Your favorite analog format? Why?

[aRolleiBrujo]

6X6 since I AM SQUARE!

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Oh I see, that makes sense, thanks for explaining, do you happen to know if they made any that are less industrial?

PS I really like 110 format for little tiny spy cameras, They're so fun and fit in your pocket, So I guess you could call that one of my favorites too, not obviously for the same reasons as 8 x 10

An 8x10 enlarger was never a hobbyist's accessory. They need to be as massive as they are because of the size they have to be to make meaningful enlargements. You need it to be rock solid stable - the column on an 8x10 enlarger is easily 6 feet tall and anything less than an I-beam would too easily transmit vibrations to the head just from people walking around and you'd have a lot of very expensive fuzzy prints.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

I'm a multi-formatter that unlike Dorothy Parker's quip about Katherine Hepburn's acting, runs the gamut from 35mm to 14x17. But my absolute most-used format is 120. I was shooting a lot of whole plate (until my Seneca took a tumble over a 30-foot waterfall and needed rehabilitation, which it still needs) and 5x7. If you held a gun to my head and said "You MUST choose", I would keep the Rolleiflex.

As to the why, the Rollei just fits my way of seeing the world. I love the way it handles, and it allows me to interact with people without the camera being intimidating. The 6x6 negative allows me the best combination of economics and image quality and emulsion choices.

 

[Two23]

My favorite is 4x5 because I can use lenses on it from any period in history. I love Petzvals!


Kent in SD

 

[BradleyK]

My answer varies with what I am shooting, and what I am doing with it.

When I am printing in the darkroom, my answer is 6x7.

+1. Except that my preference when printing in the darkroom is 6x6...

 

[c6h6o3]

5x7. I can fit my camera, darkcloth, holders and lenses in a small backpack and walk for miles with it on my back and my Ries J600 tripod slung over my shoulder. 5x7 contact prints are plenty big enough for presentation (almost twice the image area of a 4x5). The jump to 8x10 is huge and always invokes Brett Weston's 50 ft. from the car rule at my age.

 

[Roger Cole]

5x7. I can fit my camera, darkcloth, holders and lenses in a small backpack and walk for miles with it on my back and my Ries J600 tripod slung over my shoulder. 5x7 contact prints are plenty big enough for presentation (almost twice the image area of a 4x5). The jump to 8x10 is huge and always invokes Brett Weston's 50 ft. from the car rule at my age.

The problem with 5x7, it seems to me, is enlarging it. Contact prints are large enough to frame or show, I agree, but I wouldn't like being limited to 5x7. 4x5 enlargers are much easier to find and cheaper - in fact I have two of them, but I've never come across a 5x7 locally or that would ship for a reasonable amount. It's similar to 8x10 in that respect but more so, since 8x10 contacts are larger (5x7 enlargers are far more manageable and common than 8x10 but still not like 4x5.) Of course you can always scan them and then if working in that mode I understand the appeal. But I'd rather have a 4x5 neg I can enlarge optically.

Film selection is also more limited, expensive, and basically unavailable in color unless you cut down 8x10 (then again color sheet film is so expensive anyway I mainly use a roll film back to shoot color in my 4x5.)

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

The problem with 5x7, it seems to me, is enlarging it. Contact prints are large enough to frame or show, I agree, but I wouldn't like being limited to 5x7. 4x5 enlargers are much easier to find and cheaper - in fact I have two of them, but I've never come across a 5x7 locally or that would ship for a reasonable amount. It's similar to 8x10 in that respect but more so, since 8x10 contacts are larger (5x7 enlargers are far more manageable and common than 8x10 but still not like 4x5.) Of course you can always scan them and then if working in that mode I understand the appeal. But I'd rather have a 4x5 neg I can enlarge optically.

Film selection is also more limited, expensive, and basically unavailable in color unless you cut down 8x10 (then again color sheet film is so expensive anyway I mainly use a roll film back to shoot color in my 4x5.)

Actually, B&H seems to get Kodak Portra 5x7 in stock periodically. Yes it is painfully expensive, but I have 100 sheets of it sitting in my fridge as we speak, waiting for the right project to come along.

