Technique

For your "serious" work, consider film. Big sheets of film. The bigger, the better. Black and white film still gives the best dynamic range and archival permanence.

A single piece of sheet film holds hundreds of megabytes of data, and doesn't have to live on a computer disk of any kind. Properly stored, it will last for centuries. You can scan it and print it whenever you like.

Scanners and printers are improving all the time, so be glad if you still have all your film images - even the 35mm Kodachrome slides people made decades ago.

Programs like Photoshop, allow us to perform a wide range of corrections and adjustments that are otherwise difficult and tedious in the darkroom. Combining analog capture and digital workflow, we get the best of both worlds.

The more digital "corrections" we make to our images, the more artificial they tend to look. Banding and gaps appear whenever we make a change. You can start out with a continuous-tone image but may you end up with something rather... different.

To make a digital image that looks as analog as possible - as smooth as possible - you should work in a 16-bit color-space, and if scanning, try to get things right, while scanning. Make as few subsequent corrections as possible. Here is a brief tutorial on How to Use the Epson 4990 Scanner, but it applies to any scanner you use.

For rich tonality, convert your black and white images to a "monochrome" appearance: the blacks are black, the whites are white, but the grays are varying shades of brown and gold. Monochrome images often have a greater sense of depth. This is especially true of portraits. Working in 16 bits per channel, you get superior richness and fidelity.

Many of the great classic photographers made monochrome images in the darkroom, and thus avoided the harsh and "gritty" quality of pure black and white. They used warm-toned paper, printed on Platinum and Palladium, and soaked their Silver prints in baths of Selenium, Gold, etc. Today, using modern digital methods, you can render each photograph with any colors you like, choosing the best approach for each image. There are many ways to do this on the computer, and some are better than others.

Every image deserves its own unique toning, and a 16-bit high-fidelity palette of shades. Visit GoodBye Quadtones for more information, and learn how to do this yourself.

"We strongly advise those desirous of doing artistic work to begin by studying tone." -- Peter Henry Emerson, 1889

When making prints from Large Format negatives, we down-size our images. An 11x14 image, printed at 360 dpi, requires 20 megapixels. With no compression, an 8-bit color image of that size takes around 60 megabytes. A scanned 4x5 image, 8-bit color, at 2400 spi, is around 330 megabytes. So when we make an 11x14, we down-size. We toss away data. The results are very good. If that sounds attractive to you, you're going to love Large Format.

I love the Sinar P view camera. You can easily locate a second-hand Sinar P on eBay, where there's an abundant supply of used Sinar equipment. That's where I found mine. The Sinar is what all the other view cameras would be... if they could. And a used one costs a fraction of what you pay for an entry-level DSLR or a new wooden field camera. I still have a lovely and ancient 5x7 Kodak 2D, a wooden field camera. The light weight and folding design makes it great for trekking over long distances - but for everything else, it's the Sinar.

Everything is geared. Every adjustment is smooth and silky. There are very few locking mechanisms, since the gears are so well made, they just stay where you leave them. Superb Swiss craftsmanship !

The Sinar has asymmetric or yaw-free movements. It stays in focus when you tilt, swing, rise, and shift. With other view cameras, you have to tilt, refocus, then raise or lower the camera - over and over again. With the Sinar, you just focus, and dial-in the adjustments until everything is right. It's heavenly !

The Sinar is a modular system camera. If you want to add or replace things, you can. Turn your 4x5 camera into a 5x7 or 8x10 camera ? No problem. Just replace the bellows and the back. Do a quick search for conversion kit (or format kit) on eBay. The kits are smaller than whole cameras, and because Sinar is/was the workhorse of choice for so many professionals, there is usually plenty of used equipment to choose from, in excellent condition. Igor's Camera Exchange carries a lot of Sinar equipment and expertise.

