Eight By Ten

I noticed a few years back as the market for cameras that used film started to wan, a resurgence in the manufacturing of large format equipment was occurring, though. Some really fine stuff was being made. I am thinking of the folding field camera. I've always had a 4X5 camera, nothing special, a Calumet monorail. And I've gone through spells where it was what I used mostly to take pictures at the time.

Shooting with a large camera is about as deliberate an activity as one can imagine. The size, the weight, the tripod, they all add up to a kind of slow motion contemplation. And of course the results seem worth it. Holding up a sheet-film negative to window light just can't get any better. It's all there.

I remember reading about a meeting back in the early 1930's between Ansel Adams and Paul Strand in Taos. Strand, about twelve years older, had already an established reputation. He'd been photographing in the area. However, he was unable to make prints where he was staying but did have negatives to look at. Adams remarked later that it was from that meeting and looking at Strand's stunning negatives that he decided on a life in photography. We should all have such an epiphany.

I worked at it though. Along the way I acquired a 5X7 field camera, an Ansco, battleship grey with double extension bellows. This I carried into the forest and turned toward close-ups of mushrooms. My website has a couple of images from those times. At some point I thought of refinishing the camera. I had heard there was beautiful hardwood under the grey paint. It's still all apart, refinished though and sitting in a box waiting know some ten years like Humpty Dumpty. At least I figured a way to scan those negatives on my 4X5 flat bed; half the negative at a time, then blend them in Photoshop.

I didn't spend a lot. It was another Ansco with a dark natural finish. But this time it was an 8X10. Finally. Here it was, what all my heroes had used. It was what important pictures were taken with. The normal lens I used on the 5X7 became a wide angle on the 8X10. The only thing I had to figure out next was how to carry it around. For a while I was considering one of those jogging baby strollers with the large all-terrain tires. I didn't though. Instead I struggled with a small makeshift bag for the camera, a surplus canvas sack for the film holders and the other hand carried the twelve pound tripod. I didn't take all that many exposures with the 8X10. Carrying the large camera for any length of time bothered my neck.

Ironically, I had purchased the 8X10 on that fateful trip to Oregon (mentioned in the previous post). It is heartening though to see an organization like APUG (Analog Photography Users Group) thriving with over 32k's members.