Chapter 13 | The Cameras
Chapter 13 | The Cameras | 35mm
At its most basic level a camera is just a box that lets light in to expose a light sensitive piece of film or digital sensor. Some don’t even have a lens…look up pinhole camera on Google. The most simple of cameras are those that have a lens in front, bellows in between it and the rear where film can be put for exposure.
I tend to use a simple version of a camera. Lens, bellows, film. Expose and voila you have stilled a moment in time. Using the word simple makes it sound easy, but it’s really noy so ‘simple’.
Like most folks I started with a 35mm camera. It was in fact a gift given to me by my Uncle Bill, who was my fathers best friend. The camera was an Olympus OM1 35mm film camera. Uncle Bill taught me the basics, showed me how to load my own black and white film in canisters, how to process the exposed film and even how to print contact sheets using the bathroom as a darkroom. For a kid 12 years of age it was like winning the jackpot in Vegas.
He gave me the greatest piece of advice on how to go about using that camera, he told me to “Go have fun!” Only in retrospect, having made it this far in life, do I now know that such advice comes from experience. He must have learned over the years that the best way to learn was to just go have fun and to not let doing anything ‘wrong’ get in the way of that. It was something that was taken to heart. Over the years there have certainly been a lot of ‘learning’ moments when it came to using a camera. I’ve dumped it mud, water, snow, sand, grit, gravel…you name it and that camera has most likely come face to face with ‘it’. The film has been loaded backwards more than once. The camera back got opened without first rewinding the film, care to take a guess what that does?
Eventually, as my friend George Ward would say – like learning to dance, I got the hang of it. When I first started cameras were not like what they are today. Heck your cell phone probably has as good as or in most cases better than what that 35mm film camera I had back then could accomplish. It didn’t matter to me.
I was having fun.
Chapter 13 | The Cameras | 645cm
Eventually, as the OM1 started to give in from use, a replacement was needed. That required a bit of research on my part, as this was something new to me…’buying’ a camera. For more than a decade that trusty camera, with one lens, had taken me on so many magnificent backcountry trips I was at a loss. Was I suppose to bury it when I got a new one? Just put it up on the shelf? Give it to someone who might be calling me Uncle Rodney?
I’m sorry to say it eventually died at a camera shop getting repaired and made it’s way into a recycling bin or the infamous round filing cabinet. Don’t be sad, because I was going to get a new camera. I got a Canon AV-1. It was a dumbed down version of their famous AE-1, which as a poor college student the AV-1 was all I could afford.
The research though, about what camera to get, introduced me to something call a Medium Format camera. The Mamiya 645 camera used a film referred to as 120 roll film. The 120 film could be used in 6x4.5 format, 6x6 format, 6x7 format, panoramic formats. For me it was an eye opener. Beyond the possible uses the size of it was significantly larger than 35mm. On average it was some 2.5+ times bigger depending on the width you were going to shoot at. Being the math guy, that meant more resolution, which meant clearer final photographs. All it took was seeing the difference and I knew that was going to happen somewhere down the road for me.
I still have my Canon AV-1, somewhere, and the couple of lenses that got used a lot. The day came though after completing my University studies and I had gotten a ‘real’ job, I was able to get a ‘real’ camera. That job, paid well – for a just out of school guy who only had to worry about him and his wife. As a reward for making through the University, LeeAnna gave her blessing to purchase a Mamiya 645 Pro TL Medium Format camera with several very fancy lenses.
It was not an inexpensive purchase for us. But I remember being so thrilled with it that on the drive from Utah to Delaware I took that camera everywhere I could. In fact one of my very first ‘grand’ images ever taken was on that trip. Titled “Truly Delicate” was, unknown at the time, one of the images that eventually pushed me to leave the corporate world.
There have been a great many images taken with that camera system. As the years past we took that camera on all our trips. In fact we’re pretty sure it was in the tent when at least two of our children were conceived. That camera has seen more than it ever expected to see, that is for sure!
The problem with this camera, even though it was significantly sharper than the 35mm camera was, is it fell victim to the same issues surrounding the 35mm vs. 645cm argument. Yep, I saw a photograph taken with a ‘large’ format camera. Well that and my prized system was stolen out of our car in a Colorado mountain town. I still wonder, to this day, what the heck was that person thinking…did they not know how much that thing meant to me and my now growing family.
But it did pave the way for me to expand into something even more awesome.
Chapter 13 | The Cameras | 4x5 inches
You saw that right, ‘inches’, we’d moved up in the world because we were now into ‘inches’ of film. The good old American measurement system, something I’d known all my life. To be honest 35mm and 645cm lengths meant so little to me. They still do. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why I like using the large format film camera I have today.