"This $300 used 4 x 5 is sharper than a new $3,000 Hasselblad and worlds beyond a $5,000 Leica, Contax, Canon or Nikon." -- Ken Rockwell

Most good calibration software can remind you to re-calibrate on some regular basis. Some professional design studios will do it every day. They can't afford to waste the time and materials otherwise.

To calibrate your monitor, use ColorEyes Display Pro software. Not only does it do a superb job at calibration, it lets you adjust the brightness (luminance) of your monitor, to more closely match the properties of your printing paper. Most software won't do that, so you end up wasting time and money. The people at Integrated Color are extremely friendly and helpful !

One reason that Mac is so good, is that they all ship with 2-headed graphics cards, so support for a second monitor is built-in. Not only can you use a second monitor by merely plugging it in, but OS X gives you full native support for calibrating each monitor independently. I use an iMac, and an older Samsung monitor that is actually better in terms of viewing angle and evenness. For general viewing, I use the iMac, but when it's time to make prints, I do my final Photoshop work on the Samsung. Needless to say, ColorEyes Display Pro supports that all, effortlessly.

Now print it on your printer, and see if the final result looks like what you see on your monitor. Ideally, they should match, very closely. If they don't match, then perhaps your monitor is off, or your printer needs to be profiled... Probably both !

Believe it or not, you actually need your own custom profile for every combination of printer/paper/ink that you use. The same ink has a unique response to every different kind of paper - and every printer is unique. They are mechanical devices, subject to variation. Just like musical instruments, they need to be tuned up, all the time.

Printer manufacturers like Epson now make profiles for their own printers/inks/papers freely available for download, and tools like Photoshop allow you to print your images with the profile of your choice. These are not as good as getting your own profile, but they're a great place to start, and you can't beat the price ! It's hard to get things right, even with all the right tools. Without a calibrated workflow, it's almost impossible !

For best results, get someone like CHROMiX to make profiles for you. If you only print with one paper, you only have to get one profile made when you get a new printer.

If you don't want to have a custom profile made, then at least get one of the profiles from the public domain. Thanks to InkJetArt.com for the test image, which comes from Bill Atkinson.

Even if your monitor has been recently calibrated, and you are printing with a custom profile for your printer/paper/ink, you may still end up struggling to match your prints to what you see on your monitor. Why ? Because LCD monitors are much brighter than paper, and manufacturers are making monitors brighter with each new generation: 150 cd/m2 (candles per square meter) or more. For editing photos, we need somewhere around 80 cmd/m2 . We need to be able to turn the monitor down to paper-brightness, and then calibrate it.

Most monitor calibration software will automatically turn the brightness all the way back up, even if you have it turned all the way down. You can turn it down after you calibrate it, but then what's the point ? Your monitor is no longer calibrated. One solution is to use Color Eyes Display Pro, which lets you set the brightness down as part of the calibration process. It keeps it down, and calibrates the monitor at that brightness.

Here's a nice article on the Shutterbug web site, entitled Are Your Prints Too Dark ? Here's another one, by Pat Herold of CHROMiX. It's called My Printer Is Too Dark and it's on the CHROMiX Color Wiki.

"If you do not set up your system so the white of the paper and the white of the monitor are as close as possible, you will not get a good screen-to-print match". -- Pat Herold of CHROMiX

If you're a graphics professional, you probably know that the WebKit Rendering Engine is the only one which supports the presentation of images which contain "embedded color profiles". With embedded profiles, you specify the color space of your image, confident that whoever sees it, will see the colors exactly as you intended them. Standards become very important when you want to print your images, or view them on a variety of devices. Business would be impossible without them. If you want to see how this works in practice, have a look at the Web Browser Color Management Tutorial.

Until recently, the only browsers that supported accurate viewing of graphics ran on the Apple platforms: Safari and OmniWeb. Now that Apple has ported Safari to Windows, you can get the same complete viewing experience elsewhere. (Google's Chrome browser uses the WebKit rendering engine, and supports profiles on the Mac, but as of Feb 2010, has still not provided support for profiles on Windows.)

