Which book to buy to learn about Medium Format photography?

I have recently bought a Hasselblad 500c.

 

Are there an books I can buy to learn how to take good photos in

medium format? I am interested in finding out about which films are

suitable for landscape and portrait. Also, it would be good to learn

about getting the exposure right.

 

I have had a look on the web for books and have found:

 

- Medium and Large Format Photography : Moving Beyond 35Mm for

Better Pictures ~ Roger Hicks, Frances Schultz

 

- Medium Format Photography/a User's Guide to Equipment and

Applications ~ Lief Eriksenn

 

- The Medium Format Advantage ~ Ernst Wildi

 

- Medium Format Cameras ~ Peter B. Williams

 

- Medium and Large Format Photography ~ Roger Hicks, Frances Schultz

 

and

 

Hasselblad Manual ~ Ernst Wildi

 

Have you read any of these books? Which one is the best?

 

Thanks!

 

Alex

Of course it depends on what you mean by "good pictures", if you mean properly exposed, technicaly correct, etc. then a "how to" manual will no doubt help. But if you mean GOOD PICTURES then it would be better to buy books full of GOOD PICTURES, this of couse depends on your taste, you could start with Cartier-Bresson or Bill Brandt or ... well you get the point, I have learnt a lot from books (and web forums) and wish you good luck.

I've have each of these books and have read all of them, so can comment on each. The 2 books by Roger Hicks and Frances Schultz are the same book. Every book I have read by these authors are excellent. However, this book has little information on the medium format, a large part of the book is on Large format photography and processing of film, so I wouldn't choose this particular book in this instance. The book by Lief Eriksenn is excellent, loaded with information on MF cameras and tons of pictures taken with different cameras, including hte Hasselblad, highly recommended and is the first book I bought for MF, and a bargain at $24.95. The Ernst Wildi medium format book is excellent, however not too much information about the different medium format cameras, and not many pictures at all. A good book to add to your collection later, but there are better books to get now. However, the Hasselblad manual by Ernst Wildi is excellent for the Hasselblad owner and is highly recommended, but is expensive at about $60 I think. Another book to consider if you're looking for another MF camera later on is: Medium Format Cameras:User's Guide to Buying and Shooting by Peter B. Williams $19.95 tons of information on all the MF cameras and lenses available...great book.

 

Ed Hoey

Alex,

 

I just looked at my copy of Ernst Wildi, even though there isn't much on the different cameras available except spec sheets in the back on some of them, and there are only about 16 color photos in the book, it is packed with good info on medium format photography in its 290 pages, trade paper 6x9" book. It costs around $30.

It seems as if what you are asking is about photography and not about medium format photography per se. The best books I have found for any serious student of photography regardless of format size are the following:

 

1) John S Schaefer's Basic Techniques of Photography Book 1

 

2) Bruce Warren's Photography Edition 2

 

3) Robert Hirsch's Exploring Color Photography

 

4) Henry Horenstein's Black and White Photography: A Basic Manual

 

5) Horenstein's Color Photography: A Working Manual

 

As for film choice, read this forum and then test to find out your favourites. Oh yeah, I like the Ernst Wildi's Hasselblad Manual. All I wish to say is that beyond film size and handling issues there really isn't that much difference in medium format photography with a 500C from 35mm photography. The same fundamental principles of photography hold.

"also it would be good to learn about getting the exposure right."

 

