the wonderful world of large format

large format cameras are as their name describes - large. most use film that measures 4x5 inches however some go up to 20x24 inches or larger.

the main advantage with these cameras is the size of the film. a 4x5 negative is 13 1/3 times larger than a negative from a regular ol' 35 mm camera. sweet detail. another advantage is that the front (the lens) and the back (the film) can be moved independently of each other - this lets you adjust the focus in the picture and also control the perspective. imagine looking up at a building - how the sides appear to lean in. the movements on these cameras allow you to keep those lines parallel. check out wikipedia's page on view cameras for another explanation.

this beautiful piece of work is the graflex graphic view 2. this is what i currently have - ebay, $330. it was probably made some time in the 60's and it still works beautifully today.

here are a couple pictures that i took with my large format camera when i was in san francisco with my dad last spring.

on the golden gate bridge just after the bridge police tried to boot us out (because our tripods might interfere with the pedestrians).

a view of the bridge from china beach

here are some links to some of my favorite large format photographers: joel meyerowitz, george tice, tom till, and jack dykinga. if you're ever in moab, ut check out tom till's gallery (he's a large format nature photographer) so you can get a feeling of what large format photography can do. it's amazing.