I love the old Kodak. It proves that cameras are "light-tight boxes", requiring no automation whatsoever! This camera is my personal renaissance, and connection to tradition. It was never an expensive item, and the design is utter simplicity. With this camera, I can create stunning portraits, large murals, panoramic shots, and macro images. Movements are somewhat limited, but sufficient for most subjects. With a rail extension, I can also use long lenses. No small or medium format camera will produce prints of higher quality.

Fujinon View Camera Lenses (below) are a matched set. Fuji glass has EBC (electron beam coatings) for superb light transmission. The lenses shown, are Fuji 210 f/5.6 W (top), Fuji 150mm f/5.6 W (middle), and Fuji 90mm f/8 SW(bottom). "W" means wide field for a bigger image circle. SW is a wide angle design.

With the 90mm length, a short lens (wide angle) I use a bag bellows. With such a short focusing distance, this provides more flexible movements. In 4x5 format, a 150mm focal length is a "normal lens". The 210mm lens is a short telephoto in 4x5, but this lens has 300mm image circle, so I also use it on the Kodak. A Sinar lensboard adapter makes this an easy swap. A 210mm length is suitable for portraits.

Tripods are very important equipment! The big Gitzo is quite heavy, but not too bad when carried in a padded tripod bag, with a shoulder strap. This distributes the weight nicely and both hands are free.

Large Format

Here's a Kodak moment. The wood view camera shown in the photo at left is a Kodak #1 5x7 view camera. This camera is almost 100 years old, but still gets plenty of use. I restored it, attending to small details, and replacing the old bellows, which reminded me of a planetarium viewed from inside. The Kodak is now light-tight; with modern film and a Fujinon 210mm f/5.6 lens, this camera never had it so good!

This Kodak is wonderful mystery story. I often think about the photographer who bought it new, and what subjects danced on the ground glass, upside-down and laterally reversed. The winds of change were a light breeze; there was no sprawling megalopolis, but woodlands and coastal wetlands spanned the East Coast. A portrait was highly valued. Without these "memories" our human faces would disappear in time, like so many forgotten people. There were no 1-hour film labs. Photographers developed their own film and made prints. On the ground glass of the Kodak, neat lines were ruled to frame subjects for contact-prints, in paper sizes discontinued long ago. The camera has a rail extension, for longer bellows draw. With this, a photographer could use long lenses, or shoot close-ups.

Notice the photo of a building at left. This is Coburn Hall at UMASS Lowell. "Coburn Hall" is displayed in black letters above the front door. The detail shown below is an enlargement of letters "RN" in Coburn. I scanned a 5x7 negative to get this photo, greatly reduced in size, but the detail shows ample texture in every brick of the building. With such a large negative, 35 square inches, the frisky little Kodak outperforms all of my other cameras in terms of raw resolution.

Photographic paper cannot begin to hold this much detail, and is simply "maxed-out" with contact prints or small enlargements. Here we find a deeper mystery. Fewer than one person in a hundred has ever seen an actual large format print. We often see reproductions in those coffee table books, but this is content without the rich values of actual prints, that simply glow with luminosity and rich detail.

For Purposes of illustration, I cropped a section of the photo to make a panorama. Dimensions are equivalent to 6x17cm panoramic format. A Fujinon GS617 panoramic camera, with a 180mm f/6.8 "D" lens costs about $6000, and the camera has no movements to modify perspective. Another mystery is revealed! To get superb panoramic photographs, we only need a view camera. I could print a seven foot mural of this panorama, and it would only be a 12X enlargement! Another popular panoramic format, 6x12cm, can be extracted from 4x5 negatives (Sinar).

I use the Kodak flatbed for black and white photography, portraits and panoramic photography. Many photographers are shy of large format, because sheet film is costly, and so is commercial processing. This is also true of medium-format film. My solution is to process and print in my own darkroom, which accomodates 5x7 and smaller film formats.