Firefox now supports Color Management Since version 3.5. If you don't have that version, you can upgrade to it.

Want to see if your web browser passes the industry standard Acid3 Browser Test ? Click here. As of December 2009, only Safari and Chrome pass the test - because they use the same underlying engine, WebKit.

Notice the diaphragm in these vintage lenses, and how many leaves they have. When you close down the lens, the aperture is almost circular. This helps retain lovely out of focus rendering - something overlooked in many modern lenses. Nowadays, most have 5 or 6 - or possibly 8 blades. When everything in an image is in focus, diaphragm shape doesn't matter. But for portraits and close work, having a round diaphragm makes a difference.

Lenses are like musical instruments. Just as each instrument makes a distinctive sound, each lens design makes images with its own special look. As with musical instruments, many of the best designs were worked out long before the age of computers. While modern lenses tend to be smaller, lighter, or give a wider circle of coverage, many of the old classics make images with a more pleasing "feel". Virtually all of my recent work has been made with vintage lenses.

A venerated choice of portrait photographers, Heliar lenses are as tack-sharp as most modern lenses, but when shot at wide apertures, they render out-of-focus regions with a special quality. Designed in the year 1900, the Heliar has outstanding bokeh, the Japanese term for "blur". Whatever you may call it, the Heliar was designed for it - a long time ago.

This image nicely demonstrates the unique "signature" of the Heliar. Made on 4x5 film with an uncoated 150 mm f/4.5 Voigtlander Braunschweig Heliar, which probably dates from the 1920's or 1930's, the edges of the rose and the vase fade smoothly into the background. The photo was made with the lens wide-open. When the Heliar is stopped down to smaller openings, it becomes like any other modern lens: sharp, sharp, sharp. Back when Kodak set the standard, many of their best Ektar lenses were based on the Heliar design. (Their Commercial Ektars were f/6.3 Tessars). Here is another example, made with a vintage 210mm Heliar lens on 4x5 film.

Another classic design from the early 1900's, the Tessar is also very sharp, with lovely blur. Were it not for its limited circle of coverage, there might have been no need for any other design, after the year 1902. Some contemporary lenses are still modeled on the Zeiss Tessar - including the one in my Sony digital camera. Not bad for someone using little more than a slide rule and a pencil !

This image was made with a vintage Bausch and Lomb Tessar lens that most people wouldn't even consider for a paper weight. It came with an old wooden Kodak 5x7 camera that I purchased at an auction. Just as an experiment, I had it mounted on a lens board by SK Grimes. Surprise: it's just as good as my best modern lenses.

Although "Tessar" is the name of a lens design, only licensed manufacturers were permitted to use it as brand name. Other companies manufactured similar lenses under different trade names: Leitz Elmar, Schneider Xenar, Agfa Solinar, Rodenstock Ysar, Kodak Ektar, Yashica Yashinon 80mm, and Minolta Rokkor 75mm.

This image shows off the lovely bokeh of the Tessar. It was made on 4x5 film with a 250 mm f/4.5 Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar barrel lens, whose diaphragm has 18 blades. Note how sharp the flowers are, compared to the leaves in the background - and notice how the leaves are rendered: it's hard to describe, and it's hard to get this look with many modern lenses. Here is another example, made on 4x5 with the same vintage lens.

For further insights and great photos shot with a wide variety of vintage lenses, see the work of Jim Galli.

Some of the finest lenses ever made, are vintage lenses. Many of them are found in old shutters, or even mounted "in barrel" like the lens on the right. Barrel lenses have no shutter of their own, saving on weight and money. Even today, a large number of modern lenses are available in barrel.

The Sinar Shutter lets you shoot with vintage and barrel lenses. It fits onto the front standard of Sinar cameras, just behind the lens board. You set the shutter speed with the dial at the top. The shutter is self-cocking, and exposure times go from 1/60 to 8 seconds. Of course, you can still use lenses that are mounted in a standard shutter if you like: just leave one shutter open, and use the other.

