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It’s not often you get to take a family portrait just before the baby decides to be born. But above all, it is not often that you are photographed with a camera of more than one square meter.
We work in a very large format. The camera is called Bertha, and it has a bellows reach of around four meters. It’s also capable of reaching a magnification of up to 3:1.
Large format cameras seem to be popping up all over the place at the moment, particularly on crowdfunding sites. The ONDU Eikan (buy here) seems to be a little bit different, though. As well as being available in the standard 4×5 large format sheet film, it also comes in a 4×10 panoramic variety. It’s currently running on Kickstarter, where it’s already more than doubled its goal.
The Eikan’s creator, Elvis Halilović – shown above with the 4×10 panoramic version of the camera – says that it’s been in the making for ten years. But he says he wasn’t ready to bring this particular one to market until he felt he had something new to offer. Now, he feels that he does with the ONDU Eikan’s modular design.
With the resurgence in film, the term “press camera” pops up a lot these days. It comes up often in online auctions and marketplaces. The term has also evolved over the years, too. Initially, they were medium and large format cameras often used by the press. As 35mm took over, press cameras were modified standard bodies that were specifically advantageous for press use.
But what exactly is a press camera, and what makes them different from the regular cameras that regular people used at the time? And why don’t they make them anymore? This excellent video from Japan Vintage Camera takes us on a journey through history to show us why they were so special.
You can’t beat a good DIY crazy camera and they don’t get much crazier than this. Built by Matt at DIY Perks, this particular camera features a 432mm f/5 episcope lens with an image projection circle of around 500mm in diameter. To give you some idea of scale, your average full-frame lens has an image projection circle with a diameter of at least 43mm. That’s an area of 0.015 square meters. This lens has an image circle of 0.785 square metres (~50x the size).
And with this huge projection also comes a big advantage when it comes to depth of field. Despite being a 432mm f/5 lens, it offers the equivalent field of view and depth of field as a 35mm lens would on a full-frame camera if it had a maximum aperture of f/0.4. The closest lens to this designed for the relatively small full-frame format is the Zeiss 50mm f/0.7, and the last one of those to sell was rumoured to fetch around $200,000.
Corrine at Corrine West Photography booked a wet plate workshop with me before the pandemic started. Two years later we were finally able to do it. The main subject was to get comfortable with the wet collodion process and to create images similar to the ones of spirit photographer William H. Mumler. Mr. Mumler created images (probably double exposures) where his clients could take a picture with their deceased relatives.
The photograph of Mary Todd Lincoln with the “ghost” of her husband (Abraham Lincoln) was his most famous one. Corrine found my double exposure wet plates and that was the reason she contacted me in the first place. About two months before the workshop Corrine surprised me with a question: “Can we build a wet plate camera together?”. I talked with a friend and after a long visit to a DIY market, I was sure that we can do it. A DIY Camera and capturing ghosts. That sounds like a fun workshop to me!
The Brenizer method has been around for a while. In fact, it’s been around since long before it was called the “Brenizer method” – he was just the guy who made it popular so the name stuck. Essentially it’s a way to simulate the look of medium format film when shooting a small sensor camera like an APS-C or full-frame DSLR or mirrorless camera.
It’s a popular and well-known technique these days, but what happens when you shoot it with medium format film? Will it look like it was shot on large format? That’s what photographer Steve Schultz wanted to find out, so he shot some with his Mamiya 645 AF medium format film camera to see what happened.
If you have been reading my blog or watching my YouTube channel, you would know that I do mainly large format photography. I often take my own self portrait for using my pneumatic cable release that has a long cable and air bulb release.
However, I have always been thinking about how to make a more modern kind of remote cable release and hence this project.
In a previous post, I shared how I converted my Afghan Box Camera into a slide projector. The principle of the slide projector involves putting a light source at the back whose light passes through some condenser lens. The light then goes through the slide and finally pass the projector lens and be projected big on the projector screen.
Everybody knows that I work exclusively on collodion wet plate portraits. So what’s the reason for food photography now? Let me try to explain. Many of you guys will remember that I bought a Cambo studio stand some while ago. A little bit later I bought a used tray for it on eBay. The seller was very friendly and somehow we started to talk about photography
Long story short, a month later we decided to do a project together. After months of planning, Hans Gerlach (a well-known food photographer and columnist) drove over to my studio and brought his tools and some delicious food with him.
The lure of large format photography attracts many. Relatively few can justify the cost of pursuing it, though. Even 4×5 sheet film gets pretty expensive, and that’s the smallest of the large formats out there. What if you could make one relatively inexpensively, though, and at the same time, avoid the hassle and cost of chemicals by shooting the results on your digital camera?
That’s exactly what photography Olexiy Shportun did when he created what is essentially a large format digital Camera Obscura. A lens is mounted in the front of the unit which projects the image onto a backplate, like a normal large format camera. But in this case, the backplate is a white surface where it’s then photographed by his mirrorless camera.
Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.
Alex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe
Dave Williams is an accomplished travel photographer, writer, and best-selling author from the UK. He is also a photography educator and published Aurora expert. Dave has traveled extensively in recent years, capturing stunning images from around the world in a modified van. His work has been featured in various publications and he has worked with notable brands such as Skoda, EE, Boeing, Huawei, Microsoft, BMW, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, ESPN, NBC, and many others.
John Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.
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