this is a very great understatement. photography, as the name implies, is all about creating graphic representations of light. as the old saw goes (approximately), the beginning photographer thinks about equipment, the journeyman thinks about composition, and the master thinks about light. IMHO, you cannot have success at photography unless you learn to concentrate on understanding light, and become adept at putting the light on your film in a way that will allow you to produce a print that matches your personal vision of how you want to convey a particular scene to your audience. to do this you need to master (at a minimum) two skills: (1) previsualization -- the ability to look at a real life scene, and then imagine how you want to portray the scene in your print (do you want to preserve shadow detail, do you want to preserve highlight detail, do you want to compress or expand the subject brightness range, etc.) and (2) determining correct exposure -- you need to develop a personal system for taking light measurements -- spot metering reflected light, measuring incident light at your subject, sunny 16, etc etc etc -- that will ensure that what you see in your mind makes it onto the negative. later you will learn (with b&w) that you can control the negative at the developing end as well to really get what you want on the film. now, as to your question, medium format is no different than any other film size when it comes to these basic concepts. you will need to think about a few issues -- e.g. since depth of field is entirely dependent on actual focal length, a "normal" lens (80mm let's say) on MF will have less DOF than a normal lens (50mm) on a 35mm camera -- but mostly good technique is relevant equally to all formats. therefore, i recommend that you focus on basic technique. two good books by ansel adams are "the negative" and "forty examples." both of these will help you get a good handle on how to control your camera -- i.e. to make it consistently produce images that conform to your vision of the scenes you photograph. good luck. you have chosen a great tool to get started!!

Alex:I feel Roger ( and others) summed it up very well....if I may add my two cents....I have been a Hasselblad user for 7 years now and love the quality images the system produces with ease and reliability. The Hasselblad Manual is my bible..I would also like to add Basic Techniques of Photography (The Ansel Adams Guide Part 1), The Hand Exposure Meter Book by Silverman, Zucker and Shell. Look for Hasselblad workshops...I just attended one in Death Valley which included 2 Hasselblad reps..it will give you more hands on experience with the system and it's great to be with fellow Hasselbald users. Also while I gain alot of information from books, sometimes it's easier and more interesting to learn from "good" workshops that specially deal with exposure and lighting. I will be attending one on Advanced Color Landscape Photography in Yosemite this spring that will in part disucss and practice the Zone system as it applies to color photography. Good luck in your photography!Ted

Exposure:

 

I use:

 

- the wired incident flash meter that I bought with my Bowens studio flash system,

 

- the new Gossen incident/relective, flash/ambient, spot/overall meter (£300)

 

 

- the PME45 TTL metering pentaprism (£1,139)

 

 

- the TTL flash meter on the 555 ELD(£2191) with my 2 Metz 70MZ-5s (£1000)

 

 

You can spend a great deal of money on meters, but you have to determine

 

- which method or meter is best for which situation,

 

- when to use a combination of light sources (eg fill-in flash)

 

- how to get the right balance of main light/fill in

 

- when to change to a film with greater lattitude

 

- how to manage the trade off between depth of field, camera shake and carrying a tripoid.

 

Any book would have to be good to contain more useful information than this forum!

No one has suggested the Ilford manual of Photography if you can get a copy it is very good for B/W

but the best method is to shot more film and to be critical of you own work.

Alex--

Just one comment regarding the book "The Hand Exposure Meter Book by Silverman, Zucker and Shell" someone suggested. IMHO, this book is a real waste of time and money, both of which I had the misfortune to spend on it. It is basically an advertisement for Sekonic meters, which are really first-rate (I have two of them). The book is repetitive, poorly edited, and full of errors (like paragraphs repeated almost word-for-word on succeeding pages). All three (very talented and knowledgeable) contributors make and re-make the same point: incident meters are way better than reflected. It's as though none of them read what the others had written, or even re-read what they themselves had written.

Unless you want to spend twenty dollars to have the same (perhaps valid) message thrown at you again and again, skip the book and spend your money on something that is not a glorified ad flogging one maufacturer's (excellent) equipment, like film.

My $0.02.

--Alex

Alex, I would like to add: Charlie Waite´s The making of landscape photographs. ISBN 1-85585-069-9. Not a "How to .." book for beginners, but a book full of beautifull photographs with background information on the making of the pictures and "Points to watch". A nice point is that Charlie used the square format for his landscapes and that is exactly what you want to do. /Ferdi.