Favorite Monochrome Films

You will love Kodak TMAX 400 and Ilford FP4+ and HP5+ films. When developed in PyroCat HD, these films have long straight response curves, which means they give realistic detail throughout the tonal scale. They also have a very linear response to changes in development time, which makes them easy to use in both high and low contrast lighting.

If you are familiar with the Zone System, this means that they are easy to "expand" and "contract" with changes in development. If you use BTZS, this means, well... you know already. These film/developer combinations give great detail in shadows and highlights, and with Pyro's grain-masking stain effect, the already fine grain (rarely an issue for large format) gets even finer - making them a good choice for roll film as well. Ilford offers their film in a wider variety of sizes than Kodak.

Testing Black and White Film

Most people look for the ideal film, or the ideal developer. What they don't understand, is that every film behaves differently, in every different developer. So what we need to explore, are film/developer combinations.

Every film/developer combination has its own personality: effective film speed, contrast, grain, etc. Every photographer has their own water, thermometer, method of agitation. Scanners, enlargers, and lenses all differ. If you work in the darkroom, then your choice of paper and paper developer contribute to the flavor of the final image. If you scan and print digitally, then your choice of printer, paper and ink will give you different results.

For beautiful images, it's important to find out the effective film speed and developing times of each film/developer combination - using your equipment from beginning to end. Here's a short article entitled Testing Black and White Film, based on what I have learned from my teachers, and a few intervening decades of experience. This method is quick and cheap, and doesn't require any fancy equipment.

For an introduction to Pyrocat HD developer, see Sandy King's articles here and here on the Unblinking Eye web site. Since Pyrocat is composed of two parts that are mixed just before development, the shelf-life is very good. If you plan to purchase some, get the kind which uses Glycol instead of water. With Glycol, the shelf-life is extended even further. Sandy King says 6 months, but that's a conservative number. You can purchase Pyrocat HD pre-mixed from Photographer's Formulary. See my links page for other great resources on photographic chemistry and supplies.

The formulas for Pyrocat developers are in the public domain, a wonderful gesture on the part of Professor King. Pyrocat is very inexpensive, but I mix my own, using supplies from Artcraft Chemicals. When you mix your own, it's even more affordable.

Helpful Tip: not included with the Pyrocat HD documentation: You can add a small amount of Sodium Sulfite to Pyrocat HD, just before use, to eliminate any trace of magenta color-cast from the stain. I find that 3 grams per liter is sufficient. See this discussion on the Large Format Forum.

Another Helpful Tip: not included with the instructions: You can make your own stop Odorless Sop Bath using Citric Acid. The Kodak SB-8 formula calls for 15 grams per liter, or 1/2 oz per quart.

You can use a plain water stop bath, and mix your own Fixer, using the traditional T-3 Alkaline Fixer formula. You can easily make your own washing aid: just use a teaspoon of Sodium Sulfite per liter of water, and toss it when you are done. It's much more fun, and far less expensive, to mix your own chemistry. Many of the classic formulas are available in books, and on-line at sites like Jack's Photographic and Chemistry Site.

You can scan your negatives with an affordable flatbed scanner like the Epson 4990, and the Epson drivers which ship with the scanner. A 4x5 inch negative, scanned at 2400 spi (samples per inch), gives a 115 megapixel image. A 5x7 inch negative, scanned at the same resolution, gives a 200 megapixel file. Is that enough ? At such high resolution, image fidelity is very good, and the tones are... rich ! Tiny JPG files, viewed on the monitor, just can't convey the feeling. An 11x14 image made from one of these negatives is truly lovely.

To get the most out of the Epson scanner, use the Variable Height Mounting Station from BetterScanning. It lets you place the film exactly in the plane of focus. It keeps a space between your film and the scanner glass, and uses special Anti-Newton's Ring glass.

