Thread for the "over the hill gang"

DaveyJ

To vtc2002: I had several 8x10s, including the Wisner. The first American Expedition Wisner cameras were built with specially sawn American Black Cherry I sent to him. I also owned a much larger view camera and four 4x5s and too many medium formats to enumerate. The Fuji GX 617 and all the lens panels was my favorite. The Linhoff 617 was wider with the 72mm lens. Once I started using Nikon Digital I switched and sold all my big film gear. I kept my Nikon F5 and the lens for that. Digital has so many advantages over film. I also spent more money on medium and large format than I would want to mention. Selling film gear requires going to a established camera store that still has a customers who buy film gear. I think I got out of it just in the nick of time.

vtc2002

@DaveyJ I agree with your comments. Digital has many advantages and I love my D810. I still like shooting film and especially my 4 x 5 camera and I agree that it is expenses. My Calumet is made out of beatiful Cherry wood. Some of it is the image quality but alot of it is the workflow. I do mostly landscapes and spending time searching sites and determining the right time for the best light is still enjoyable for me. I realize I am a dinosaur and not trying to ding digital photography. I have taken many beautiful images with my D800 and D810 and at some point sell off my film equipment and will take a beating but will be sad to see it go. I am glad that I had the opportunity to learn on large and medium format equipment. I guess in a few years alot of us will be doing the same thing with our digital equipment when it is replaced mirrorless.

DaveyJ

vtc202: What is the actual manufacturer of your 4x5. Toya? What lens do you use on it? When I use mirrorless I long for a dark cloth!

My son says "There were Brontasaurs grazing on the front lawn when my Dad was a boy". When I sold my camera gear it all went in three sales. All a check which was always good, and they sold high. If I sold them today I would suffer a huge loss. I am reluctant to say what I had in camera gear. It cost me a fortune. I was married to a great gal for thirty three years. The camera habit and my role as a photographer might have helped get me a divorce. But they also were the foundation for many of her oil paintings. Many people used to call us the happiest married couple they knew. I obviously see cameras and film and digital as a central part of my life.

Calumet who I bought $100,000 worth of photo gear never made a camera. So it was a camera made in Japan. Probably Toya. I will try to post a photo of my 4x5 Wisner taken with my 8x10 Wisner or maybe it was my Zone 6......I agree that mirrorless has great advantages But it also has distinct disadvantages. I sometimes miss the view camera tilts and swings. I owned a couple of very expensive Nikon shift lens and did not like them at all. I owned Hasselblad and Fujis and Mamiyas and it seems like almost all of the rest. Bronica, Kodaks, I kept a Kodak Circuit swing lens camera to the last. I had Linhoffs and Rollie's.....I do NOT MISS film one bit.

When I would come up to the podium at National Banquet Addresses where I was the paid principal speaker they would play the song Kodachrome I even had a slide show that was tiled that with Neil Simon's song. Women pro photographer women in California nicknamed me "Velvia", and I was engaged to an award winning California Beauty for three years until we decided we could not afford to be Bi-Coastal..... I still miss her! I rarely even take out the huge transparencies or negatives now.

I knew Ansel Adams. I doubt that mirrorless will be so completely replacing DSLRs. But then I said "Digital is still a poor investment and film is increasing in quality faster than film." Then I switched completely to digital and sold all but my Nikon F5 and the lens for it.

chito

♪ I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don't take my Kodachrome away ♪ - Paul Simon "Kodachrome"

donaldejose

Mirrorless won't "replace digital" because mirrorless is digital. All it replaces is the mirror. To do so it must add on sensor AF and almost instantaneous EVF. When technology can accomplish that we will have a better tool than we now have in the DSLR format.

DaveyJ

I tried to find if I wrote mirrorless won't replace digital. I sure hope I did not write that! I try always to express DSLR which is mirror cameras? I think of mirrorless cameras as not being DSLRs as they are not using the single lens reflex mirror to "look" through the lens via mirror. I became very used to using view cameras which of course you are looking through the lens and under the dark cloth looking at an upside down and backwards image. The disadvantage to me using quite a few mirrorless cameras is looking at LCD or the like in bright light or some other difficulty. there are a lot of ways to cure the mirrorless cameras different way of evaluating the subject you want to capture before and after the shot in playback. All of the mirrorless "disadvantages" I see will be overcome in time. As donalddejose says when technology can accomplish that we will have a better tool. Digital cameras I predict will outlast the mirrored camera which I call, maybe incorrectly, the DSLR.

Msmoto

What a great idea....a "mirrorless" with a 4" x 5" LCD, image upside down, reversed right to left. Comes with a nice back cloth.......