I think there is a lot to be said for keeping things simple at the beginning. This means using films with good exposure latitude such as C41 colour print or Kodak T400CN or Ilford XP2 Super in black and white. This is contrary to what many people will tell you, but it will enable you to concentrate on composition and lighting rather than worrying if your exposure is out by 1/2 stop. You will learn much more if you also print your own pictures either by scanning or in a darkroom. The main barrier to good results is usually people's ability to frame and compose a photograph that conveys somthing of interest. An aesthetically pleasing but technically flawed rendition is usually preferable to a technically perfect but boring photograph. Formats only vary in aspect ratio, so if you can take good 35 mm photographs you can take good medium format ones as well .

 

Exposure measurement technique is indeed something you can pick up from a book. In fact I would recommend the Ansel Adams books as well as 'Perfect Exposure' by Roger Hicks and Francis Shultz. Ernest Wildi has an annoying tendency to state the obvious in 'The Medium Format Advantage'. Don't fall into the trap of immeadiately going out to buy a dedicated spotmeter and a densitometer on the basis of these books. If you can't take a good picture without these tools, you are probably not ready to use them. You will however need either a 35 mm camera or a good incident/reflective meter (which may include a spot capability) for exposure measurement. Look at books on the works of photographers that you admire rather than those concentrating on equipment. This is a personal choice, but any good bookshop should have a selection.

"don't fall into the trap of immediately goind out and buying a dedicated spotmeter . . . ."

 

in fact, you could do much worse. spot metering, while time consuming and obviously not the solution for every photographic situation, is a great way to learn about how light works and how a scene is likely to be rendered on film. often only a narrow spotmeter will be able to tell you what exposure you will need to sho detail in your deep shadows. often only a spot meter will be able to measure subject brightness range and so tell you whether you have exceeded the range of your film. a spotmeter is a great, even indispensable tool. as for the "spot" meters built into gen'l purpose meters, they are not worthy of the name. seldom better than 7-10 degrees (regardless of what the mfr claims), they simply have too wide an angle of acceptance to be useful for most applications. simply put, there is virtually NO scene that cannot be accurately metered with a spotmeter. no other meter type can make that claim. every other type of meter has some significant limitation.

Using a spotmeter without understanding is likely to result in more mistakes and disappointment than using a simple averaging inident / reflective meter. Roger is right that some meters appear to have a wider than claimed acceptance angle. I think this is mostly due to flary optics.

Vartan--- I totally agree in regard to spot meters being hard for newbies to master. While capable of giving tremendous amounts of detailed information, they easily muddle new users' decisions on a shot.

 

I've had students be 2-3 stops off on highlights because they failed to realize they were at an angle that forced a direct reflection and was only slightly off of their taking angle. I think that an experienced "feel" for the nuances of true film range and actual speed ratings for proper densities must be developed in order to make good use of a spot meter. I like to have new photographers use an incident meter and develop a "painting with light" sort of mind set when first learning the craft. Some sensitivity to the general reflectance of the tones in the scene can be developed off of short term experiences and good, generally easy to print negatives come more quickly. After saying all of that out of one side of my mouth, I need to add that I personally use a spot meter for most situations but that it wasn't an instant success story in getting any mastery over it!

with all due respect, i must observe that IMO determining correct exposure with an incident reading requires far more skill and experience than using a reflectance meter of any kind, including a spot meter. unless you are just using it as an averaging meter (and even then), an incident meter can give very misleading info unless you have good knowledge about reflectance. use of an incident meter also poses practical difficulties. you must be able to approach your subject (or make a crude guess about the lighting conditions of your subject vis-a-vis the lighting conditions in a place you can reach). finally, incident meters are often hard to use to guage deep shadow detail since it is often difficult to know how deeply in a shaded area the meter sensor should be placed to obtain an accurate reading. in the end, i would always recommend a center-weighted averaging reflectance meter for a novice. for someone who has serious aspirations, i think a spot meter is the obvious next step. it is no accident that it is the type of meter that you use craig. any BTZSers out there who want to stand up for incident readings?? i know you're out there mr. davis!!