From BronicaBill's post, it seems like there are a few LF photographers around. If you shoot 4x5 or greater, come on in and say hi.

I use a Toyo 4x5, shooting mainly HP5, with some Arista on deck. We moved a few months ago and I lost my darkroom, so now I'm looking at a new type of 3D-printed developing reel that will develop 6 sheets of 4x5 in a Patterson daylight tank. Looks promising. I'm also thinking about restarting my 8x10 build. The bellows beat me the last time around.

I had a Sinar F2 for years but I ended up selling it when digital became the rage. I still have several Schneider and Rodenstock lenses which I should probably sell off to fund some other interests since the only large format camera I have left is the Crown Graphic I started out with.

And I thought this was going to be about Avatar sizes....

I'd love to get into this type of project, someday.

I have, but rarely use lately, a Graphic View II 4x5 . I have a couple of daylight tanks for developing, and scan on an Epson transparency scanner for Photoshop editing / printing. Also have a polaroid back (with no film now available!) and a roll film adapter which I have used for color transparencies. I need to get back into it but it may have to wait for retirement.

I use to work for a photographer and all we used was the 4x5 Crown Graphic ( that's the one without the focal plane shutter) an 8x10 format pedestal portrait camera backed down to 4x5 and occasionally 5x7. This camera also had an air bulb released Packard shutter. Really "old school".

All of our developing was done with three approximately one foot tall black bakelite tanks with stainless steel racks and conventional sheet film developing hangers.

For portraits, we made old fashion red proofs that were printed in 5x7 contact printing frames over a light bed of fluorescent bulbs.

Just to get an idea how old fashioned this guy was, he came to our town in 1905 from Jamestown NY where he had worked at the Eastman Kodak Company "patina plant" before his trek west. He bought out a guy with an existing studio/photo business, and his first printer was what he called a "daylight printer". He actually had a shutter in the ceiling that would let in daylight to make contact prints.

This guy also had two panorama cameras that would revolve 360 degrees. They could use roll film that was five and seven inches wide. After a while the film became unavailable but he found a away to use roll film designed for the 1940s vintage K2 hand held aerial cameras that were used extensively during WWII.

This guy was a great story teller and I just wish I had documented hours of him telling what it was like being a photographer in the early part of the century. He even used flash powder back then and has many times told the story of how he set the ceiling of our local hotel on fire with flash powder while taking a large group banquet photo. I went to work for him, for the first time in 1954.

Another Sinar F owner here. I used it for architectural and product photography.







Neither image was retouched.

Many years ago I used a Linhof III (1953) 4x5 view camera. Had no rangefinder cams, so it was a pain in the ass to set up and focus (Ground glass back), but with tilt and swings, 4x5 gave amazing details on paper.

Loading the film holders with sheet film in total darkness was a chore, too.

35mm now, when I'm not too lazy to take film (C41) to ONLY film developer in Tucson.

I did advertising and commercial photography for 25 + years (30 years ago).
I primarily used view cameras. Mostly Deardorf 8x10 and 11x14. Also used and preferred a Toyo 8x10.
I rarely ever used 35mm (Nikon F2 because the thought of using any electronic camera was TABOO in the day. Would never even think of using an on camera light meter) if a small, faster action type requirement was needed first choice was a Hasselblad ( also the most likely to break camera or lens system,always carried extra lenses and camera bodies) because Michigan Ave. Ad Agency clients expected to see that equipment and they knew what to look for. Most had shot with high level photographers all over the world.

The Schnieder, and Rodenstock lenses were fantastic eventually giving way to the Nikon large format lenses.

Fujichrome was the preferred large format film but Extachrome was used most often because retouchers dyes were dialed into Extachrome.
Eventually that changed.

I only retained my 35mm Nikon equipment that sits unused in cases.
After photography started to turn digital I got out, it was not the same profession that drew me to it many years before. I enjoyed learning and doing film processing (ran a pro lab for several years) and learning all the aspects of film types and the development. I also enjoyed the challenge of peering at a dim,upside down image with a loop on the ground glass of a view camera, then stopping down the lens to check depth of field.
The hours or days spent perfectly lighting and composing an image in the ground glass, then shooting a bracket on 8x10 film, waiting a hour on rush service to get the test film back from the lab, doing final exposure calculations, then shooting for real, all that work paid off ( or you prayed it did) when the final film came back and went up on the light box. Those 8x10 or 11x14 transparency's were something to behold.

My first photography professor had use 4x5 cameras for a several months on the theory that it would really force us to be deliberate in our compositional choices. Any one exposure was such an investment, you weren't inclined to be slapdash. That was certainly true. And, though this was the secondary reason, it also forced us to be extra careful in our exposure choices. While we were all using manual cameras at the time, since any given exposure was so much more effort, it forced us to be more careful - again.

I haven't used a large format camera since then. That was almost 40 years ago. I have used my medium format cameras more, but even those haven't been out of the case in years now.

I used to shoot film on a camera that could handle a single piece of film up to 48”x 120” it was used for making the billboards that you see on the side of the highway. Usually 7 sections turned sideways.

Pretty sure not the intent of the OP but when I hear large format camera that’s what I think of.

Speed press 4x5, Rollieflex twin reflex 2 1/4

Love medium format.. always wanted a view camera, just couldn’t afford one.

The 4x5 is the largest film I’ve used, I guess that counts as large format...the Rollie, like my Brownie takes the same film. 120/620

Studied photography under Bob Brooks, School of Visual Arts.

Pentax 645z here...

quote:

Originally posted by Patriot:
Pentax 645z here...

That explains why your avatar is so crisp.