4x5 View Camera Practice

I have a few images for you of my work with the dreaded 4x5 view camera, a monstrosity someone must have traveled back in time 100 years for. Although it is revered as a quality photographic tool, I see nothing but an archaic design that causes inefficient use, despite whatever quality results it might be able to obtain.

Here are some of the practice works I completed near the end of the semester:

Project: Create an extraordinary image from an ordinary object.



This is a Harry Potter book with the pages folded into the center. It is shot from behind using a strobe flash through ripstop nylon. I believe it was shot at f/32 for 1 or 2 seconds, but when I exported the image from the digital back Leaf software I did not export all the meta data as I should have.



These are just pasta noodles, shot through a white/translucent plexiglass and lit from below and from the right side by flash strobes. Not exactly super extraordinary, but when I had imagined the result I was imaging it being completed with my macro lens and DSLR. I was a little surprised when I arrived at the studio only to remember we were required to work with the 4x5 for this assignment.

The last image was done with my Canon 7D and a 100mm macro lens. The assignment was to find an advertisement and see if we could emulate it. I though I would be smart and research "minimalist ads" so I would need relatively little for props, but my teacher pointed out to me after deciding this was a perfect image the instead of a normal alka seltzer tab in the image I chose, they had used a pie!

My Final Image	Original Alka Selzter Ad

I lit the container and water for the tab from behind using a hard light through ripstop nylon, and tied a string around the tablet, shooting it remotely as I waved it back and forth through the water to get a curve in the bubbles. I also shot the pie in studio, photoshopping the final result into the "ad".

_{Posted: December 23, 2010}