Why not start with Med. format?

[petrochemist]

If by medium format you mean cut film, it is a different world.

I have been working with a restored 1910 view camera. Lot of fun, I you like challenges.

• Yes you can successfully use one of those dreaded Yankee 4x5 cut film tanks. But they do have several short comings.
• You can also tray develop if you like working in total darkness.
• You are working with long focal length lenses. In my case 123mm and 165 mm. so you really have very little Depth of Field at the smaller f numbers.
• Set up for a shot usually requires a tripod, going under the hood with a loop glass for focusing, It is not as easy as the movies show the press photographer snapping away with their speed-graphics.
• Making a print requires an enlarger that can handle large format film or contact printing.

Start out with digital. You can learn a lot and the "film" is free.

Medium format is roll film - typically 120 type, giving 6x4.5, 6x6, 6x7, 6x9, 6x12 (cm) negatives depending on the camera. Usage is much more similar to 35mm than large format.

Single sheet (cut film) cameras are known as large format with 4"x5" & 10"x8" being the most common. As you say they are a different world, especially if employing movements.
Depending on the film stock being used total darkness may not be required for developing. There are safelights designed to be used with orthochromic films...

 

[Soocom1]

If by medium format you mean cut film, it is a different world.

I have been working with a restored 1910 view camera. Lot of fun, I you like challenges.

• Yes you can successfully use one of those dreaded Yankee 4x5 cut film tanks. But they do have several short comings.
• You can also tray develop if you like working in total darkness.
• You are working with long focal length lenses. In my case 123mm and 165 mm. so you really have very little Depth of Field at the smaller f numbers.
• Set up for a shot usually requires a tripod, going under the hood with a loop glass for focusing, It is not as easy as the movies show the press photographer snapping away with their speed-graphics.
• Making a print requires an enlarger that can handle large format film or contact printing.

Start out with digital. You can learn a lot and the "film" is free.

Medium format is roll film - typically 120 type, giving 6x4.5, 6x6, 6x7, 6x9, 6x12 (cm) negatives depending on the camera. Usage is much more similar to 35mm than large format.

Single sheet (cut film) cameras are known as large format with 4"x5" & 10"x8" being the most common. As you say they are a different world, especially if employing movements.
Depending on the film stock being used total darkness may not be required for developing. There are safelights designed to be used with orthochromic films...

Dont forget the Med. format 2x3 and 1x2.

 

[FatBear]

Dont forget the Med. format 2x3 and 1x2.

2-1/4 X 3-1/4 (2x3) film is basically 6x9cm - a nice ratio for landscapes but with the same issue as 35mm when it comes to printing the full image. Paper and frames did not come in that 2:3 ratio so you had to either crop down to 6x7 or use oversize paper and waste a lot. (If you trimmed them first you could at least save the offcuts for test strips.)

I had a Linhof Super Technika 23 in the 1980s and early '90s. (With 8x10 ratio lines etched into the groundglass!) Finding the sheet film was very hard even back then. You had to cut your own from 4x5 or 8x10. Developing it without the special tanks was a PIB. And it printed exactly like 6x9 shots on 120 roll film. And there were lots of options in 120 and developing was little different than developing 35mm - easy. I was very glad that I had a 6x7 and two 6x9 rollfilm backs. But even that was a pain as critical focus had to be done on the groundglass, then the backs switched. They did register correctly or this would not work, but you had to have a rock-solid tripod.

Somehow I doubt that things have improved for 2x3 sheet film here in 2019.

I have never heard of 1x2 sheet film. Tell me about it.

 

[Soocom1]

Film format - Wikipedia

500 film pack 1911 1948 1¾" × 2⅜" 12 redefined 1921 as 1⅝ x 2⁷/₁₆
121 roll film 1902 1941 1⅝" × 2½"

It hasn't been produced sense Laurel and Hardy, but there were various cameras that I was exposed to including an old folder my dad had that he traded in for a Minolta around 1971 or so.

 

[Soocom1]

Here is another link to other sizes. I remember them from my time as a wee bit 4 year old monster at Kurt's Camera Corral.

