Handheld LF, why?

I'm always amazed when I see posts about handholding 5x4.<br>Is there some myth that camera shake has less effect with large formats?<p>I've been through the geometry and maths, and my conclusion is that, for either angular camera movement, or movement parallel to the image plane, there's no difference between formats.<br>Have I overlooked something?

Pete:

 

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I think you're right on technical grounds... but the implicit

assumption is that people choose LF to achieve very high levels of

image quality. Why, then, use LF if camera movement is going to limit

image quality to that achievable by smaller formats... essentially

a "weakest link in the chain" issue.

"Why, then, use LF if camera movement is going to limit image quality

to that achievable by smaller formats... ". That's more or less the

whole point of my question Glenn.

Hi Pete,

 

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I don't know why people would want to use a 4x5 hand held, but

conceivably here's one reason. Camera shake is camera shake, but it

becomes more noticable the more it's enlarged. You'd have to enlarge

a 35mm neg much more to get an 8x10, so perhaps that's the reason -

though somehow I don't think so.

 

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Regards,

Why not hand-hold a 4x5? That's what thousands of press

photographers did before 35mm cameras became popular for newspaper

work - and - how else can you get that "Weegee look"?

"I think you're right on technical grounds... but the implicit

assumption is that people choose LF to achieve very high levels of

image quality. Why, then, use LF if camera movement is going to limit

image quality to that achievable by smaller formats... essentially

a "weakest link in the chain" issue"."

 

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Because my 4x5 hand held stuff has an entirely different look that my

35mm Leica stuff or even my 6x7 work. Camera movement isn't always an

issue (or rather, is an issue for any of these formats). Suffice to

say, it can work and work well. Quite simply, it works. Of course you

are shooting in a different way though. And you also get a different

reaction if shooting people. It's not just technical stuff.

 

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Also, having worked on a lot of hand held 4x5 stuff in an Archives,

there was plenty there that was damned sharp - way sharper than

anything in 35mm.

there are several occasions where i must use a handheld 4x5 to do my

job. to get certain views for my HABS/HAER work, i sometimes must

get into fairly precarious positions, often in places where tripod

placement is simply impossible, and i pull out my old crown graphic.

to acheive appropriate image sharpness, i do try to use as fast a

shutter speed as conditions will allow, and often i cannot filter the

same way i might with a tripod situation. i do have to be careful

and steady, but i have successfully used shutter speeds as low as 1/4

second. to give you an example of the effects of camera shake on LF

work, i have had the opportunity to work in the field with jet lowe,

HAER photographer, under some difficult conditions. one of these was

recordation of the historic steel bridge across the willamette river

in portland, oregon. we climbed up into the truss superstructure

above the roadway to get a shot of the trusswork, and jet setup his

tripod on a small platform near the operator's house. there was a

lot of traffic on the old bridge, and the entire structure shook

enormously and moved continuously as we worked there. jet was

unperturbed by the movement, and i asked him what shutter speed he

was going to use on the shot - 1 sec at f/22. i said, "jet, there's

no way you can get this shot like that," commenting on the amount of

camera movement during such a long exposure. he just smiled and

stuck his hand on the lens and released the shutter with his thumb

(not even using a cable release). he told me that even with some

shake, he would still be able to get an acceptable 11x14 print from

his 5x7 neg, since the enlargement amount is so small for the large

negative size, and he was not worried about it. after seeing the

resulting image, it was obvious he was quite correct.

Gents,

 

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The shake is the same, but to get equivalent depth of field in LF as

you have in SF you will need a smaller aperture and a resulting slower

shutter speed. You usually find yourself forced to use shutter speeds

that border on the ability to hand-hold.....In situations where depth

of field is not an issue and you can use big apertures and fast

shutter speeds, LF works great. The 9" aerial stuff I shot in the Navy

was much better than anything I did with smaller formats.

 

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bw

If you're shooting 4 x 5 handheld WITH FLASH, and you can hold the

camera reasonably steady, I don't see what factor "camera shake" plays.

Hi Pete, I some times shoot a Graflex hand held with a 150mm lens in

day light. The images look fine to me. I think they look much better

than hand held 35mm shots I've taken. Even in doors, 5.6 at 1/15,

this a group of men having coffee at a cafe table, and I liked the

results. David

Pete, you seem to be under the assumption that hand held LF cameras

are inherently shakey. Not so. The six to ten pound mass of a Speed

Graphic or Linhof, the gentle, symmetrical motion of Compur shutter

blades, and no moving mirror makes it far, far easier to take shake-

free negatives than a 35mm SLR. Because of it's great mass, and the

ergonomic position of holding it, even a 4x5 Super D Graflex can give

needle-sharp negatives. You should try applying Newton's Laws,

rather than geometry and math here.

Hi:

In Camera Ansel Adams talks about the impact of a bigger camera -- both

the big neg and inertia. He does the math, and it sounds good to me --

works too -- so read his answer.

