Category Archives: Hardware

Stuff

Going Big

Cameras

Well, I screwed out my courage and plonked down the huge sum of $300 for a 50 year old 4×5 camera, a Graflex Crown Graphic. It’s a logical migration in a life which started with 35mm, then saw 6×6 come on the scene some 15 years ago. The latter proved ideal when 16x prints were expected rather than hoped for. Yes, you can get there with a Leica but everything has to be just about dead right for a perfect print that large. On occasion I can make a Big Print where you cannot tell whether 35mm or 6×6 was used, but not always. So when detail in the details matters the Mamiya 6 or Rollei 6003 comes out – the latter somewhat reluctantly, it should be added, owing to its great weight. Anyway, the Mamiya’s lenses are better, if less varied.

I started thinking about Going Big over the past couple of years. Not wanting to spend a fortune on what is probably a dying medium, I nonetheless desired something a little better than a home made pinhole camera for my tentative entry to the world of black headcloths (OK, my old green Scottish wool pullover which is always with me, in my case) and de rigeur tripods. Further, a growing interest in abstract nature photography, spurred by Eliot Porter’s great work, meant that definition in the final image would have to be good. Really good.

I was so completely clueless about the world of large format photography, when I started research I had no idea what a film holder was, and little more than a basic appreciation of the physics of camera movements, tilts, shift and so on. The World Wide Web soon fixed that, especially the splendid site at Large Format photography where many selfless contributors offer a fine education in the basics.

So where to get this contradiction in terms, a top quality, cheap large format camera? Simple. I did what many before me have done when dipping a toe in the waters, and purchased a Graflex Crown Graphic, beloved by many press photographers in the 1940s and 1950s. My $300 got me a pristine camera, a 135mm Schneider Xenar ‘standard’ lens (like a 40mm on 35mm film) and a couple of wooden film holders, each holding two sheets of film. So now I can go on the road and take 4 pictures before ‘reloading’ in a changing bag. Not a big deal. I take few pictures in any case and filmholders can be had for $5-10 each if I need more.

The quality of the camera is a superb meeting of form and function. First, it is unbelievably light, owing to the extensive use of aluminum where it matters. The body is wood covered with leatherette. It is also amazingly compact when folded up. Believe it or not it has a coupled rangefinder with a separate, parallax corrected, viewfinder. And did I mention the night focusing device? So you thought infrared focusing aids started with digital cameras? How about an internal, battery illuminated bulb which, when switched on, projects a light beam on the subject through the rangefinder, alignment of the two beams denoting sharp focus? And, the whole thing being industrial grade, needless to say the bulb in my Crown Graphic worked first time, needing only fresh batteries. It had never been used. The manufacturer’s dummy batteries, in the form of two wooden dowels, resided in the camera on receipt!

It was a matter of two minutes to remove the rangefinder housing, adjust the rangefinder for accuracy and proper image coincidence, and a drop of blue Loctite later I had a focusing aid every bit as good as those to be found on pre-M Leicas. A gentle cleaning of the glasses and mirrors and everything is now crystal clear.

So now I have three Leicas – my M2 German original, my Texas Leica (Mamiya 6) and my Godzilla Leica. Having splashed out a further $5 on a cable release, I’m now wondering where I hid my tripod. I’m trying the whole thing out today at my Top Secret location off gorgeous Highway One. And no, I’m not telling where that is.

Where should the money go?

Cameras

There used to be an old rule of thumb with hi-fi gear back in the days of the long playing record that 50% of your budget for an outfit should be for the loudspeakers, these being the weakest link in the chain. Of course, as with photographers, many disregarded this sound guideline, if you pardon the pun, and spent most of their money on the pick-up arm and turntable.

The assumption underlying what follows is that the goal is for prints which are made at a magnification of 12x or more on a consistent basis.

I think there a version of this “rule” which is equally applicable to expenditure on photographic equipment. If we break the process into two components – the front end (camera, film or digital card, lens) and back end (enlarger or scanner and printer) then I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that most serious photographers spend 80% of their budget on the front end.

This is completely wrong, especially for film-based photography where processing is much more important than with digital. The best way I can think of solving the equation is to look at the back end first, because there is less to choose from there.

A dedicated film scanner for 35mm or medium format, I mean a good dedicated film scanner, will run some $1,000 (35mm) or $2,000 (medium format). For that you get a top quality lens backed by robust mechanicals and software to remove dust and scratches without significantly affecting image quality. In the wet darkroom, the cost is similar – you need a good lens and enlarger. A good enlarger runs $1,000 to $2,000 with a lens adding $200-300. Sure you can spend less but you get a poor screen, slow speed and modest storage. The digital back-end worker has to add a computer for another $2,000, Photoshop for $800 and a printer for $350 – $600, the latter for a wide-carriage version.

