On 5 Jul 2008, at 16:54, Walter Lee Davis wrote:
I still have a roll-film back for my view camera somewhere. It takes
120 or 220 film, and just slips into the back of the camera like any
other film holder. I think it was made by Calumet or at least I got
it from them.
I had the exact same one. I used to use it on my Sinar and in the 80s
when we started to have a bit of a recession, a lot of my clients
realised that it was pointless to get me to shoot pictures on 5x4 that
were only reproduced at about two inches square in a magazine. Film
and processing price alone for 5x4, even back then, was around £30-40
(three sheets of 6118, a few Polaroid 55s). I could have told them
that earlier, but they wouldn’t have listened; they’d always have 5x4
‘just in case’. When the recession hit, they suddenly thought that
6x7cm might, just might, be a good idea. From that time on, I must
have put thousands of rolls through that roll film back. I wore it out
eventually and had to get another, although I forget the make of that
one.
This reminds me of that quite a lot, although the focal-
length disparity was not nearly so great, since I was only stepping
down from 1016mm x 1270mm to 600mm x 700mm, not all the way to 24mm x
36mm. (This really reminds me why we used such massive film areas –
you really do get the pixels you pay for!)
Being a still-life photographer, I rarely needed much in the way of
wide angle, and I found that the apparent ‘lengthening’ of the focal
length was quite handy. Less distortion, greater working distance etc.
I did a lot of packs, and the greater length meant my 150mm Schneider,
short on 5x4, was lovely. Mind you, I had a 210mm as well, but when
shooting straight down on the floor, that could be a little long.
best wishes,
Paul Bradforth
http://www.paulbradforth.com
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