is LF really complicated?

[2F/2F]

I wouldn't call it more complicated in the way of being much harder to understand...perhaps in the "more involved" meaning of the word. You need to be "on it" all the time or your shots don't come out at all. It is rather unforgiving of user error. The technical things that really matter (understanding light and metering, for example) are the same across all formats. You don't have to worry about the exposure compensation unless you are focusing on a close subject, and even then, the formula is simple (one act of subtraction, one act of division and one act of multiplication), and there are ways (including gizmos) that let you avoid plugging numbers while working.

[Willie Jan]

Life is complicated too.

If you see the quality once, you're lost...
A single lens can be used from landscape until macro by just extending the bellow. With MF you have a minimum distance. tilt,shift etc.. can be used to adjust your image. But it's heavier and slower than MF...

[Steve Smith]

This is all a really good point. While trying to make things simple, modern technology can create complexity beyond what we are really capable of dealing with.

Edwin Land, inventor of Polaroid instant film, promoted "simplicity through complexity". i.e. using complex design and manufacture to make the user interface as simple as possible. This was true of his Polaroid cameras as they were easy to operate.

Modern designers of all electronic cameras might think that they are doing the same thing but they are not so much hiding the complexity, rather they make it all user adaptable by putting in multiple layers of menus.


Steve.

[Ian Grant]

Barry, there's nothing remotely complex using a LF camera, however it's well worth spending an hour or so with an experienced LF user, it's far easier to see and grasp things like movements with guidance & practice than reading books etc.

As others say you can mark the bellows extension/exposure factors on the camera and it's very straight forward.

Ian

[jp80874]

A different approach. Goal orientation. Look at a good contact print, 8x10 or larger. If you can see and enjoy that quality, the work to get there is nothing compared to the reward.

On the other hand the formulas are nothing compared to having to carry a big camera and that stuff a mile or two in a babyjogger.

John Powers

[olwick]

I think for some applications 4x5 is excellent. It slows you down so it makes one see differently. I like cook so I see it like cooking from scratch with a stove verses microwaving a tv dinner. One is more an art and the other is just do what is necessary to get the job done to eat.

Outstanding analogy!

[stradibarrius]

Wow, thanks for all of the encouragement!!! The APUG community is by FAR the best forum I have ever been a member of. My RB67 doesn't have any gizmos or batteries and it has bellows but I have never figured any factors for that. I keep thinking I should understand it more but it never seems to matter really.
I love the slower approach and hate digital things trying to out think me all the time.
I have basically worked out the trade and hope to have the whole kit next week sometime.
I understand exposure and metering. That is the same for any format as someone pointed out. I was just afraid that I would need a slide rule to calculate the angle of the dangle so that the square of the hypotenuse was equivalent to the reciprocal of the lens diagonal.
I want understand what I am doing but I do not want to be paralyzed by a bunch of calculations I have to make before each shot.

I have patience...remember I make violins the way Stradivarius did 300 years ago. all by hand. No CNC machines, just chisels and knives and scrapers.

[Steve Smith]

If you are mainly thinking of photographing your violins then your bellows factor will probably not be more than the focal length of the lens. If it was equal to the focal length, you would be projecting an image onto the film which was the same size as the subject. I suppose some detail shots could be at 1:1 though.

If this is as large as you will go then the most compensation you will need is two stops.

For less than this, you can just scale back from the two stops a bit and be close enough if you err on the side of more rather than less.

There is an Excel Spreadsheet here: http://www.largeformatphotography.info/Bell_Ext.xls which shows exposure compensation relative to focal length and bellows extension.


Steve.

[goldenimage]

there is a learning curve as with anything else, i have been shooting LF for about 5 years, i l ove it, it still exciting to me everytime i take the camera out for a spin, the questions you get from other people sometimes are hilarious. for example i was shooting at a national park a while back with my 8x10, a guy walked up to me and asked,,"hey thats one of those old black and white cameras aint it?"

[Mainecoonmaniac]

is LF a lot more difficult than shooting MF? As much as I love photography I don't like or care for the extreme details like formulas and ratios.

Ralph Lambrecht a regular poster here on APUG has been generous enough to post excerpts from his book "Way Beond Monochrome". On one of his posting on his website for his book is a template page that has a bellows extension calculator on page 15 on the PDF download. The calculator has 2 parts. The first part is a chip that you but in front of your subject and the other is a ruler which you use to measure the size of that chip on the ground glass. From the measurement, you can calculate how much to compensate in exposure. It's an ingenious but simple way of calculating bellows extension. I've used something similar for years using a 4x5 for close up tabletop photography. Here's the link to the PDF.
http://waybeyondmonochrome.com/WBM2/...mplatesEd2.pdf

Don't let any of the complications keep you from shooting LF.