 

[Roger Cole]

Ah ok. I still couldn't print it optically though, without finding a 5x7 enlarger somewhere. And the most common one that does come up is the Zone VI with a cold light head which can't do color either.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Color heads for 5x7 are a bit of an odd bird, I'll agree. But there are a fair number of 5x7 enlargers that COULD take a color head - Omega, Durst, and Beseler all come to mind. But it will take a bit of searching and patience, along with a budget, to get a good working 5x7 enlarger, color or otherwise.

 

[Roger Cole]

I wouldn't personally need a color head. I've done a lot of color printing in past days and never used a color head, just CP filters in the filter drawer of a condenser head. Works fine. It's a touch slower but even that tends to get lost in the noise of processing, drying and evaluating for the next test. Of course once dialed in just knock out as many from that negative as you like.

But since virtually all of my sheet film work is now black and white I'd actually be ok with the Zone VI too. But they're expensive. Other brands these days are often not but are big and seldom will anyone ship even when you do find them and then they tend to be half way (or more) across the country.

I'm not in the market to move up right now but IF I had an enlarger later could certainly see the appeal. The equipment is not that much bigger than 4x5 while the negative is nearly twice as big, wide selection of lenses, and I like the aspect ratio.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Even though I can't optically enlarge 5x7, I love the format. Small enough that it can be enlarged from, big enough it doesn't have to be. And I do like the long axis, but sometimes it's a tad too long. I like 6.5 x 8.5 even better, as the cameras are still almost more-or-less the same size as 5x7, but the negs are almost more-or-less as big as 8x10 for print purposes. And when it comes to scanning, I can just barely fit a whole plate negative on my BetterScanning holder without cropping. So if I HAVE to go bigger, I can always scan and output a digi-neg. And the proportions are less square than 8x10 and more square than 5x7.

 

[Roger Cole]

Too long, just crop to a tad shorter. Of course the same can be said of "too square" and probably half my 6x6 negs are cropped to rectangles of roughly 6x4.5. It's rare for me to crop a 645 neg to square though, which is odd now that I think about it. I don't seem to think of composing square except when I have the square image in the viewfinder but when I have that square image I can easily see rectangular variations too. Hmm.

 

[c6h6o3]

The problem with 5x7, it seems to me, is enlarging it. Contact prints are large enough to frame or show, I agree, but I wouldn't like being limited to 5x7. 4x5 enlargers are much easier to find and cheaper - in fact I have two of them, but I've never come across a 5x7 locally or that would ship for a reasonable amount. It's similar to 8x10 in that respect but more so, since 8x10 contacts are larger (5x7 enlargers are far more manageable and common than 8x10 but still not like 4x5.) Of course you can always scan them and then if working in that mode I understand the appeal. But I'd rather have a 4x5 neg I can enlarge optically.

Film selection is also more limited, expensive, and basically unavailable in color unless you cut down 8x10 (then again color sheet film is so expensive anyway I mainly use a roll film back to shoot color in my 4x5.)

Nevertheless, it's my favorite format.

 

[DannL.]

The problem with 5x7, it seems to me, is enlarging it. Contact prints are large enough to frame or show, I agree, but I wouldn't like being limited to 5x7. 4x5 enlargers are much easier to find and cheaper - in fact I have two of them, but I've never come across a 5x7 locally or that would ship for a reasonable amount. It's similar to 8x10 in that respect but more so, since 8x10 contacts are larger (5x7 enlargers are far more manageable and common than 8x10 but still not like 4x5.) Of course you can always scan them and then if working in that mode I understand the appeal. But I'd rather have a 4x5 neg I can enlarge optically.

Film selection is also more limited, expensive, and basically unavailable in color unless you cut down 8x10 (then again color sheet film is so expensive anyway I mainly use a roll film back to shoot color in my 4x5.)

Just to pass this along . . . If you own a view camera, then you already have a basic b/w enlarger for that specific format. A holder for the negative, a light source, and if your lens will not project as desired, a lens. It only takes a couple hours to put it all together the first time. And 5 minutes thereafter. And when the camera is not acting as an enlarger, remove the light source and it's a camera once again. I added a light source (bulb in a housing) to my 5x7 and made several prints that way. It was much easier than I had expected.

I once owned an 8x10 (10x10) enlarging camera. It was just a view camera that sat on a table and projected horizontally.

 

[DannL.]

Now having used my RZ67 for over a month, I may have to reconsider my favorite format. I'm going to have a lot of pissed-off plate cameras should they find out.

