Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
The other day, I posted on here about The Standard 4×5 large format 3D printed camera. I was a little sceptical about The Standard at first until I saw that the project files would be released into the open source world upon completion of the campaign and deliveries to backers.
Now, another new 3D printed large format camera has popped up on Kickstarter. The Cameradactyl. This one, though, won’t be releasing the files and doesn’t quite leave me with the same warm fuzzies.
I love that large format seems to be coming back in fashion. I really do. In the last couple of years we’ve seen some great new large format cameras come into existence, like the Intrepid, and the Chroma – the latter of which we saw in person at The Photography Show.
Now we have a new one, The Standard 4×5, which is made from 3D printed parts. It’s is being billed as a DIY 4×5 large format camera that you can build yourself – which is a really awesome idea. It’s being funded through Kickstarter, and the prices aren’t that bad, either (even though the early birds have already sold out).
When it comes to the discussion fo bokeh, we often hear of the “benefits of full frame”. There are many comparisons out there all over the web, extolling the virtues of a larger sensor, and how a full frame mirrorless or DSLR is the “ultimate”. It’s really not, though, if that’s your goal, which this video from photographer Bill Lawson sets out to prove.
In this side-by-side shootout, he compares a Nikon D7000 DX body, along with a Nikon D700 full frame DSLR and 4×5 large format. He uses 50mm, 85mm and 300mm lenses to achieve a similar field of view with each of the different cameras, and gets to work.
Zeiss has announced their newest set of cinema lenses for advertising and movie production. Although these lenses are smaller than their counterparts, the German company promises that they will offer top of the line results for filmmakers.
Because the snowdrop shoot what so much fun, I wanted to do something like that again. After I saw the cherry blossoms on my tree, it was crystal clear what comes up next. I wanna shoot one of these with my wet plate camera, but this time I will shoot them on the tree.
When I was little, this tree was my climbing adventure. This tree has seen better days – the weather from the recent years started to ruin some parts of it. But it is still beautiful in the springtime.
Large format digital cameras aren’t an entirely new idea. They’ve been around for a little while now, and a number of people have built their own. But they’ve had one big drawback. Because it’s difficult and expensive to make sensors so large, they typically use scanning backs. In the case of DIY options, it’s often the internals of a flatbed scanner.
Now, though, an 8×10 large format camera which uses a 9×11 inch monochrome CMOS sensor to record a single shot all at once is available to buy. Created by Bill Charbonnet, who left his “real job” in 2014 to start LargeSense LLC, the LargeSense LS911 can be yours for only $106,000. Oh, and yes, it shoots 4K video, too.
The Chroma 4×5 large format technical camera has intrigued me since it was announced last February. When I found out its creator, Steve Lloyd, was UK based, I got in touch to find out if he’d planned to visit The Photography Show this year. It turned out that he had, so I asked if he could bring along one of his Chroma cameras so I could see it for myself.
100 megapixels or 400 megapixels sounds like a whole lot, doesn’t it? Well, large format wilderness photographer Ben Horne takes it even further and gets a 709.6-megapixel file. With a little help from his friend Michael Strickland, Ben scans his large format 8×10 slide film with a very high-resolution drum scanner. Check out his video to see the result and how he managed to do it.
Regular DIYP readers will know that I’ve been researching 3D printing recently. My goal is to see how one might be able to help me with my photography and video tasks. Primarily to keep things organised. There’s SD card cases, battery covers, lens cap clips, charging station doohickies and all kinds of goodies on sites like Thingiverse. But I also want to have some fun, too.
One photographic collection over on Thingiverse that’s particularly cool belongs to user Schlem. He’s created a whole bunch 3D printed pinhole cameras. Most of them are medium format but there are one or two large format ones, too. One of them is even stereoscopic. He’s put all the models up so you can download and print your own, and the results coming from some of these cameras are just amazing.
Shooting wetplate is a bit of a feat all by itself. Sure, it’s getting a little more common than it was a decade or two ago, but it’s still not all that easy, especially if you want to do it well. Photographer Markus Hofstätter is no stranger to large format wet plate photography, but he’s had a burning desire to shoot it handheld. Obviously, the giant plate camera he uses in his studio is a little large for this type of thing, so he went on the hunt for something a little more manageable.
You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube and Facebook.
can change a lens mid-rappel, swap a memory card while treading water, or use a camel as a light stand.
To see more of his work please visit his studio website blurMEDIAphotography, or follow him on Twitter, 500px, Google Plus or YouTube.
JP’s photography is available for licensing at Stocksy United.
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