So your back-end for top quality exhibition work with a film front end runs $2,000 to $5,000, with the latter price point easily reached if you work in medium format. The worker using a digital front end saves money on the film scanner, as none is needed.

Yet how often do you read film users saying “My flat bed scanner does just fine on all film sizes”, this invariably written by someone who has never seen a good scan from a dedicated film scanner? Their mega dollar front end is being processed though mush. Quality in, garbage out.

So, with a back-end running $2,000 to $5,000 that leaves the quality oriented photographer a like sum, adopting the 50/50 Rule, for the front end. That sort of sum buys you just about anything you need.

Moral of the story? A cheap back end makes your camera into a Box Brownie, even if it says Hasselblad on the label.

On Leica cameras

Cameras, Lenses

Beware of the Leica camera. It starts as a romance. Soon, it is an affair. Before you know it, flirtation blossoms into passion. Finally, it settles into infatuation. The four stages of a lifetime relationship.

Someone one asked me why I use a Leica when all around use an SLR. Why film when digital is the standard? Fast, instant results, low cost. My glib reaction was not unlike that of the Ferrari driver. “If you have to ask, you do not get it.” But that is no answer.

In truth, it is hard to explain an irrational attraction to this wonderful machine, the Leica camera. After all, it just takes pictures, right? It cannot do close-ups, right? And what is that you say? You have to process then scan the film? Ugh! Worse, like all infatuations, it can get dangerously expensive, no?

Then again, why even bother with this antiquated technology, unless it is some sort of affectation, a preference to live in the past, some perverse desire just to be different?

The SLR is superior in so many ways. A huge range of lenses. You bet. Automatic focus? Naturally. Shake reduction? You got it. Extreme zoom range? But of course. Macro capability? Every one has it. Motor drive? Would that be three or six shots per second, sir? Digital? Hard to get anything else today. Several hundred or thousand pictures a roll? Standard. Instant gratification? Naturally. 5, 10 or 15 megapixels? Take your choice.

However, maybe yours is a quieter world, eschewing the crass vernacular that is modern life. You value performance and results, not promises and looks. You appreciate iPods and cell phones as much as the next person. They are just not you.

Then you have one of those flashbacks. And all is clear as memories created with that ever present, sweet, speedy, silent Leica come flooding back.

Spring in Paris was especially welcoming that year, the air with that indefinable smell. Beauty, culture, women, food. The couture attired lady and her cocker glance up at you for the briefest of moments, unaware that their image has already been recorded. The spectator looks curiously at her friend, the latter surveying the nude on the wall of the Louvre with unusual interest, captured in an instant. The morning promenaders in the Jardin de Tuileries caught just so. A fraction of a second later and the scene is gone, its denizens no longer perfectly arranged like some latter day Seurat canvas.

Summer in San Francisco. The old man makes his way along the narrow sun lit street. Echoes of Edward Hopper’s lonely city abound in the lazy afternoon sun. He does not even know you took his picture, yet you were all of a few feet away. The little boy in the back of the pick-up in Union Square, lost in wonder, is another easy catch, before the swirl of traffic whisks him away. Did you take that? No, it took itself.

Autumn in New York. The sky has the pallor of cold cream. You are on walkabout, just for fun. Maybe something interesting will crop up. Then there it is. The huge Yogi Bear balloon overhead. It’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Click. You are enjoying your warming drink in one of those cozy Madison Avenue coffee shops, when a red flash catches the corner of your eye. No time to think. The soft, instantaneous camera shutter is released even before the viewfinder is at the eye. That blurred umbrella will forever say Autumn in New York. Clouds of steam emanate seemingly from his head, as the rain-coated man makes his way down Park Avenue, shoulders hunched, hands buried deep in his Burberry to stave off the cold. You take the picture without even thinking, focusing a matter of a moment, exposure second nature. You are in direct contact with what you see. No mirror, no motors, no flashing lights. Just a simple viewfinder. I am a camera.

Winter in London. The light is, well, London light. Gloom, rain, depression. Yet click, the girl in the railcar is caught, the iris unthinkingly turned to full aperture, the shutter as slow as you dare, too quiet to arrest her slumber. Hope that one comes out, you think. And of course it does. The little boy marches behind the band down Pall Mall, stretching his legs as far as he can. A young man in the making. Click. He is yours for ever. The dowager outside the Rolls Royce showroom gives you an icy stare. How dare you, she is thinking. Too late. Got her!

That ubiquitous Leica, quiet, unassuming, its amateur looks aiding the whole deception of invisibility, its petite size making sure that it is your constant companion, it is a machine that transcends time and technology. Not very good at lots of things at which its marvelous technological superiors excel. One day it, too, will be digital, with all the advantages that storage medium offers. And it will be fast. But it will never pretend to be a Swiss Army Knife for it knows one thing.

It is there for the moment that it alone can capture. And it is always with you.