View Camera Photography

The name view camera is ironic. The one thing this type of camera can't do is let you view the image once you loaded it with a film holder.

Also, as long as it is unloaded, the image you do see is upside down, and so dim you need a dark piece of cloth and a loupe to see any anything. So yes, out of all camera types, let's call this one the view camera :-)

But that said, these cameras offer all the control a camera can offer. A view camera has two sides. One holds the focusscreen and the film, the other holds the lens. Between them there is a bellows. This allows for focusing, and to move, shift and swivel the lens and the film and the subject relative to each other.

And there is something intimate about not looking through a camera but rather at the subject themselves when taking the photograph.

Maybe that is what view camera means.

If you understand Dutch, than you might want to see what the workflow with a 1905 plate camera is.

The large size allows for high resolution, precize composition and high quality lenses. There is sense of reality to them. And the process is so slow that by the time I trip the shutter, my subject has had to come to terms with being photographed and the tensions are gone.

All this is why I have the feeling that I can truely document my friends and loved ones with a camera like this.

I'll add a gallery of photos shot with a 4x5.