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istillshootfilm

Introduction To Large Format Photography

Since we’ve already covered medium format, now it’s time to introduce you to the revered large format photography. This is like a different level of quality you get which starts with 4x5” negative sheet film (as opposed to rolls of spools) and can go up to 8x10” and beyond. Essentially you can make GIGANTIC photographs when you started delving into the world of large format. Plus, large format cameras are quite frankly - stunning. Our editor-in-chief spent about an hour trying to figure out if the above beauty could make it into her carry-on… but alas.

For landscape lovers, large format is the soul mate you’ve always been searching for, delivering absolutely stunning, crisp results. After all, if landscape master Ansel Adams vowed by large format, who are you to question that? Moving on, let’s begin!

What Is Large Format?

Large format, starts at a 4x5” negative size. Technically, it used to start with now-obsolete 2x3″ - quite difficult to find these days. The most common sizes are 4x5” and 8x10”, even the latter being rare since it’s so much harder to use.

Large format is the biggest you can go with negative sizes, and the cameras used for this are completely mechanical with manual focus, manual metering, manual loading and unloading of film, and all around manual labor that takes a lot of time and effort just to make one exposure. You use slide film that needs to be separately loaded in complete darkness onto a film holder and unloaded in complete darkness once you’re done with it. This can be done in a dark bag, but is much easier in a light-tight room.

Why You Need To Try It

{Viewing through a Sinar F camera by Guillaume Piolle}

By now you must be wondering why the heck would anyone use large format in the first place, since it’s so inconvenient to use? Well, the short answer is image quality. Since the film size is so big, you can get amazing quality results which far surpass any digital or roll film formats, and since you don’t need to enlarge much, and not at all if you’re using 8x10” sheet film to make an 8x10” print, you don’t have to compromise on resolution.

istillshootfilm

The Real Resolution of Film vs. Digital

What Is Resolution?

Ok, so most people equate resolution to the number of Megapixels, especially when comparing digital camera qualities, but this is not entirely accurate. Image resolution is basically the amount of detail an image can show. It is the quantification of the degree to which two lines next to each other can be visibly resolved, or discerned from each other. If a camera, film or lens can produce an image where you can see clearly defined edges of the smallest details, the resolution is said to be high.

So, Megapixels then become a kind of unit of measuring resolution in digital images. Resolution is determined by the size of pixels present in the image, and the more the pixels, the smaller they are. However, naturally, this has to take the size of the area in question as well. Plus, there are other considerations as well, such as the image processing algorithms and interpolation of pixels, which we will discuss further shortly.

Film resolution is measured in lines per millimeter, and these lines comprise pairs of a dark and a light line, also known as line pairs per millimeter. Since film records details naturally, there are no algorithms and computer interpretations to mess things up and the details you see are extra-ordinary, especially with medium and large format sheet film.

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