April 26th, 2012

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Oxford: 10×8 large format camera

Thursday, April 26th, 2012

I’m a huge fan of large format photography and I bought my first large format camera (a 5×4 inch Wista) back in 1990. At the time I was an assistant in a commercial photography studio where a lot of the work we did was car advertising photography for Rover which was shot on a 10×8 inch camera. The photographer I worked for has since retired from commercial photography and he’s been kind enough to let me borrow the same 10×8 inch camera that he used for all of the advertising work. It’a a big camera (four times the size of my 5×4 camera) and it’s also quite heavy. Only recently have I been able to find a rucksack big enough to hold it and last weekend I was finally able to take it out on the streets of Oxford which was lots of fun. I was only able to take 4 sheets of film with me on my outing because the combined weight of the camera, rucksack, lens and tripod all added up to quite a hefty load to be walking for 45mins into town with. I made it there and back in one piece and I can’t wait to do it again.

[Tech info:] Wista 10×8 camera with 300mm/f5.6 lens. Adox 100 film processed in Rodinal (1:50 dilution).

Wista 10x8 camera with a smaller lens than the one I took out on my session.

Here's the camera with a smaller lens than the one I ended up taking with me.

 

Ground glass screen

The view that I see from underneath the dark cloth. Image by Paolo Polzella.

 

Negatives drying in the darkroom

Negatives drying in the darkroom.

 

First shot, Turl Street, Oxford.

 

Street portrait

Street portrait, Turl Street. I made this shot in a hurry because this guy had to get back to work at the coffee shop down the road .

 

Morris dancers

Morris dancers, Broad Street, Oxford. Unfortunately this one has a processing problem where I didn't add enough film developer to cover the sheet of film.