Karsh
and Adams would breathe a sigh of relief. View cameras are becoming a reality
once more with few changes from their operation fifty or sixty years ago. For
those that seek ultimate image quality, flexibility and control these
contraptions (current set-ups look like they came straight out of the Lockheed
Martin skunk works) are the end-all and be-all. View cameras are taking their
place in the pantheon of digital cameras.
The digital view camera is an
interesting device, all the ease and quality of digital photography, yet the
rugged simplicity and flexibility of a view camera. It is well suited to
architecture, landscapes, fine art, portraiture and commercial photography.
Wildlife, sports and photojournalism being the three most prominent things that
view cameras do not excel at. For field work there is also little else as
reliable as a view camera, with an almost complete lack of electronics as part
of the camera itself, the ability to repair lenses in the field and fix pretty
much any other problem with gaffers tape there’s not much that can go terribly
wrong. The digital back can of course run into trouble, but there’s a simple
solution to this, you can carry a medium format film back and a few rolls of
film.
The
average person’s view of professional photography begins and ends with Nikon
and Canon, depending on their age it may extend to medium format film, Hasselblad
and Mamiya. To that end a large format camera is an extreme and exotic thing
and people tend to value anything extreme and exotic above the average and
mundane. To put that into words the working photographer will respond to:
“ka-ching!”. A digital view camera also opens up several new areas of
photography (architecture and high end commercial) that are not options for the
photographer with the average (or even high end) SLR camera kit.
There are several downsides to
digital view cameras, size/weight and expense (an ideal digital view camera
system costs about as much as a new BMW at the moment) being the biggest
hurdles. With greater control and flexibility also comes greater requisite
technical skills; with extreme image quality comes a higher degree of
difficulty, both in creating an image and in proper use of equipment while
shooting, during post-production and even in selecting the proper equipment as
these cameras are not sold in kits but assembled with pieces from many
manufacturers. There is also no ready source of information on the use of view
cameras, let alone digital ones, and very little in the way of on-line
resources. Most books on the subject are out of print and even finding an
on-line review can be challenging. The average photographer will not be able to
extract the utmost quality from a digital view camera thus further removing
competition and turning this style of photography into an even more exclusive
niche. Which, if you are one of the lucky photographers that has the requisite
knowledge and training, ain’t such a bad thing!
- This was a 'term paper' for one of my classes this semester. One nice thing about photography teachers, they don't like to read.