OK, question for some who shot the 500c Hassy. Did we have a back with a ground glass so one could focus without the magazine on, compose as in a standard view camera? Or, am I imagining this.....Or, maybe the Polaroid back was this way.....mmm???

Or, was this the Hassy with the 38mm lens....?

DaveyJ

I owned several Hasselblads. The 500C/M I used and had two roll film magazines. The 6.45 magazine I decided was not as valuable as the 2 1/4 square. I cropped from the square negative when I decided it was appropriate. I liked my Hasselblad X Pan quite a bit more. That was a going rig and the quality was very good. Since I was also shooting 617 where the film was longer I had to have photo albums that were say 10x20 and 10x30 and after a while it got pretty pricey but I still have many of the display albums. The X Pan used a slip on viewfinder which I found useful for aspect ratio and composition before slipping it on the camera and shooting.

I even got ABC Photo and Imaging to produce machine prints of the panoramic cameras and for years they helped me get 10x30 machine prints that were very sharp and colorful and my images were used by that great lab's machine prints in Shutterbug magazine for many months. They were by far the best lab I ever worked with. When I needed bigger prints like 24 x 72 or 3 foot x 9 foot they would be done in traditional lab print work. At some point these transparencies and negatives were scanned and run through a big rig like the LightJet 5000 and the image at some point were digitized.

The 500 C/M had a whole system of viewfinders and the "best' was regarded as a mirror which had quite a tall eyepiece but the view was crystal clear and efficient and the eyepiece image easier to compose than in a 35mm, at the time i was going through quite a few Minoltas which became frustrating as they kept changing the mounts and I had SRT 101, SRT 202, the XE7, then the Maxxum models came out all switching mounts and I changed to Nikon since I decided their glass was about as good as it could get. I bought the 80-200 2.8 lens and tried a batch of primes and then decided the 20-35mm 2.8 was the one I needed for wide. The reflex mirrored viewer was honking big and I often found it easier to use with the ground glass by flipping up the ground glass protective cover which my Kodaks and Bronicas and Rollies all had. Some of those of course were twin lens reflexs and I and many others decided the single lens reflex was better. Friends of mine wrecked their systems by juggling film magazines, lenses, etc. and the systems were not all that forgiving.


I never had anything like a dark cloth for the Hassy's and it was widely accepted that that was a superiority of the 500c/m is that you didn't need that. The flip up assembly around the ground glass allowed a good view of the subject and it was like using a view camera without the dark cloth. If it was very bright and would use my shirt or jacket to work like a dark cloth to see the image better.

I had 4x5, 8x10, and for a while a 10x30 so I had quite a few choices but one had to decide what rig was going to be deployed before the shoot. The Hassleblad X Pan I thought most remarkable and suited my photo style best. As I was also using Horseman roll film backs like 6x12 and 6x9 I even had my son build a 6x18 for my Horseman 8x10 which I thought was pretty good. I spent many hours trying to get Fuji to make a lens panel that was longer than the wide angle (I owned a Fuji G617 which had a 105mm fixed lens) and finally after I sent print film trasparencies to Fuji Japan they came out with the camera I pushed for the Fuji GX 617 and that was the best of my panoramics. I also had the Linhoff 617 with a 72mm lens, but the Fuji GX 617 had from a 90mm lens, a 105mm lens panel, a 180 that I had lobbied for, then a 300mm lens panel. The composing was done with slip on viewfinders that were self contained and I often would look at a scene with just the viewfinders which were pricey yet very easy to work with and light, then after finding the right view i would set up camera and tripod.

DaveyJ

I tried the Hassy with the 38mm lens. I finally decided I had things that would do the same but that was a very nice rig! That was a very popular camera and for some time I published what I had done with it and a number of others published some very nice 38mm lens Hassy photos. In the field that was a lovely set up, especially wonderful for landscapes. Studio people were not thrilled by it. I thought it was one of the best camera systems ever developed!

framer

What a great idea....a "mirrorless" with a 4" x 5" LCD, image upside down, reversed right to left. Comes with a nice back cloth.......

OK, question for some who shot the 500c Hassy. Did we have a back with a ground glass so one could focus without the magazine on, compose as in a standard view camera? Or, am I imagining this.....Or, maybe the Polaroid back was this way.....mmm???


Or, was this the Hassy with the 38mm lens....?

I did have a ground glass attachment for a Koni Omega M, Rapid Omega 200 and Omegaflex. You could focus on the GG then take the adapter off and put he film magazine in, remove the dark slide and shoot. In the studio you would use it for closeup work and product shots. I used these through the 70's

framer