i can zoom in and out with large format?

[denada]

i'm a snapshot photographer and know just enough to know i don't know. i know that when you switch film size, all your dof instincts are out the window. i'm using 4x5. i wanna mimic sally mann's bathroom mirror self portrait and don't have a loop (today; i live in the city without a car and i don't wanna go downtown for one thing). is that a no go? it looks like she has less light than me and she did it on 8x10 or something old and huge. so i'm trying to move further away so i get enough dof to shoot at an aperture i can hold still long enough at. cause i think i need to do this at at least f22? but then i realized my camera zooms in and out when i move the back? am i altering the focal length of the lens. well obviously not, but what am i doing? if i move further away and then zoom in i must be reducing the dof i gained by moving further away, right? like switching lenses even though the lens stays the same? wtf is happening?

it looks like i can push hp5 to 3200 with ilfosol 3 and still get a clean-ish image at laptop screen sizes?

 

[Dave442]

Sounds like a great project to do. I don't think you need to worry too much about DOF on your version. The lighting is more important.
Take shots at different settings and just look at the differences. Only change one setting at a time so you can follow the changes, i.e.: different apertures, different focal lengths (zoom setting on your lens, etc.).

 

[denada]

thanks. that's the plan. i like that answer a lot more than "read a book." i wanna take a picture but every step i take toward doing so i realize how many more factors there are than what i'm used to. like picking up a super 8 and suddenly realizing everything changes throughout your shot.


edit:

meh, i can't get it done today. gave my parents' too much stuff to store when i moved from a house to a chicago apartment. including a 4x5 jobo tank. that's too expensive to just buy another of. will come up with a list for them to mail me and do it later this week. i'm over 10 rolls behind on scanning 35mm anyway. was friends with the guy at the lab in cincinnati and got all my rolls scanned gratis. have to go to a lab and pay to use their scanners here. learning how to use their drum scanners on tuesday. have been using their kodak creo iqsmart 3, but i don't like the results versus the fuji frontier series (i cannot afford to pay for print res fuji frontier scans). hoping whatever drum scanners they have give better results.

soon

 

[480sparky]

You're not zooming... you're moving the rear standard in relation to the plane of focus.

 

[compur]

... but then i realized my camera zooms in and out when i move the back? am i altering the focal length of the lens. well obviously not, but what am i doing? if i move further away and then zoom in i must be reducing the dof i gained by moving further away, right? like switching lenses even though the lens stays the same? wtf is happening?

A fixed focal length lens can't zoom. That is, you can't change its focal length by moving it closer or farther away from the subject or by any other way. You CAN change the point on which it is focused by changing the distance between the lens and the film which is what you are doing when you "stretch" or compress the camera's bellows.

 

[Soocom1]

i'm a snapshot photographer and know just enough to know i don't know. i know that when you switch film size, all your dof instincts are out the window. i'm using 4x5.

Remember that your lens FP distance (the mm size) is what governs your ability to use a LF camera.
Ergo: A 90mm lens will only allow 90,mm from the FP of the lens tot he ground glass of the back. This will severely limit your ability to tilt, shift, and control dof and brightness because of the limited movement distance and moreover the image circle.

i wanna mimic sally mann's bathroom mirror self portrait and don't have a loop (today; i live in the city without a car and i don't wanna go downtown for one thing). is that a no go?

Not necessarily. But you need to understand that the image she is using what looks like an 8x10. Prob. and older Schneider lens and a few other aspects that you would need to do an exact copy. As a result I would say mimic what she is doing but make the image your own. Use a diff. setup.

it looks like she has less light than me and she did it on 8x10 or something old and huge. so i'm trying to move further away so i get enough dof to shoot at an aperture i can hold still long enough at. cause i think i need to do this at at least f22?

Actually I am willing to bet she prob. shot an f11 on that picture.

but then i realized my camera zooms in and out when i move the back? am i altering the focal length of the lens. well obviously not, but what am i doing?

Actually yes you are moving the focal distance of the lens (see above) and you can only set the focus for that range. The same exact principle is exercised on 35mm cameras. Except the distance is fixed on box cameras, whereas the LF has a moving bellows.
That lens looks like a 135-200mm given the distance seen in the image.

if i move further away and then zoom in i must be reducing the dof i gained by moving further away, right? like switching lenses even though the lens stays the same? wtf is happening?

Not exactly. You have the right idea, but again go back to lens size. if a 90mm lens, then from the focal point of the lens (usually about double the thickness of the lens behind it.
Ergo: the 90mm lens the front of the lens is actually 180mm from the front element to the film plane.
(This is NOT a hard and fast rule. ) Just a general guide. But if you have a 250mm lens, the distance from the front of the lens to the film plane should equal around 500 mm total. This will give you a great deal of movement and decent DoF to work with.

But remember that the aperture size is going to control the actual DoF. NOT the focal distance.

it looks like i can push hp5 to 3200 with ilfosol 3 and still get a clean-ish image at laptop screen sizes?