Standard Film Sizes - Antique and Vintage Cameras

 

[FatBear]

Film format - Wikipedia

500 film pack 1911 1948 1¾" × 2⅜" 12 redefined 1921 as 1⅝ x 2⁷/₁₆
121 roll film 1902 1941 1⅝" × 2½"

It hasn't been produced sense Laurel and Hardy, but there were various cameras that I was exposed to including an old folder my dad had that he traded in for a Minolta around 1971 or so.

Oh yeah, those really old sizes. I'm not actually that old. I only remember watching Laurel and Hardy in reruns.

 

[petrochemist]

Medium format is roll film - typically 120 type, giving 6x4.5, 6x6, 6x7, 6x9, 6x12 (cm) negatives depending on the camera. Usage is much more similar to 35mm than large format.

Single sheet (cut film) cameras are known as large format with 4"x5" & 10"x8" being the most common. As you say they are a different world, especially if employing movements.
Depending on the film stock being used total darkness may not be required for developing. There are safelights designed to be used with orthochromic films...

Dont forget the Med. format 2x3 and 1x2.

I was sticking to sizes I know 120 film is used for the first 3 are quite common, and IIRC my 120 folding cameras that use the latter 2. Historically there have been many other film sizes which are pretty much impossible to get now. Some of the historical formats of roll film wouldn't be likely to be classed as medium format - My Voigtlander vito I was designed for 828 film only fractionally larger than 35mm, fortunately it can also be used with 35mm.

 

[Ysarex]

FatBear, I looked through your earlier digital phase on Flickr. I _instantly_ recognized the location/shot of Cannon Beach.

We owned a store in Cannon Beach for 24 years and commuted from Manzanita. That photo was a scene I passed every day on the way to work. I rarely do landscapes, I leave them for everyone else. I just decided to stop and take that shot one day when I was trying to tell someone where I was from. There's another one farther down taken from the north with lots of sunsettie colors that I took for a graphic on our website.

The humidity is usually near 100% around there so it is a rare day when photos come out really bright and contrasty. But it would be misleading to shoot it on a day like that, anyway, because they are so rare. Nor would it be honest to punch up the contrast and saturation and make it look like it was taken on a day like that. I do admit guilt in emphasizing the sunset colors in the Ecola Viewpoint photo. Rules are made to be broken.

Since the early2000's, most people have come to favor punchier,higher-contrast digital images. Your photos LOOK as if they were shot and processed 15 years ago, with a softer,lower contrast look that was relatively common back then.

That was what you got from any digital camera that I could afford back then. Additionally, many of them were taken in very flat lighting. A sunny day is rare on the north Oregon coast, and overcast is better for many things, anyway. The ones taken in Liguria were in late October during one of their rainiest falls in decades. We drove up into the alps and actually drove behind a huge waterfall that arched out over the road. We drove down into one of the Cinque Terre villages and a mudslide sealed us in. Finally a guy in an Ape offered to lead us out over the sheep trails. (We followed him and made it.) As a result I got those moody shots where someone else might have taken a shot worthy of a postcard. I like them both, but can't see wasting my energy on a shot that you can buy for a dollar off of a rack.

The amount of work that goes into some of those mushroom shots might surprise you. I think of them as portraits of very patient subjects. Some work, some don't. My two best mushroom photos were taken on B&W film in the OM-1n with fill flash. One is sepia toned and one selenium. Neither of them is online.

Most of the mushroom shots were done with either two flashes or with reflectors for filling in shadows or both. You can see one of my diffusers behind one of those tiny mushrooms. I just couldn't get it to stand out, so I put a background behind it, just like any portrait photographer would do. Except most portrait photographers do not work in overalls and kneepads.

Why mushrooms and what does this have to do with MF? I like mushrooms because you can present an everyday object in a way that almost nobody has ever seen before. I started shooting them like this in 1987 and could find nothing like them in any publication. I scoured the Internet for mushroom shots before I took the risk of putting such weird photos on Flickr and found nothing like them. Now I do - in fact there are whole Flickr groups for mushroom shots and I see some that I wish I'd taken. I do not claim they are "copying" me, but I do take at least some credit for making them a popular subject. Of course that probably means I will have to move on to bryophytes...

