INTRODUCTION

The Calumet 4x5 camera is a large format camera made in USA in 1966. Reasonnably sturdy, it offers a lot of movements.

BEST SUITED FOR:

Studio

Landscapes

Architecture

Art

PERSONAL NOTES

The first thing you notice about large format is the weight and size of the equipment. Heavy and large. It's a good idea to have a small trolly to carry around the camera, case, film, and stuff you need to work with. You also understand why the camera is always on a tripod.

The Calumet was my first large format view camera. I learned a lot with this baby.

Shooting large format is something all photographers should do for a little while in order to have more patience and respect for the photographic process. Don't get me wrong, we all have patience and respect for our process, but doing large format slows us down to the point we can only embrace fully what we do. It makes us wait for that shot, it makes us see more.

When shooting large format, you have to carefully load film in the loader, emulsion side up. You have to bring that big camera out, find a shot that is worth your efforts, compose under a cloth on that big ground glass, focus with a loupe, correct perspective, use scheimpflug's theorem to move the focus plane as desired, see what aperture will cover your image size by looking from the 4 corners of the ground glass. When you're ready to take the photo, you have to put the film holder in, close the lens and manually put the desired aperture, remove the dark slide, then shoot. After, you have to put the dark slide back in, carefully sliding it on the opposite side it was before to indicate that this film is exposed, reopen the lens and putting back the aperture to its max. When shooting your cellphone, you point and shoot.

When taking all these steps to make a single image, you will automatically observe more and think more before shooting, period. By experiencing large format photography, you become more patient with photography and yourself. I now do better photography with small cameras because I mastered large format.

CONCLUSION

I always encourage photographers to experiment with large format photography, but this is not for beginners. The Calumet 4x5 is a good place to start. The camera is reliable, cheap and has plenty of movement to experiment fully what large format is all about.

PHOTO SAMPLES

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