 

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Plus, on the slippery why bother slope, why bother enlarging a negitive

to 4x6 when you can have a 4x5 contact print without the trouble of

using a pesky enlarger... why bother...

Dean

Wow! I didn't expect feelings to run so high on this subject. No

offence was meant.<br>

I just want to counter a few points, though.<br>Bill, I hadn't taken

the inertia factor into account that's true; but I know from personal

experience that muscle fatigue plays a big part in adding to camera

shake.<br>Hoisting a metal bodied view camera's rangefinder to my face

by a single strap and fiddling with the focus for more than a few

seconds gives my arms the shakes almost before I can set the shutter

and fire it. OK, maybe I need to work out more, but if I wanted arms

like Shwarzenegger, I'd have become a navvy. :-)<br>J Norman (sorry,

you didn't give your first name). I see the myth lives on, from your

anecdote about 'Jet'.<br>The smaller enlargement needed by LF just

doesn't reduce the effect of camera shake at all, because the image

has a larger magnification in the camera to begin with. For a given

print size, any angular movement of the camera results in the same

degree of image blur regardless of film format.<br>The case is

the same for movement of the camera parallel to the subject too. This

has the same effect as if the subject had moved by that distance

during the exposure. If the camera moves one millimetre, then the blur

is the same as if the subject had jumped one millimetre. No matter

what format you use, the end result is the same.<br>I suspect Jet got

away with his 1 second exposure because both the bridge and the camera

were moving together, nothing to do with the format, and you say he

was using a tripod anyway!<p>I guess we'll all have to agree to differ

on the merits of hand-held LF, but I was really a bit curious why

people still did such things nowadays. <br>I can't imagine many cigar

chewing editors thrusting a Speed Graphic and two double dark-slides

at young Jimmy Olssen, saying "f/8, and be there", in this 21st

century. Not when lightweight 6x7 rangefinders are available, together

with T-max and Delta fims.

........T-max and delta <b>films</b>. Maybe fims are what fishes use

to take their pictues.

If I might help my pinch of salt, most of the contributors forgot that

there is a modern version of the hand held camera which simply didn't

exist before and these are the widecameras or the panoramas, when you

are in focus from 1m to infinite at aperture 16, you just need a sunny

day to enjoy yourself let alone if you add a flash and go into the

crouds and shoot 4x5" or 6x12cm superwide, it must be a lot of fun!

Almost point and shoot! Lifting a technika with 240mm and make a

portrait without tripod on a cloudy day with no flash might be

impossible, but why would you want to create an impossible situation?

Work with the things you have and not agaist them. Use the modern

version of the Weegee Look, very trendy indeed!

Regards

Another thought.

Most of the things we do in large format can be done very well

otherwise, but it is love and this is by definition blind so all the

rational things play very little role in the choice of the format you

use but rather the way it feels, for you, to handle the equipment.

pete - i guess i am not sure what you are trying to say. i am

telling you that i do this occasionally as part of the work i do for

HABS/HAER, and i do not have that much trouble hand-holding my crown

graphic (135mm lens) at even fairly slow shutter speeds. the work

becomes part of the collections of the library of congress - i dont

know what higher standard you would want to set for acceptable

professional work. what exactly is your point?

Jnorman wrote: "pete - i guess i am not sure what you are trying to

say...... what exactly is your point?"<p>As I tried to explain

previously, I was just curious why anyone would want to hand hold LF

<i>out of choice</i>, since there seems to be no good technical reason

for doing so.<br>Then someone replied, off list, to the effect that

they did it just for the hell of it, and I suppose that's as good an

answer as I'm likely to get.

Maybe. It seems to me though the answer given above, about needing to

use the camera in places where a tripod will not go, has some virtues

that "for the hell of it" doesn't. Then there was another answer up

there, that the results are better than 35 mm handheld. Both these

answers came from people who actually have done the thing they are

talking about.

OK. I accept that if you're stuck out in the field with only an LF

camera, then a handheld shot from the right viewpoint might be better

than a rock-steady shot from a less than ideal position. But this

assumes that no other camera is available to you, and you don't

have a 'Benbo' tripod which gets almost anywhere.<br>I did qualify my

question with the phrase "out of choice", and in those circumstances

the answer "for the hell of it", still seems the only suitable

one.<p>I've never advocated using 35mm as a substitute for LF, only

medium format, and if you're implying that I've never tried hand-held

5x4, think again.<br>My own attempts at handheld LF were slow,

uncomfortable, and mostly unuseable. That experience gave me a higher

admiration for those reporters and photojournalists that were forced

to work with 5x4 in the past. I can only think that they must have had

an extra arm grafted on, and masochistic tendencies.

