(embiggenable) • iPhone
(embiggenable) • µ4/3
(embiggenable) • iPhone
After posting a few of my 8x10 view camera pictures, the picture making part of my brain began to think about film-based picture making. Film-based describes my picture making-professional and personal-from 1966>2004. Not only did I make pictures using film-color negative for personal work, transparency for commercial work-but I also processed and printed most of that film. I especially enjoyed printing my personal color work (there was almost no BW personal work). *
Consequently, after printing hundreds and hundreds (and hundreds more) of color prints, I developed a, some might say "extreme", fondness for the look of C prints. C prints made from color negatives-most of my "serious" personal work was created using 8x10 color negative film-displayed a smoothness of tone and color that was unmatched by transparency film.
To this day, I can walk into a gallery and know, upon viewing just one print, whether or not a picture was made with color negative film (even though the print is a not a C print). That is possible because that beloved smoothness of tone and color is captured-and readily apparent to my eye-in the digital conversion-scanning and printing.
In any event, I am seriously considering returning to the use of film for some of my picture making. That film will most likely be 4x5 color negative film because I have one the most compact and lightest 4x5 field cameras-made of wood-ever made. That camera is a Nagaoka view camera, one that was bequeathed to me in a will. A camera made of cherrywood and chrome-plated brass.
I never used the camera very much inasmuch as 8x10 view cameras were my "thing" for my "serious" personal work. Nevertheless, it was always on display in my studio and eventually in my home simply because it is thing of hand-crafted beauty.
Assuming that I succumb to the allure-perhaps nostalgia-of film-based picture making, several tasks will fall to hand ... finding a good source for the film, the processing and hi-res scanning. That should be easy enough but then comes the hard part ... where in my house to load film holders in a totally dark and dust free (extremely important place. Building a film loading (and unloading) closet in my basement might be the only solution.
Stay tuned. In the next entry I'll write about the other film/print characteristic of film-based picture making that I really like.
*the lone exception being snapshot picture making. That film processing and printing ("standard" 4x6 prints) were left to Kodak via a camera store.
Nagaoka 4x5 view camera with 90mm Schneider Super-Angulon lens