I Bought An Old Wooden Camera And Started Taking Pictures With It

Although most people associate these cameras with Victorian gentlemen in Bowler hats. These cameras are still being made today. I think my camera is actually from the 1980's.

Unlike most film cameras, you can't just buy a roll of film and start shooting. The camera has to be attached to a tripod. The film needs to be loaded into separate holders and to see anything you need a dark cloth and a magnifier to focus properly.

There is no light meter, so you have to buy one or use an app on your smartphone.

By the time I had bought everything I felt I needed, the cost of the camera was less than half of the total for the complete kit.

A large format camera is basically a light tight box with a lens at one end and a sheet of film on the other. The three main controls are the same as for any other camera. Focus, aperture and shutter. The ISO is set by what film you load into your holders.

They might be in different places (the ergonomics are a real learning curve). But if you know how to use your digital camera in manual, you can use an old film camera.

Lots of people will say that digital is way cheaper than film. In reality it is much closer than than you might think. Depending on how you shoot, film may even be cheaper when comparing like for like systems.

High end digital systems are expensive. It might cost as much as £10,000 to get set up with a pro system.

Large format cameras and lenses can actually be obtained pretty cheaply, and if you are careful you can get set up with a nice camera and a couple of lenses for less than £1000.

Yes, film is can be expensive, but you tend not to shoot a lot of sheets in large format. I can shoot, develop and scan black and white for around £3 per shot. Colour is much more expensive at around £15 per shot. For an average portrait I might only shoot 4-6 sheets of film

The prices can mount up, but your digital equipment depreciates over time. So you might easily lose a thousand pounds or maybe more every year of its life. If you wouldn't shoot £1000 of film every year, large format is cheaper.

My camera takes 4x5" film. To put that into perspective it is 15 times the size of a full frame digital camera sensor. If you get skilled at using the camera it can produce hugely detailed photographs. More surprisingly 4x5 is the smallest sheet film format. Cameras and film are available for 5x7", 8x10", and even 11x14" if you know where to look.

As nice as a camera may look, at the end of the day it is results I care about. Portraits taken with a large format camera have something special about them that you can't duplicate with a digital camera, and believe me I have tried! The long tonal range, and way the focus unrolls from perfect sharpness to soft blur have their own particular look that smaller formats don't have.