The LF size wont only cover a laptop sized image, but will be solid to about 80x100 inches. Image resolution will only degrade on a LF when you reach a huge level of enlargement. But that is if your shooting an actual 4x5. If your shooting a small format camera or such, the image is only as good as the poss. resolution capable based on the format size itself.

 

[denada]

i appreciate all these replies, am reading them and taking them into consideration, but i don't have a real response until i get my jobo tank so i can take a couple of pictures and gain some practical understanding.

i very much note and appreciate your "remember that" Soocoom1. very polite. reality is i have zero formal training and near zero formal understanding of photography. that said, i've taken thousands of pictures of the last few years and do have some practical knowledge. so ...

what i mean by increasing the dof of field by moving back the camera back is that the further away i am from a subject the easier it is to get in focus. i don't know how to explain this is technical terms, and i've never used anything except a prime lenses on cameras without tilt or movements or whatever. but if i'm shooting on the sidewalk and i wanna take a picture of a person or object, if i'm further away and stoped down, they're in focus as long as i have the lens set at even vaguely at the right distance. if i'm taking a picture right as i pass them, all the sudden it matters if i have my lens focused at 4ft or 8ft. where if they're far away, i could have it focused at 20ft and they'd still be in focus at 28ft away. so in percentages maybe the grace or forgiveness of my focus does or doesn't change, but in number of feet it does. i'm talking f8 and f11 with 35mm film and a 28mm or 35mm lens. so i know that by moving away from a subject, it's easier to get them in focus even if i don't know the terms to explain that or understand the physics behind it.

what confuses me is with a large format camera i can move the film further or closer from the lens, which is entirely new to me and gives what is apparently the illusion of zoom -- but not actually zoom. it sounds like the term is plane of focus or focal distance, not zoom. and i imagine that difference has some practical implications as well. i'll have to take some photos in order to understand that, because even after googling the terms i just can't wrap my head around it.

Soocom1, yes, the image will certainly be my own version not an exact copy. it just gives me a general goal to work at as i learn all the new factors that large format and the movements of a large format camera introduce. plus i can do it in my apartment, where i have a messy counter in front of a mirror and lighting coming primarily from behind me, like she does in that photo. sally mann is the reason i bought the large format camera. largely the reason i bought any camera, period. though i've chosen very different subject matters. and while i'm a widely confident when it comes to public photography ("street" is too restrictive a term), it's gonna take a second before i'm brave enough to lug a giant calumet and tripod through the crowded streets of chicago. people generally ignore you here no matter what you're doing, but that might be enough to attract attention.

 

[480sparky]

Technically, you're not zooming. Zooming means you're changing the focal length of the lens. I know of no LF lenses that zoom.

You're simply moving the film plane back and forth through the plane of focus. The image will only be in focus when it's concurrent with the focus plane. The further you get the film away from that focus plane, the more you'll be out of focus. In essence, you're changing the 'crop factor' and defocusing at the same time.

 

[Soocom1]

....what confuses me is with a large format camera i can move the film further or closer from the lens, which is entirely new to me and gives what is apparently the illusion of zoom -- but not actually zoom. it sounds like the term is plane of focus or focal distance, not zoom. and i imagine that difference has some practical implications as well. i'll have to take some photos in order to understand that, because even after googling the terms i just can't wrap my head around it.

Soocom1, yes, the image will certainly be my own version not an exact copy. it just gives me a general goal to work at as i learn all the new factors that large format and the movements of a large format camera introduce. plus i can do it in my apartment, where i have a messy counter in front of a mirror and lighting coming primarily from behind me, like she does in that photo. sally mann is the reason i bought the large format camera. largely the reason i bought any camera, period. though i've chosen very different subject matters. and while i'm a widely confident when it comes to public photography ("street" is too restrictive a term), it's gonna take a second before i'm brave enough to lug a giant calumet and tripod through the crowded streets of chicago. people generally ignore you here no matter what you're doing, but that might be enough to attract attention.

Out of curiosity, what size camera did you get?


When you move forward or backward the rear element (film holder/ground glass) area what you are doing in effect is similar to a zoom, but more accurately enlargement. The mechanics are essentially the same. But what you must also understand is this:

In a box camera the lens and film plane remain stationary. So the "zoom effect" causes a dramatic change in the way the light is passing through the lenses to the focal point and film plane.
There is a significant degradation of quality as a result. This is because your effectively 'squeezing" the light (poor terminology I know) to bring a subject "closer". You also have in a zoom lens a VERY dramatic loss in DoF. The image will show two objects quite far apart as nearly touching each other. Study soccer or other sports photography for this effect.

In a view camera, the movement of the elements creates an "enlargement" of the image circle and the change in light is different because the difference from the glass to the focal point and film plane is going through a fixed piece of glass and the image quality doesn't really change, but is expanded. Thus the DoF is affected much differently and the image shows more dramatic DoF as a result because the glass hasn't altered the light, just moved further or closer to the FP.