Yes, there are better scanners out there. According to experts, the 4990 scanner really only delivers around 1600 samples per inch, even when you set it to 2400. If you set it to 3200, you still don't get any more detail: just a much bigger file. So the Epson is good enough to make a roughly 5X enlargement, and still retain critical sharpness. This means you can make a nice 6x9 inch print from 35mm, an 11x14 print from Medium Format, and a 16x20 and larger, from 4x5 and beyond. Since an 11x14 print is only twice the size of a 5x7 negative, scanning 5x7 film at 2400 spi is... wonderful. That's what makes the difference between merely adequate resolution, and gorgeous High Definition - having so much extra data, that we exceed the capacity of the eye. The eyes love that.

Make minor adjustments in Adobe Photoshop, and print on an Epson R2400 printer. Epson UltraChrome inks are rated to last a long time, when stored or displayed properly. On a truly glossy paper such as Epson Premium Glossy, the image quality rivals the best Silver-based papers you will ever use.

Graphics professionals know that if your monitor isn't calibrated, "what you see", may not be "what you get". To calibrate your monitors, use an Eye-One Display 2 with Color Eyes Display Pro software, which you can purchase from CHROMiX. They have a great newsletter, know everything about digital imaging, and are extremely friendly and helpful.

A 4x5 image, scanned in 48-bit Color at 2400 spi, give you a 660 MB file... and that's before you make any adjustments ! If you work with large image files - but don't have a super computer with tons of RAM - here's a great video tutorial from West Coast Imaging. Called the Guide File Workflow, it shows you how to work with a small copy of your image. You perform all corrections as adjustment layers on the small "guide file" version of your image.

The "guide file" can be as small as you like - a tiny fraction of the original size - and your humble machine will have no problem with it. When you are done, you transfer the adjustment layers to the original. With this technique, an older machine with less RAM can still be used for working on scans of 4x5, 5x7, and 8x10 negatives.

This tripod is neither the largest, smallest, heaviest, or lightest - but the Bogen 3021 BN Pro is an affordable all-around solution for holding up Medium Format, 4x5, 5x7, or 8x10 cameras. It's built strong enough, and light enough. It's not made of carbon fiber, but unless you are a trekker... who cares !

Have a look at the Manfrotto 3275 410 tripod head. It lets you make geared fine adjustments in 3 directions, independently. It's small, light, and strong. It's a treat to make adjustments this way: there is no drift.

Here's a cold-weather tip: wrap some pipe insulation around the legs, and hold it down with some inexpensive duct tape. This will keep your hands warm when you carry the tripod. Pipe insulation is very inexpensive, but you will find this very helpful in winter time. It also helps if you want to carry the tripod on your shoulders: it's soft on the body.

Some photographers buy expensive custom cases and packs for their gear. Others prefer a canvas tote bag, and an affordable insulated beer cooler. The Sinar P folds down small enough to go into the tote-bag, upside down. The Sinar is built like a tank. The only thing it needs, is a carrying strap, and that's what the tote bag is for. Everything else goes into the beer-cooler, which has a nice sturdy strap to go over your shoulder. The beer cooler keeps the equipment cool in summer, and warm in winter... How does it know ?

Even more importantly, it looks like a beer-cooler, to anyone who might see it in the car. Some people like to show off the brand name of their camera, as a status symbol. Others prefer the safety of their gear looking like nothing more enticing than a case of beer or soft-drinks.

If you look closely, you'll see that the camera has a Sinar Shutter on the front, and a blank home-made wooden lens board to protect the shutter blades. The Sinar Shutter adds very little weight to the camera, all things considered - but makes it possible to use barrel lenses in the field. It's generally the film-holders and large lenses which add bulk to your gear. Note the pipe insulation on the tripod legs, held on with duct tape. It too is very light in terms of additional weight, but vital when shooting in cold weather.

