Kleffel 24x30This an old "Reisekamera" (field camera) built by L.G. Kleffel (Berlin) in the end of the nineteenth century.
It is a flat-bed camera with limited adjustment capabilities.
I have restaurated it and use it for architecture, landscape and sometimes for close-ups and portraits.
For transportation the bed is folded up to the back such that the ground glass is protected*, then
the whole unit is like a small wooden suitcase.
(* A feature some modern field cameras are lacking...)
This camera supports film sizes of 13x18cm (5x7 inches), 18x24cm (approx. 8x10 inches)
and 24x30cm (a little smaller than 11x14 inches).
With reduction frames all smaller formats are usable too.
formicula 18x24
This is my home-built view camera, a monorail construction with full adjustment capability.
It is rock solid, but not too heavy to be carried around.
(The GIF image shows the original version of "formicula". Here is a more recent JPEG picture of my "formicula 2" camera,
with an improved monorail and an improved 3D-tripod-head.)
New: Here is a brand new (2001) view of my newest improvement, a camera back in the "international" compatible style, and in the 8x10' US size.
New: Now I do provide drawings of my camera design in GIF and PDF format.
I also have a short discussion of some design decisions.
Other cameras.
I have many other cameras, not only LF, and plan to present them here in the future.
Please visit my page regularly to learn about a really old Polaroid, a tiny Rollei 16, and more.
My bath served as my darkroom for film processing. There were the large development trays
and the microcomputer used as a programmable timer.
The working room of our flat served as the "dry" darkroom were I made
the copies and (sometimes) enlargements.
New New New!!! Finally (June 1999), about five years later than expected, I have my real darkroom.
I really enjoy to just having it available anytime. :-) :-) :-)
You will see my darkroom if you follow the "Next" link at my navigation bar (at the bottom of this page)
or you can jump directly from here to my darkroom page, but then don't forget to return to this page ;-)
I am sorry: Until now (2001) there is no practicable way to get the quality of large-format images over the net. Reasons:
- The only professional digitizing service accessible for me is the Kodak PHOTO CD,
but the largest neg. format supported by PHOTO CD is 4x5'. Most of my work is much larger.
Also, the printing process is a creative act and so in the case of B/W the prints
should be digitized, not the negatives. - Even if I could digitize my images at the required resolution
(at 20 lines per mm I would need about 10000x14000 pixel scans, 140 million pixels)
the resulting image size in computer memory would be simply to big for todays computers.
(At 4 bytes per pixel this were 0.56GB memory.) - Such monster images would result in large files
even if using the most advanced compression scheme. - Even if this was not a problem, my web space is limited and
most people do not have access at direct T1 backbone connection rates...
(1)
In fact, good 35mm SLR quality is much more than what can be displayed on the best computer screens anyway...
so I provide some 35mm conversions of my large slides on my photo gallery page.
(2)
To give you a crude impression here, this is one of my b/w photos as scanned by a midrange scanner
(with ridiculous few gray values, only 256, while the original has virtually infinite grays...)
NEW: I no have put midrange quality scans of my images into my new LF gallery.
You find it from the links in my photographic index page.
Large-format photography can be the most expensive way of photographing. The good news is,
it can be really cheap too. It depends on how much one is willing to do him/herself.
Until I had my first finished picture ready, I spent about 120$ for the material of the camera,
200$ for the tripod, 10$ for the trays and some $ for my first film pack
and photographic paper. One of my first lenses was from an overhead projector.
This already yielded excellent results.
OK, admitted, it was from an upper-class overhead model, consisting of three optical elements, i.e. a triplet.
Later I added some more expensive parts, like professional lenses (made by Rodenstock) with shutter, and a light meter (by Gossen).
The large-format slides do not need projection. I put each slide into a
frame made from strong paper (carton) and store these in an aluminium suitcase.
For viewing one can simply hold a framed slide against a bright light source,
preferably daylight. Or I hang several of those framed slides in front of a window, which is covered with a
diffusing foil for better lighting:
This looks best when the sun is shining, allthough each kind of daylight induces its own kind of impressions...
since July 22, 1999.
