Why Large Format?
There are a few reasons why I eventually decided that Large Format was probably a direction I would like and each of these arose at a separate point in time. The first time I considered LF was when I was looking at various blogs talking about how digital cameras could almost get a picture that was as good as medium format film. These same articles compared the best digital photos (ignoring scanning backs for the moment) with large format to show how good digital was getting. I remember thinking that the large format pictures just looked so much more real in their portrayal of texture (Charles Cramer 4×5 vs Digital at Luminous Landscape). At the time however, I remember thinking that I really liked that digital gave you a quick feedback cycle and helped to close the loop between taking and learning. However, at that time I was looking into the use of tilt shift lenses and promised myself that when I got my new digital (this was just before I’d bought the 5D) I would get a 24TSE and play with Scheimpflug.
Since that time, I read more Joe Cornish books and found the Ebony website. This lead to much slavering. Unfortunately there was no way I could justify spending that sort of money as I’d only just got my 5D. However, the desire for the engineering that is an Ebony camera stuck with me and I’d quickly look back now and again. This also lead me to find more large format photographers and I remember at one point starting to look into how much it would actually cost to get a LF kit together.
The final straw was seeing the prints produced by David Ward and Richard Childs at the Light and Land course I attended in the Hebrides in Scotland. Combined with seeing the LF cameras in real world use and starting to understand the benefits in composition, I realised this was a path I was inevitably going to travel. So, now I had to explain this to my wife. Fortunately she is long suffering but very understanding and so the green light was given.
At this point I had to decide what Camera and lenses I was going to buy. I’ll leave this for the next post.
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