My Sinar "F" 4x5 view camera is a very expensive item, but Sinar doesn't hold value as used equipment. What we're really paying for are substantial differences in US/Swiss currency value. My Sinar was lightly used, and a very good value. This camera allows me to work in 4x5 format, which has wider film selection, and generous, high-precision movements make the camera suitable for commercial jobs.

The Kodak is a flatbed design. Sinar uses a monorail design, for greater rigidity and generous movements on both standards. It's also an extensible design. The camera in the photos is really several cameras. Using a short rail and a bag bellows, it's a wide angle camera. The configuration you see in the photo is a "normal" configuration. I can also build a long camera, with enough bellows draw for long lenses, or high magnifications of small subjects, as shown in the lower photo.

The "F" model designation stands for "Field". This model is absolutely rigid, and suitable for outdoor photography.

Polaroid photography is really in a class by itself! The still life photos above illustrate some special properties of Polaroid prints, including sumptuous color and rich detail. I just slipped the print in my flatbed scanner, and now we have a digital image. Polaroid photography is frequently used for proofs. However, the image quality of a scanned polaroid is quite suitable for the web and some printed media. The photo at left shows a Polaroid film holder inserted into my Sinar F.

View Camera Movements merit some discussion. The Kodak has very limited movements, but they are key movements. The cone of light coming from a lens makes an "image circle" larger than the film plane. Since the front and rear standards are connected by a flexible bellows, we can "walk around" inside the image circle. Up/down movements are called rise and fall. Side to side movements are called shifts. I used front rise to make the photograph of Coburn Hall. If the camera were pointed up to include the roof, vertical lines would converge. I allowed small convergence because it helps the image. To get this shot with a standard camera, you would need a cherry picker.

Another important class of movements are swings and tilts. With rise/fall/shift, the front and rear standards are parallel. With tilts and swings, we move the plane of focus. This is how photographers get those amazing images, where everything appears to be in sharp focus, from boulders in the foreground, to mountains in the background. By tilting the front standard, we also tilt the focus plane so it covers subjects of interest. The same technique is widely used in product photography.

Front tilts (up/down) and swings (right/left) move the optic axis. This changes the position of the plane of focus. Rear swings and tilts move the subject plane, and this can cause distortions. With natural subjects, distortions won't jump out of the photograph. If the subject is a building, interior, or product--I use the Sinar. A Kodak #1 only has rear tilts and swings.

View Camera Lenses are objects of beauty. I use a matched set of Fujinon view camera lenses, which have outstanding contrast, color fidelity and resolution. These lenses are shown in the photo at left. Like Hasselblad lenses, view camera lenses incorporate a leaf shutter between the lens groups. These lenses have an hour-glass shape; the rear elements are behind the lensboards. Fuji lenses, which must be imported from Japan, use a Copal leaf shutter.

Fujinon lenses are well-corrected for optical distortion, and have a wide-field design. Color is corrected so well, that all three lenses could be called "apochromatic". Electron-beam coatings (EBC) are applied to the lens surfaces to achieve high levels of light transmission and color fidelity.

Numerous Accessories are required to do large-format photography. The meter shown above is a Minolta "F" 1-degree Spot Meter, used for medium and large format cameras. It's also a flash meter. A Minolta IV flash meter (not shown) gives more general incident or reflected light readings.

The Sinar "F" (for "Field") lives in foam-padded case. Other equipment is kept in soft bags. 4x5 and 5x7 film holders are required, along with a "changing bag" to load film. Lenses require filters, in several different sizes. The most important companion to large format is a darkroom. Without a darkroom, the cost of processing film and printing would be much higher, as labs charge more for medium/large format work.

At Left: A Gitzo Pro Studex Tripod, with a Majestic platform head. The Gitzo has geared elevation, and the Majestic head has geared tilt, a very smooth combination. After some disappointments caused by camera shake, I decided on this rock-steady combination. I use a Gitzo Reporter for small/medium format. The French styling is very nice, so I keep them in tripod bags.