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Photographing wildlife with 4×5 large format camera and expired film

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These days, for sports and wildlife shooters, it seems the smaller sensor cameras are often favoured for the “extra reach” with long lenses. Most wildlife shooters I know, at least up until the days of mirrorless, were shooting fast APS-C DSLRs like the Nikon D500 and Canon 7D Mark II. Some have switched to Fuji and even Micro Four Thirds mirrorless.

But for some photographers, bigger is always better. And that certainly seems to be the case for Markus Hofstätter. We’ve featured Markus a bunch of times here on DIYP for his wet plate photography, but attempting to shoot wildlife on a 4×5 large format camera, especially with expired film is definitely a little… extra.

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This video was made from 37,000 film photos and inspired by early cinema

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Music is an important part of my life, and when a good song is paired with a creative video – I can’t imagine a bigger treat. Well, Ankur Sabharwal’s Better Man has it both. The video was made from whopping 37,000 film photos, greatly inspired by early cinema. It’s incredibly creative and mesmerizing, paired with a song that you’ll want to play over and over again.

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Agent Shadow is new black and white film perfect for night photography

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We talked today about film photography and its magic that just can’t be recreated digitally. If you shoot film or you want to try it, there’s a new 35mm film that seems like a real treat. Kosmo Foto’s Agent Shadow is a black and white film perfect for shooting in low light and a real treat for all fans of the Film Noir look.

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This video explains the science behind photographic film

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I think many of us agree that there’s still something special about film photography even in the digital age. Film photos have some magic to them, and there’s a lot that comes before we see their final look. In this video, Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day shows you the magic and the science behind shooting, developing, and scanning a roll of 35 mm film.

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How I shot a lunar eclipse sequence on film and entirely in-camera

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G’day from Australia, my name is Jason De Freitas (@jase.film on Instagram), and I’m a photographer mostly known for my analog astrophotography. In this article, I’ll describe the process and decisions I went through to take this lunar eclipse multi-exposure sequence on medium format film.

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This Fujifilm golf GIF camera is the weirdest camera in the world

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For some strange reason, this video from Taylor Nowel popped up on my suggested feed yesterday, although it was actually posted to YouTube about 18 months ago. It documents the weirdness that is the Fujifilm Rensha Cardia BYU-N 16. What makes it weird is that it has sixteen lenses. Yes, sixteen. Count ’em. Each with their own individual shutters.

It shoots to 35mm film and contains two separate shutter buttons. When it was released in 1995, it seems to have been marketed to golfers, allowing them to shoot a rapid succession of images when they tee off in order to be able to analyze their swing after the fact. Today, it’s basically an animated gif-making machine (although you will need to scan the film).

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Apparently, yes, you can you shoot portraits with a smashed up rear lens element

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So many of us baby our gear. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Despite the fact that the odd scratch here and there isn’t going to affect the performance of my kit, I’m still going to try to take the best care of it that I can. But sometimes accidents happen.

And an accident is what happened to Christopher Hamberger when he dropped his $1,200 Nikon 35mm f/1.4 Ai-S lens and shattered the rear element. Can it still shoot, though? How will that decimated rear element affect the images? Well, there’s only one way to find out. Shoot with it.

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Reveni Labs is back with a new teeny tiny spot meter

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Reveni Labs, the company responsible for the tiny on-camera light meter for old SLRs that don’t have one built-in is back. And they’ve brought a new meter with them. This time it’s a still-tiny-but-not-quite-as-tiny-as-the-original-meter spot meter – once a very common tool amongst film photographers, particularly medium and large format landscape shooters, and one that’s still built into just every DSLR and mirrorless camera today.

And, yes, there are companies like Sekonic still producing excellent spot meters, but they’re not exactly cheap. Even older, used ones can still be fairly expensive. Reveni Labs’ goal with this is to print the price down to a more manageable amount for those who don’t need the advanced capabilities of more expensive meters.

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Is 645 medium format film really better than 35mm? Well, yeah. It is.

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I still shoot quite a bit of film when the opportunity allows, and when I do, I still primarily tend to reach for a 35mm. It’s not that it’s the best, or even just the best suited to what I want to shoot, but it’s convenient. The 35mm film SLRs I use the most are all Nikon F mount bodies, letting me use most of the lenses I also own for my DSLRs. But medium format definitely has it’s benefits.

In this video, photographer Kyle McDougall looks at the overall thought process behind using 645 medium format instead of your standard 3:2 ratio 35mm film, as well as some of the objective benefits and drawbacks to the larger format.

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