Some people purchase expensive custom equipment to wash their film. Nowadays, you can construct your own washer out of inexpensive and widely available materials.

A Dish Rack Film Washer costs only a few dollars. Your film just soaks, in a bunch of standing water. There is no need for a fancy syphon or drain system: Just let the film soak, and replace the water now and then. Save the water, and let diffusion do the work for you. You can use a similar technique to wash roll film too.

Photo trays are great for developing prints, but you can do things better - and cheaper - with items available almost anywhere. Plastic Food Containers are more affordable, use less chemistry, prevent scratches, and require less room. Once you try them, you will wonder why you ever used traditional "Photo Trays".

The Pentax Digital Spot Meter lets you directly measure the reflected light from within a 1-degree circle. It makes it effortless to use the Zone System for determining perfect exposure and development with precision and confidence. With an instrument like this, you can measure the bright and dark areas of subjects from miles away if necessary.

It's hard to tell how someone could have metered this scene any other way. Where the camera was standing, the sky was overcast. In the distance, the morning fog was clearing, and light was breaking through the clouds. There was no way to walk up to the distant barn and take a reading. The light where the camera was standing, was entirely different, so you couldn't point a meter at a white sheet of paper, even if you had one. With a 1-degree spot meter at hand, getting the right exposure was trivial and instantaneous - fortunate for me, because the light was changing all the time, and the clouds were moving quickly.

When shooting a subject like this one, it was easy to meter the individual brightness values of the water, the rocks, and the boats, and make sure they were all correctly exposed to convey a genuine feeling of light, without losing any detail in the low or high values. If I had to give up all my "extra" equipment and use only one lens, I'd want to keep this meter. That's how important it is. To learn more about the Zone System, read Zone VI Workshop by my mentor Fred Picker, and The Negative, by his teacher Ansel Adams.

Once you start using something like this ATN Viper Night Vision Monocular, you will have a wonderful time developing, loading, and unloading black and white film in the dark. You can see everything, without fogging the film.

You can perform Development by Inspection (DBI), not in the old fashioned way (where you get only a brief peek under a dim green bulb), but throughout the whole process: development, stop bath, fix, etc. You can do tray development with ease, with far fewer scratches, and with total confidence that things are "turning out right". It also helps a lot when loading roll-film.

There are many kinds of Infra Red Night Vision viewing devices, and this one is simple and affordable. You can get one new from Optics Plus on eBay - for much less than list price. It's the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Thanks to Boston-based Architectural Photographer Peter Lewitt, you can see the manual for the Fidelity Calumet Digital Shutter Tester. The Shutter Tester allows you to test the shutters on a variety of cameras and lenses. Click here to read the manual.

If you like to control the visual quality of your photos, and you acquire equipment from others, it's nice to know how close it is to the correct speed.

When shooting in Black and White, many people have been taught to use a Red or an Orange filter, to darken the sky and clear the haze. Sometimes, this can be the ideal solution, but rarely. Why ? Because red and orange filters not only remove blue light from the sky: they also darken the green light in vegetation.

Unless you want a vivid look with ink-black skies, it's better to use a polarizer - and perhaps a weaker filter. With a polarizer, you can control the amount of darkening, while maintaining a normal balance of colors. It's great for color photography for that reason. If you need even more richness in the clouds, then reach for a medium yellow filter, or a light orange filter, and place it on top of the polarizer. That's how this image was made. Note the tones in the grass and the trees: the yellow filter has actually enhanced the details. If you really want to go all the way, then a red filter, or a red filter + polarizer, will give you the strongest results.

You will appreciate these lenses for their compact size, light weight, extreme sharpness, and wide circle of coverage. That's what you need for images of landscape and architecture, especially when shooting in the field. This image, taken with a Fujinon 300A (see below) would probably not have been possible with a vintage design, for all these reasons. To include the top of the building, extreme rise was required. Because the lens has such generous coverage, even the lightning rods at the top of the building, are tack-sharp in the negative.