When the aperture is at a larger area (f 8 and larger) the DoF is decreased significantly. If the aperture is smaller (say f22), then the DoF becomes wider. Thus, the smaller the aperture, the more things far away are in focus WITH the closer subject. This is the principle behind boke. In a view camera the change in DoF acts differently. Because again, your moving the two elements in relation to each other the effect is much different than a box camera.

 

[Derrel]

It has been along time since I have used a view camera, but my advice would be to set the camera up 8 to 10 feet from the mirror,and to use a 150 mm to 240 mm focal length lens. Whatever you happen to have.

Remember the focus distance will be equal to the distance from the film plane to the mirror and back to the film plane,so at somewhere between 16 and 20 feet, you should have decent depth of field at least four or 5 inches, even at a large aperture, which in view camera parlance would be f/8 or f/11.
I do not know the exact Sally Mann photograph you're talking about, and was unable to find it a quick web search yesterday.

 

[dxqcanada]

Ah. large format on rails ... that was the funnist camera I have ever used.
I could spend a whole day trying to get one shot cause I was swinging, tilting, and shifting the thing every-which way ... good thing I was hidden under a dark cloth.

 

[480sparky]

......I was swinging, tilting, and shifting the thing every-which way ...........

I think it's called twerking these days.

 

[Derrel]

You are correct in that the farther away at the camera is from the subject, the more depth of field there is at a particular aperture.

Depth of field is the strange thing. At macro and close up rangers depth of field is extremely shallow, but that intermediate ranges, it is possible to achieve selective focus COM well at long-range depth of field is extremely deep, even at wide apertures, and with long focal length lenses. The 8 to 10 feet distance from Camera back to mirror, which is doubled because of the image not being located "inside" the mirror glass, Put you into the beginning if the "intermediate" distance range. You are very far from the len's hyperfocal focusing distance,so things are in the " narrow band of depth of field" ar f/8 to f/11 at 16 to 20 feet.

 

[denada]

hey derrel!

calumet 4x5 monorail. if it has a more specific name than that, i don't know it. lens is a fujinon w 150mm/f5.6. it can stop down to f64, but in this situation i cannot go past f11 or f22 at most (pushing hp5 to 3200iso). i just remembered at home developing requires temperature control -- my absolute least favorite part.

the crop factor way of explaining makes a little more sense to me. a lot more sense actually. i'll still need to take and develop some pictures before i really get a solid grasp. of course. like dave suggested, i'm going to play with one factor at a time. i'll start with your suggestions, derrel.

"sally mann bathroom self-portrait" without quotes in google search will bring it up as the first result in the image search preview at the top. i don't wanna link, as i'm still unsure of all the rules and etiquette here. you all don't even swear. so civil.

 

[480sparky]

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/30/e6/ce/30e6ced9ce37beee84ed236c7990716e.jpg

 

[Tim Tucker 2]

Large format is an oddity in that while it allows you greater freedom because it is free from the design restrictions you find in highly automated and technical digital cameras it also releases you from those narrow and logical confines that allowed you to *get a handle on it* so easily. It also becomes *technical* by default...

So first a rule of thumb that while is not *technically* completely accurate will allow you a certain continuity of visualisation between formats:

A lens will have similar dof characteristics regardless of format. So a 150mm lens on a large format camera will have similar dof to a 150mm lens on a 35mm camera.

There are no zoom lenses on large format, it doesn't work that way, they would be fairly useless anyway because of the way you work. But I know what you mean...

All lenses change their effective focal length when you focus. The nominal focal length printed on the lens is derived from the distance between the lens and the film plane at infinity focus. As the subject moves closer so you have to focus and to do that you move the lens further away from the film, as you do this the image appears to enlarge on your ground glass screen. But there is still only one point where the image is in focus and when it is the distance between the lens and the film is the effective focal length of the lens.

It doesn't matter if you move the film plane or the lens plane it is still the *difference between the two* that is the focal distance, or the distance apart they need to be to get the subject in focus.

With the image in question I think that a 150mm lens will suffice on 5"x 4", but (if it is the same shot I know)...

It isn't shot with strong back light as Sally is well lit. It is probably shot at around f16 on a 10"x 8" because with the longer shutter speeds the slight movement even when you try to stay still will soften and so absolute dof is a pretty mute point, (understand what the result *will be* not how it relates to numbers... ) so f8-f11 with a 150mm lens on 5"x 4". She is also clutching her clothes in a very protective way, as though she feels vulnerable. She is the subject and is well lit against the background, it is odd and works because she looks vulnerable in a shot she took of herself, there is a contradiction.

I wouldn't *push process* HP5 simply because you are trying too many different techniques without really understanding any of them and so will be at a loss to repeat anything you learn or separate what caused which visual effect. It's almost certain that Sally didn't push the film much at all and just settled for the softer look because she probably felt it enhanced her vulnerability more than if she appeared hard, sharp and real.

Just some thoughts.