Anatomy of a large format photograph - Kilometer 1784

kilometre 1784, barmah forest, originally uploaded by Andrew McDougall.

Toyo 45G, Nikkor-W 150mm, f22, 1/30, Fuji Veliva 100
This is an image from my second foray into large format photography. The Kilometer 1874 sign is visible to the lower left of the river bank. The figures in the boat at the far end of the river are also visible in the orignal size, as well as a bird flying across the top left hand edge that wasn't visble at the time of capture.

This is an image I took at Easter for the Barmah Forest Project. I’ve chosen the large format (LF) camera, because it produces an image which matches my perception of the forest and river as a sanctury.

Because the film size is 4x5 inches (10x12cm), the camera records an amazing amount of detail, 20 times what is contained in a regular 35mm frame or digital sensor. Everything which I saw is on the film, and even more. When I examined this transparency under a loupe, I noticed a bird flying across the top left hand edge of the frame which I was unaware of at the time of capture.

I could also pick out the two figures in the boat at the far end of the river:

As the lens is connected to the film plane with a bellows, it let me control the perspective and the distribution of sharpness in a way which cannot be achieved with a regular camera:

• I recall the tops of the trees waving in the wind and the current on the river in the foreground. With a regular camera, I would have had to either limit the amount of river in the frame or chop the tops of the trees off. By rising the front standard I’ve managed to keep the trees in perspective, they do not lean in toward each other as they would with a regular camera would when tilted

• The LF camera looks at the close objects and the horizon sharply at the same time: notice that the ripples in the foreground, only a few feet in front of the camera, are seen as clearly as the distant trees. Notice also the plastic water bottle anchored to submerged log in mid-stream. In contrast, a regular camera has to focus either close or far.

Of course I also wanted to capture the kilometre 1874 marker so that it would be sharp even though it occupy’s only a tiny part of the image.

For this particular photograph, those adjustments were quite simple and intuitive. After levelling the camera, I raised the lens using front rise to obtain the composition I wanted. I then tilted the lens forward, which tilts the plane of sharp focus, until it became horizontal. There was quite a lot of movement in the tree tops and on the river that day because of a light breeze, so with a 1/30 second exposure (f 22 aperture, Fuji Velvia 100), all movement was frozen.

Note that what is displayed here does not capture the full detail in the original transparency, but only a half of it: the scanning was done only at a resolution necessary to produce a 86 by 69 cm print, which is 476mb. However, the transparency has a resolution that could have been used to produce a quality digital image file at least two times larger. Such a file would have been close to 1 Gigabyte. At the resolution used, there is absolutely no fuzziness and no grain.