The Fujinon 240 A is my favorite modern lens. It is part of Fuji's "A" series: highly color-corrected process lenses, performing superbly at very close range as well as distance. This 4x5 photo was taken with a Fujinon 240 lens. In the 12x15 print, you can clearly see details in the legs and wings of the fly on the lower right.

It weighs only 245 grams and takes 52 mm filters, yet it has a 336 mm circle of coverage: enough to function as a portrait lens on 4x5, a normal lens for 5x7, a wide-angle for 8x10, and an excellent close-up lens for all 3. This lens is so small, it's a delight to carry into the field, and is ideal for portraits in 4x5.  It does nicely for 4x5 landscapes too.

Like the others in the A series, the Fujinon 300 A is a "super-apochromatic" process lens, and is remarkably small and light, considering its performance. It has a generous 420 mm circle of coverage. It takes 55 mm filters, and weighs only 410 grams: much less than comparable lenses for the 8x10 format, for which it serves as a normal lens.

When used on 4x5 or 5x7 cameras, it becomes a wonderful longer lens for portraits, and gives tremendous accommodation for view camera movements (Check out this vertical rise). It is also superb lens when used close-up on any format. This lens was discontinued by Fuji, but you can see it listed in this 1981 catalog.

This 4x5 image was taken with the 300A, with a lot of rise. A small section from the top shows plenty of detail, way off-center. This portrait of Richard Ritter was made with the 300A on 5x7. So was this one.

The Fujinon 450C is a compact lens with long reach and tremendous coverage. Mounted in a Copal #1 shutter, it weighs only 270 grams, takes 52 mm filters, yet covers 486 mm, enough for the 11x14 format. A nice portrait lens for 8x10, a long lens for 5x7, it's a very long lens for 4x5, where it renders images with a more flattened, abstract look.

This 4x5 image was taken with the 450C, with a fair amount of rise, at a great distance from the subject. Here is a detail section of the negative. If my scanner were better, you could probably see even more. It also makes a nice medium length lens for 8x10 landscapes.

Concerning the Rodenstock 150 APO-Sironar-S, noted lens expert Kerry Thalmann writes: Out of all the lenses I own, this is the last one I would ever part with (you'll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands) . Many photographers agree that there is something special about this lens. This 4x5 image was made with a Rodenstock 150 lens. The tonality and detail is...delicious.

Here is a detail section of the original. As you can see, this lens is so sharp, it's crazy ! It weighs only 230 grams, and takes tiny 49 mm filters. Yet, it covers 231 mm - enough to cover 5x7 as a wide lens, and plenty for 4x5 as a normal lens. It does nicely for close-up shots as well.

The Fujinon 400T is a telephoto lens for 4x5: even though it gives a 400 mm effect, it requires only 250 mm of bellows draw. It works great on a Tachihara wooden field camera which was otherwise limited to 300 mm lenses of "normal" design. Mounted in a Copal #1 shutter, it takes 67 mm filters and weighs 700 grams.

This 4x5 image was made with the 400T, at a great distance from the subject. Here is a detail section of the negative. Here is another one taken with this lens: sharp as a tack. If you want a long lens for 4x5, but your camera has limited bellows extension, then this is a great option.

The Fujinon 180A is a slightly-longer-than-normal lens for 4x5, and is very small and light. Mounted in a Copal #0 shutter, it takes tiny 46 mm filters and weighs only 170 grams. Since the A-series lenses are optimized for close work, It's great to make 4x5 negatives of flowers and leaves.

Keep in mind that to make an image at 1:1 size, you need bellows draw equivalent to 2x the length of the lens. So unless you have unlimited bellows extension, a shorter lens can actually be better than a longer one. This 4x5 image was taken with the 180A, and prints out much larger than life.

