Using the View Camera: A Creative Guide to Large Format Photography

Moving from a small, hand-held camera to a view camera is a big step, but this book will help guide you in your switch to large-format photography. It explains the technical aspects and explores the creative potential of the view camera when photographing architecture, interiors, landscapes, and table-top sets. The camera's basic design, its many-sized formats, and all oft accessory equipment on the variety of lenses and shutters available. Such optical principles as depth of field, the Scheimpflug Rule, image size and distortion, and perspective are clearly explained and carefully diagrammed.

The view camera's movements, used to adjust the film lane in relation to the lens, are among its most important features. The movements—the rise and fall, the shift, the tilt, and the swing—are individually analyzed, and their effects are fully illustrated. Such basic procedures as loading sheet film, leveling the camera, choosing a filter, and calculating the right exposure are detailed as part of the natural sequence of operating the camera.

Data for a wide range of large-format films is presented in straightforward charts that include exposure indexes suggested by Simmons, notch patterns, and information on coping with reciprocity failure. You'll learn how to process sheet film in drums, in open tanks on hangers, and in open trays. Best of all, Simmons explains how to use the Zone System to visualize the tonality of our final prints and how to tailor your exposures and development accordingly.

Forty-eight pages of color and black-and-white pictures taken by 15 view-camera artists highlights some of the camera's creative applications.