Eventually, as you will soon see, it really just boils down to resolution…no matter what kind of camera system one uses. The bigger the better. But that’s part of this story to be discovered in a moment, after we get through these next couple of cameras.
Ok here’s what happened. I saw a photograph that had been taken via a large format 4x5 film camera. It was stunning. It blew my mind away. If I’d thought the difference between 35mm and 645 was huge, the difference between 645cm and 4x5 inches was like discovering the earth was NOT FLAT!
Here’s that stats. A single sheet of 4x5 film is approximately 15 times larger than a 35mm. That was nothing to sneeze at. In fact the photograph I saw from the 4x5 was almost like I was standing there looking out through a window.
Most people, and I certainly didn’t to begin with, don’t actually seem to know the biggest reason why these large format cameras are so much better than the smaller formats, which has nothing to do with clarity. It has to do with a few select technical things one can do with the large format camera that are just impossible to do with the small or medium format systems.
A large format camera can deal with what is called ‘perspective’ control, or correction might be more accurate, for each and every lens used on the camera. Another reason is that these cameras allow for focal plane adjustment, which allows the camera, through applying what is called a ‘tilt’ available in all four focal planes, to focus an image perfectly without having to change the f-stop, which effectively keeps one from having to stop the shutter down. These two reasons alone would be enough to only use a large format from now on. But there are even more reasons!
These cameras do not use roll film they use one sheet of film at a time. This allows one to make corrections in exposure, at the time of exposure or when that sheet gets developed when you get back from being in the field. This means one could trip the shutter on multiple sheets while in the field to either 1) expose them each differently or 2) expose all of them the same. Then when the time comes to develop these sheets of film, one sheet can be processed and then the next and so on and so forth. By doing it this way one can make adjustments in development times to either brighten or darken a single sheet. The hope is that somewhere in there, given there is no little computer telling the image maker what exposure will work best, a perfectly exposed sheet of film comes from this process.
There are a couple of other things that come to mind, like you only have to process a single sheet versus an entire roll, at any given time. And a sheet of 4x5 film has a cost that when you take all things into account is less expensive than the other formats.
But it does have one thing that makes it not as good as one more camera…the 8x10!
Chapter 13 | The Cameras | 8x10 inches
I’ve always called it the Mack Daddy! Now to be clear upfront here, there are larger film cameras that some folks do use. But if you plan on carrying something around with you out in the woods, this one pushes those limits. Here’s why…
You will be taking with you two lenses (minimum), changing bag for the film, box of film (that’s only 5 images, taking 2 sheets for any one image), the 8x10 camera (it’s big, even when it is disassembled), accessories (like flashlight, broken off stem-less toothbrush, no toothpaste, matches, etc.), tripod & head, light meter, tent or bivvy sack, sleeping bag & pad, cooking equipment, food, clothing (jacket, socks, pants or shorts, long johns, gators, undies, shirt, hat, gloves, sunglasses etc.), water bottle & pump, emergency kit, medical kit, candle and fire starting kit…I’m sure I’m missing a few things on this list like tasty treats, but when you put all of this stuff into a backpack, it takes a big one, you’ll be pushing close to 120 pounds for a two week trip into the wilderness.
Ever wonder why not so many people do this? Well this could be one of the reasons.
From time to time I will just go out for a few nights, just for the fun of it. No equipment gets dragged along. Talk about FREEDOM! It’s like carrying nothing sometimes in comparison. Yes, I’ve regretted not bringing the camera long a couple of times as something just goes wild. But I’ve stored them up in my head and in a way those are ‘just for me’.
Lets just say, when it comes to backcountry travel, I have a ‘pace’. It is a slow pace, a very slow pace, but what I loose in speed I more than make up in stamina. Another way of putting that is…I’m slow, but I can do it all day long. You’ve heard the story of the tortoise and the hare? Well I’m the tortoise. I’ve always been this way so it doesn’t have anything to do with age, but it could have something to do with the length of my legs.
About now you are wondering why on earth would anyone do this kind of thing ‘on purpose’?
Remember how this progression has gone so far. 35mm got dumped because I saw something done in medium format 645? Then 645 got dumped because I saw something done in 4x5 format? Starting to see a trend here? Yes, I saw something done with an 8x10 film camera.
To put things into perspective one can fit approximately sixty four 35mm’s into one 8x10 piece of film. That’s a huge increase in resolution. It’s 4 times the size of a 4x5.
Now when you stare at a large image done in 8x10 you really do feel like you are standing there in person. And that is something to behold.