Many folding cameras were manufactured during this era, by such respected companies as Zeiss and Voigtlander, but in my humble opinion, Agfa seems to have come up with the most attractive design. Hold one in your hands and you'll know: they're the BMW of folders. These photos were made with my 6x9 Agfa Record II camera, and these with my 6x6 Isolette.

The Agfa Record produces 6x9 images, and the Agfa Isolette shoots 6x6 on the same 120 roll film. To advance the film, you watch though a little red window on the back, and wind until the next number appears. Then you cock the shutter.

The shutters on these cameras are almost inaudible. Depending on the model, you get manual focus, rangefinder focus, or even coupled rangefinder focus in later versions. Many models have double-exposure prevention, which locks the shutter release until the film has been advanced to the next frame.

Some shutters have built-in self-timers, which are perfect for making exposures with no vibration - and for including yourself in a group portrait. Newer models have flash synchronization, and can sometimes be purchased with original leather case, still in good shape.

Scanning at 2400 dpi with an affordable consumer scanner such as the Epson 4990, a 6x6 image comes to around 25 megapixels. A 6x9 image gives around 40 megapixels. With a dedicated film scanner such as the Nikon Super COOLSCAN 9000 ED, you can get much better image quality, and even more megapixels. The Nikon can scan at 4000 spi, down to the grain of the finest film, and get everything there is to see.

Here is a sample image, taken with an Agfa Record II, with its 3-element 105mm Apotar lens, a classic Cooke-Triplet design. The film is medium-grain TMax 400, and the picture was taken hand-held. The detail section is taken from the whole image, scanned with an Epson 4990 at its setting of "2400 ppi". It has been enlarged to a size of 14x26 inches at 300 dpi.

You can see the screw heads on the sign, even though the photo was taken from a great distance... hand-held ! For best results, use a fine-grained film like TMax 100 or Fuji Acros, place the camera on a tripod or a monopod, and shoot the lens at f/8 or f/11, where it is sharpest. (Most lenses are at their best, when stopped down just a few stops from wide-open).

The top-of-the-line Agfa Record III model came with a better lens, the 4-element coated Solinar, and had its own built-in uncoupled rangefinder. The Solinar lens was designed to give better results for color images, but as this sample photo suggests, even the 3-element coated Apotar on the Record II, is plenty sharp !

A great place to learn more about these cameras is Medium Format in Your Pocket. Jurgen Kreckel is the fellow from whom many purchase their folding cameras. He's a great guy, and restores them to perfection. His web site shows a great variety of folding cameras, along with a gallery of sample images taken by the cameras. See Vintage Folding Cameras

Among Medium Format folders from the 1950's, the camera with the best optics was the 6x9 Voigtlander Bessa II with Color Heliar lens. Rolleiflex 6x6 cameras of that era had terrific optics, but they were not folding cameras. Add to that the additional enlargement (and subsequent loss of image quality) required for a 6x6 to match a 6x9, and the Bessa was a champion of its day. Even by modern standards, the Color Heliar lens is quite good.

If you want to get the absolute best optics in a highly portable Medium Format camera, go for the Mamiya 6 and 7 cameras, which were made in 6x6 and 6x7 formats respectively. They were manufactured right into the 21st Century. The lenses for those Mamiya cameras are among the best lenses ever made, almost optically perfect ! With an ultra-fine-grained film like TMAX 100 or Fuji Acros (exposed at ISO 50), you can make images of outstanding clarity and fidelity. When scanned at high resolution, these cameras can match the quality of large format.

Considering that the Mamiya cameras come with a built-in light meter and coupled rangefinder focusing, they are really just as portable as their ancestors: the folding cameras of the 1950's. They may not be as... cute as the folding cameras, but with their ability to use longer and shorter lenses, they represent the Summum Bonum of Medium Format.

Here's something interesting: The new 6x7 Voigtlander Bessa III a modern folding camera with coupled rangefinder, Heliar lens, and 21st century precision. It will take 120 and 220.