A little thought tells me that Pete may be right that the blur

is proportionally larger for angular movement depending on the size

of the format. For translational movement, I don't think this is

so. One of the photo mags had a feature on resolution loss with

handholding a 35 mm some years ago. The conclusion was that, for

most people, the 1/focal length rule for the shutter spped was too

liberal by a stop, but that at double that speed there was no loss in

resolution from the very fast speds such as 1/1000. Then, as others

have pointed out, one has to admit that the greater mass of the LF

camera and the leaf (vs. focal plane w/ reflex mirror) shutter should

allow hand holding at a slower spedd with equivalent results. Since

the LF photographer can use 400 speed film easily for most work

without objectionable grain, and since the sunny 16 rule modification

for full shade is about f5.6, this gives 1/400 @ f5.6 for full

shade. With a 135 or 150 mm lens, this is more than adequate if the

study is to be believed, and 1/250 should work, or something even

slower if the greater mass of the camera and the leaf shutter improve

results some. While hand holding inside without flash might result

in some degradation, it seems that much could be done outdoors even

on an overcast day or later in the day. If you had a Xenar (f2.8?)

you could do even better. If you braced on a wall or had a monopod,

that would extend the range, too. I've about got myself convinced to

try it.

HI All,

 

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I havn't mastered setting up the tri-pod for action shots. planes on

take off, chasing trains, ballons in the winter, doing the foilage

tour in vt. now for my 8x10, havn't figgured how to hand hold that

yet.

As an ex 35mm shooter who now regularly shoots LF hand-held (Linhof

Master Technika with coupled rangefinder) as well as MF (Rollei TLR) I

would like to dispell some of the misconceptions expressed above.

 

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A 16X20 print from a 4X5 B&W negative, taken hand-held, shows far

greater detail and richness of tonal information than a print from

either a hand-held or tripod mounted 6X6 negative. I have many

examples on the walls around me (of tripod and hand-held 35mm, 6X6,

and 4X5 shots printed to either 11X14 or 16X20), so I speak from

experience. I am not giving you an 'opinion' based on the conjecture

of pseudo-expertise, but facts based on proof. I do not pretend to be

an expert, but I do have some expertise to share.

 

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From experience I can also say that camera-shake becomes more of an

issue as you move to SMALLER not LARGER formats. For example, a 1mm

vertical movement of the film plane during exposure creates far more

image degradation in a small 35mm negative than the same 1mm vertical

movement in a comparatively huge 4X5 negative. Think of the effect of

the apple that landed on Isaac Newton's head compared to the gravity

of the situation caused by the one that landed on the ant basking in

the sun next to him.

 

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This is not the first time Mr. Andrews expresses incredulity at the

use of 4X5 hand-held (see previous thread):

 

 

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"Oh come on! We are talking hand-held 5x4 here are we? At f/22 in

available light?

MTF curves! Taking a couple of tranquiliser tablets would surely have

more effect on image quality than whatever lens is on the camera.

Or is this just a leg pull?

 

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-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), February 02, 2000.

 

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To expound on some previously made enlightened comments:

 

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One of the most celebrated images of the 20th century, Migrant Mother,

was taken in 1936 by Dorothea Lange using a hand-held 4X5 camera

(Graflex). To quote Robert Cole's essay in "Dorothea Lange-

Photographs of a Lifetime" regarding the taking of 'Migrant Mother':

"She was retutning home on a rainy, cold, miserable March evening...

Lange spent less than ten minutes with the woman, making five

exposures." He further added: "She seldom shot indoors, seldom used

artificial light."

 

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Even Alfred Stieglitz used a 4X5 camera hand-held. There is a long and

rich tradition of hand-held 4X5 photography. Press photography was,

for many decades, dominated by hand-held 4X5 cameras (look at Weegee).

 

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And no, I doubt that f22 would be the aperture of choice for hand-held

available light 4X5 photography. That is why MTF curves at f5.6 and f8

are so important, because these apertures would actually be used if

necessary!

 

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'Migrant Mother' was taken in poor light, hand-held, without flash,

using a relatively slow emulsion by today's standards. I am sure the

lens was close to being wide open... Today we have faster and sharper

films, sharper and contrastier multicoated lenses and better

engineered and built equipment for hand held range-finder 4X5 picture

taking (Linhof Master Technika?).

 

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As for the unkind suggestion to take tranquilizers... Pry open your

mind and expand your imagination and accept new creative

possibilities. Not all large-format photographers are worrying about

what zone to place the foot of Mt. St-Ansel in as they try to

pre-visualize it with the entire scene in focus, their lens at

infinity and set at f22, displaying ultimate depth of field...

 

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Diversity of thought and creative expression is what makes the art of

photography so rich, compelling, and absorbing.

 

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I will enjoy a different way of making images with a large format

camera. I certainly will not be the first to do this, nor the last.

Let the nay-sayers laugh, for they will cry at my next exhibit and

wonder how the hell I did it!

 

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Regards from Toronto, Dr. Mark Nowaczynski (I am only licensed to

prescribe tranquilizers in the province of Ontario)

 

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-- Mark Nowaczynski (archivalprints@home.com), February 02, 2000."

See another previous thread on this topic titled 'Observations on

hand-held large format photography':

 

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http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=004G64

See also the thread I quoted from in my first message on this topic

in this present thread:

 

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'Hand-held Linhof Technika lens choice?'

 

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http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=002SVA