And what it has to do with MF - to me, anyway - is that mushrooms led me to MF. First I bought a Baby Linhof with a couple of 120 backs and refurbished it. Then I used the movements and the amazing sharp lenses to improve my shots. But with mushrooms your camera is in the dirt, sometimes even down in a hole that you have to scrape away. And it was hard to get my face down there to look at the ground glass - the "underground glass" as it were. So I bought the Mamiya RZ-67 because it had a waist level viewfinder. Boy that was nice. If you've never used a waist-level viewfinder, don't. You will become addicted. Right now I think some of the modern DSLRs have articulated screens on the back. I would only buy a new digital camera if I could either 1, tilt the rear screen up to let me focus and compose from above; or 2, plug in a separate monitor on which to view my focusing and composition.

If there is an expectation that every photo must be punchier and higher contrast in this modern age, well I hope it is an affectation that passes. I think it is important to fit the characteristics of the image to the subject and to what you want to say with it. And sometimes you have to accept what you can get in the conditions. Doing the best you can with what you've got is becoming a lost art in America. Buying the best is the modern way. I guess I'm just old-fashioned after all.

I know this is entirely off topic but much of the thread is now so WTH.

FatBear, start with this old thread: Xmas Present Growing

When the Xmas gift stopped producing and I went to dispose of it my wife said, "just leave it in the vegetable garden and we'll see." So an hour ago I was out starting to do some prep work in the vegetable section of the garden and hidden under the weeds I found:

I just finished eating lunch. Yum!

Joe

 

[FatBear]

Mmmmm. I do love to eat mushrooms, not just to photograph them.

 

[Grandpa Ron]

I never did get a good definition of medium format. But if roll film is medium and cut film is large that is fine by me.

My enlarger has options for 35 mm and 120 film. So I have been scanning my 4x5 negatives and digitally processing them. Now that everything seems to be working, I have ordered the some photo paper and will be trying some contact printing.

In answer to the Ops question there is a lot to learn and a lot of mistakes to be made. So, the less expensive the better. That generally means 35mm if you do not want to go digital.

 

[Soocom1]

Medium format by definition is anything larger than 35mm and smaller than 4x5 sheet.

But the original intent of the post is to point out that Med. format is still photography period.
There is no real fundamental difference between 35mm, MF, or LF.
Only the way the pictures are taken.
i simply wanted to point out that if one starts someone on a MF camera (regardless of medium) that it will help underscore the spicific differences of format size and the capabilities of cameras as a whole.

 

[smoke665]

Wow this thread just keeps growing. Had a conversation about film vs digital last night with a fellow hobby photographer, who like me predates digital. Bottom line we both still share a nostalgic fondness for film. There's a certain hands on feeling you get from the moment you click the shutter to the point you first see the print coming alive in the tray, that's lacking in the digital world. However we both discussed the hassles that come with film. Unless you have the dedicated space to set up a permanent darkroom, the process of setting up, cleaning up and putting things away can quickly overshadow the fun part of darkroom time.

Making the transition from film to digital was hard for me, but as Derrel mentioned above once I became versed in digital, I'd be hard pressed to go back to film.

 

[Soocom1]

Well I can only comment at this point because the thread went so outside the intent.


As I posted earlier, the intent was and is still to point out that med. and Large Format are exactly the same mechanically as 35mm APS size and smaller formats.
The ONLY difference is that Med. and Large format have certain ancillary advantages over 35mm. To whit I wont explore here, but include overall quality, depth (I am talking about richness of the image here) and specifically enlargement ratios (reproduction ratios) that exceed 1:1.

But is STILL the same as 35mm. hence why I comment that one could easily start with Med. or LF over 35mm any day of the week.

That the mystic of MF and LF is all mental and in one's head.

But everyone is stuck on the instant feedback of digital over film.

 

[Grandpa Ron]

I guess I am stuck on cost.

If you are beginner and cost is not and issue, then you can learn on any format you want. However a telephoto or wide angle lens for a 120 format vs. 35mm, even on the used market is more limiting.

Personally, I have never bought into the idea that film makes you a better photographer. Having grown up with the old 127 format film since the late 1950's I find film discourages experimentation. With Digital I can try all sorts of weird angles and views that would have cost me a fortune even in 35 mm format.

 

[Soocom1]

When i see a complete Mamiya RB or RZ system with a back, lens viewfinder and body or a TLR that runs around $350-$750 with digital hitting the same if not more, I simply dont see that.
Especially given that Mamiya glass sells in most cases under $200 and the most expensive systems are still hassys.

but thats me.