 

[Roger Cole]

Just to pass this along . . . If you own a view camera, then you already have a basic b/w enlarger for that specific format. A holder for the negative, a light source, and if your lens will not project as desired, a lens. It only takes a couple hours to put it all together the first time. And 5 minutes thereafter. And when the camera is not acting as an enlarger, remove the light source and it's a camera once again. I added a light source (bulb in a housing) to my 5x7 and made several prints that way. It was much easier than I had expected.

I once owned an 8x10 (10x10) enlarging camera. It was just a view camera that sat on a table and projected horizontally.

I'm a mechanical klutz. If someone put together a kit for this I'd seriously consider moving up to 5x7 and/or 8x10 later on.

 

[Roger Cole]

Nevertheless, it's my favorite format.

Well ok. I'm not saying it shouldn't be. I was pointing out that I too like the aspect ratio and the fact the equipment isn't that much larger than 4x5 whereas the negative is, but it's difficult to find enlargers or else it might be mine too, kind of thing.

 

[Mark_S]

Like many, I started photography and became serious about it with 35mm. I started using B&W, and then graduated to color (mostly E-6 and Kodachrome), but then came back to B&W and when I became more serious about darkroom work I shifted to 4x5 and almost completely abandoned 35mm. I had times when I wanted to get pictures hand-held, and used the 35mm for that, but got so frustrated in the darkroom that I moved to a 6x6 format camera for the handheld shots. I now hardly ever shoot with the 35mm gear (and should probably sell or donate it). I like the 4x5 aspect ratio, and when enlarging almost always use that aspect ratio, but for shooting handheld, I like having the square format so that I don't have to turn the camera. For reasons that I do not fully understand, 99% of what I shoot in LF is B&W, and when I am shooting with the MF camera, it is about 30% colour transparancy, 70% B&W.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

I'm a mechanical klutz. If someone put together a kit for this I'd seriously consider moving up to 5x7 and/or 8x10 later on.

It would actually be quite easy to cobble something together, at least for 5x7. A bit of opal glass, a couple of CF and/or incandescent bulbs, and something to act as a negative carrier and you're all set, light-source wise.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Cobbled together? Isn't that how Dr. Frankenstein created a monster? No thanks. Think I'll skip the duct tape and Krazy glue and stick to
a real machine. Good enlargers can be had for downright free these days.

 

[StoneNYC]

Cobbled together? Isn't that how Dr. Frankenstein created a monster? No thanks. Think I'll skip the duct tape and Krazy glue and stick to
a real machine. Good enlargers can be had for downright free these days.

Send me an 8x10 enlarger then....

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

This is something I've also very seriously considered. Not because I couldn't afford a decent used 8x10 enlarger. But because I don't have room for one.

Mine is a Calumet C1 8x10 camera. Before me it was only used indoors in a studio as a copy camera. I already have two G-Clarons that came with it. Nice lightweight lenses for outdoor use, when sufficiently stopped down. But also nice for flat field copy work, the inverse of enlarging.

Since all of the precision is already built into the camera, it would only require a customized light source (LEDs?) to replace the back. This would also include a way to perhaps sandwich the negative between two sheets of AN glass and slide it into the custom back. Horizontal projection would be fine. I do have room in the darkroom for that.

Now I'm no high-precision woodworker. But the back design of a C1 is so damned straightforward (two set screws with a simple rectangular light-trap inset required) that I'm certain even I could cobble together a very workable solution. Mount the camera/light source horizontally to a piece of plywood, add a little flat black spray paint, sit it on my enlarging table pointed at the far wall, and it's there.

The advantages would be numerous. Savings in space and money are obvious. Less obvious is that by using the same lens for both exposing and projecting the negative, I think that things like edge illumination falloff should be automatically eliminated when going from negative to positive. Wasn't that the case with the Graflargers?

All I need is the time...

Ken

 

[Roger Cole]

If you luck into them and if they are close enough to pick up - both a matter of luck.

 

[RDWestPR]

Because I plan to make my own 13" x 19" B&W Carbon Transfer prints, I settled on 6cm x 9cm roll film. It's much more convenient than 4x5 to shoot and much more 'enlargeable' than 35mm. Especially since I plan to develop my own film. Costs go up exponentially when you go over roll fill sizes. I also favor 6cm x 12cm, but I don't have a camera for that yet. I'll rely on my Fuji GSW 690 III rangefinder for now. It has a great lens.