Workshop: Large Format

In one day you learn to shoot large format: how to set up the camera, what’s specific about shooting and developing, and you make your own frames and take them home.

We work with two different cameras:

1) a 4×5 inch monorail view camera

2) a regular folding field camera (FKD)

Theory

We take the cameras apart and put them back together to see how they’re built and what the parts do. We talk about how to choose a camera for your own needs. We look at all the materials you can shoot large format on: different films, photographic paper, glass plates and more, what they look like and how to load them into the camera.

Shooting large format

You choose what to shoot on: film, X-ray film or photographic paper.

Together we load the camera, shoot, develop and scan the picture. (Weather permitting we shoot outdoors; otherwise in the studio.)

Large format is where photography started in the 19th century. Formats gradually shrank to 120 and then 135, but photographers around the world still shoot on large cameras for the extreme detail and the amount of information they give for printing.

Workshop led by:

Alexander Gor, photographer, co-founder of Berliner Strasse.