keeping your blood-pressure down and my life is far the happier for making judicious use thereof.

As to the question at hand: movements* are the primary reason that I got into LF.

More detail could be a nice theoretical bonus but 4x5 isn't a huge improvement over 6x7 in that department and it's swamped by differences in film technology. For example, 6x7 Acros is about 35c/frame, 4x5 Fomapan (Arista) is 70c/frame and 4x5 TMX/Acros is $1.80/frame. Going to LF approximately doubles the film cost for no increase in resolution, or you can increase $$ by 6x for about one extra stop of detail. Similar price ratio (4x) for shooting E6 and about 7x if you want to shoot C41, still for just that one extra stop of detail.

I'm also a recovering technophile so I enjoy the challenge of using (and getting the most out of) complex toys and while that's a bad reason to choose a particular artistic approach/technology, I'm pretty sure it applies to a lot of LF users. It probably doesn't matter though as long as the technology isn't actively holding you back - I make a point of using more-appropriate toys when taking more-spontaneous photos like candid portraits in poor light, or travelling around the world.


* movements are not happy accidents. Movements are the result of a plan to achieve a specific (pre-visualised, even) outcome in terms of perspective and focal plane.
 

markbarendt

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Polyglot, I personally think that the cost/benefit comparison to roll film is a false economy for at least some of us.

One of the biggest problems I have is not finishing a roll when I shoot.

I'm to a point where when I see a shot that I want, 2-4 frames are normally more than plenty for a given subject. I roll 20-shot rolls for 35mm to minimize this, but I am finding that getting even 10 shots in a row, with the old RB, is becoming a real streatch most of the time.

With roll film I end up with from 8 to 34 more shots to go before I can move on, unless I'm willing to waste the rest of the roll, which is becoming a more regular occurrence.

With sheet film that systemic conundrum doesn't exist. Shoot one frame of 4x5 and I can go straight to developing, no waiting, no wasting.

The other thing I find is that roughly double the data (in moving from 6x7cm to 4x5") does make a significant difference visually in a print.
 

David A. Goldfarb

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I like the look of a contact print.
 
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