I'm thinking of getting into large format photography, probably 4x5 to start. I'd be using the cam for portraiture, primarily waist up and headshots. 210mm seems to be a pretty common focal length but will it be too short for portraits? I was thinking something more like 300 or 360 would be better, but they're obviously pricier and then I wonder whether the bellows on whatever cam I buy will be long enough.
The old textbook method of finding the “proper” lens for head-and-shoulders portraits is to double the diagonal of the film size. With digital, that would be the sensor size.
The diagonal of a 35mm negative is about 42.5mm. The diagonal of a sheet of 4x5 film is about 160mm. Using the old rule of thumb would dictate an 85mm lens for 35mm and a focal length of about 320mm for 4x5.
To put it another way, here are some common large format lens focal lengths and their approximate equivalents for 35mm.
So if you have a favorite portrait lens for 35mm (or a full-frame 35mm-size), you can try the approximate 4x5 equivalent. I generally use a 135mm lens (or a 70-200mm zoom) for headshots.
Presumably you’d want something shorter (maybe 50-75% of the focal length of your head-and-shoulders portrait lens) for waist-up portraits.
Another thing to consider (unless you’re using a 4x5 SLR or an accurate optical viewfinder) is that once you put the film holder in the camera, you’ll no longer to be able to see where your subject is in relation to the edges of the film. Therefore you might want to leave some “air” around the subject in case your subject moves while you’re closing and cocking the shutter, inserting the film and pulling the dark slide.
And yes, you're gonna need a lot of bellows extension with the longer focal lengths.
Chris Macan
Posts: 12,738
HAVERTOWN, Pennsylvania, US
I use a 300mm when I'm shooting portraits on 3.25x4.25 pack film,
But I'm considering getting something in the 210mm length because I need to be fairly far away with the 300.
Rainer Ressmann wrote: i have the nikon 300/4,5 and totaly love it for potrait work - if you´re shooting "american potraits" the 210mm is a great choice too!
I realize the aspect ratios of the two formats is a complicating factor, but my experience (and depending how you calculate) is the angles of view are roughly equivalent to 1/3 on 35mm cameras, thus a 90mm 4x5 lens has the AOV of about 30mm, 150mm equals 50mm, 210mm equals 70mm, etc. This is why the 210mm is commonly used as a portrait lens - it is slightly telephoto and provides compression of the subject and pleasant perspective.
Hector Fernandez
Posts: 1,146
Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico
I shoot this with a 210 and then cropped the boobs out (that was the extra inch in the vertical side of the 4x5) as Mr. Snape said is a paper negative rated iso 6 at f6.3 (the largest aperture of that lens) still i think I underexposed it a little bit due to bellows extension.
Tony-S wrote: I realize the aspect ratios of the two formats is a complicating factor, but my experience (and depending how you calculate) is the angles of view are roughly equivalent to 1/3 on 35mm cameras, thus a 90mm 4x5 lens has the AOV of about 30mm, 150mm equals 50mm, 210mm equals 70mm, etc. This is why the 210mm is commonly used as a portrait lens - it is slightly telephoto and provides compression of the subject and pleasant perspective.
I started to mention the difference in aspect ratios but decided against it, since it can only be factored in if you are shooting for a particular print size - and printing everything without cropping (except as dictated by the aspect ratio).
When I was shooting both 35mm and 4x5, most photos were printed as 8x10, 11x14 or 16x20.
This gives the advantage to 4x5, since it's closer to the same aspect ratios of those three print sizes. And then you get into the borders (which most prints had back then), since 4x5 is not exactly the same aspect ratio as an 8x10 print with 1/4-inch borders.
However, today's 4x6 and 8x12 borderless prints give that advantage to the 35mm (or 24x36mm) film size.
In my newspaper days, at first I shot head-and-shoulders photos (or mug shots in newspaper parlance) with an 85mm lens until I realized that there is often some distortion in a tightly-cropped H&S shot with an 85mm.
Even though it may not appear to be obviously distorted, there is often some distortion of the features that alters the subject/model's features in a way that is more subtle but still changes their appearance somewhat.
Then I went to 105mm for mugshots/headshots, and now I prefer a lens that’s longer than 105mm.
However, with 4x5 there is less need to crop tightly. Since it's not the lens itself that distorts (it's the perspective, including the distance), you can get away with a shorter lens (in relation to the film size) by maintaining a greater distance (cropping less tightly in the camera).
Well, actually the newspaper where I interned before high school was still using 4x5 Crown Graphics that summer (and “experimenting” with 35mm). So those very first mugshots were actually shot on 4x5 with a 135mm lens and lit by two bare #5 flashbulbs – one held above the camera (the shutter was tripped by a solenoid from a button on the flashgun), the other on a stand that was held by an assistant or a volunteer.
Since mugshots were always printed one column (about two inches) wide in the newspaper, obviously 4x5 was overkill – and no attempt was made to fill the frame, since that would have required reducing when printing, which was trickier and more time consuming than enlarging the photo.
To be perfectly accurate, everything was printed 1/3 larger in the darkroom than it would appear in the newspaper, and the prints were rubber-cemented to a flat. The chief photographer felt that having a print that was larger than the final engraving improved quality - and it somehow simplified shooting the negatives for engraving vs. printing at the actual published size. (The enlarging easels were marked in column widths – 1/3 larger than the actual column width in the newspaper.) Printing everything to size allowed all the engravings to be shot without adjusting the engraving camera for each photo in order to save time.
Recently, a member made a post to the effect that there was never anything interesting or informative in the forums. Without "going negative" about why a person would make such a statement, suffice it to say, you only have the run across a few threads like this one to appreciate the depth of the knowledge base of the 'real photographers' who inhabit the forums here and generously contribute their ideas, knowledge and perspective on the fascinating discipline that is photography.
There is none so blind as he who will not see and none so deaf as he who will not hear.
Legacys 7
Posts: 33,118
San Francisco, California, US
I'd also state that 210 is good. I haven't shot 4x5 in some years. But I miss it. I own one and had to take a 4x5 class during my school years. It was part of the photography major. It you can, buy a mono rail camera. It's more flexible than the flat bed 4x5 camera.
The correct length is 300 or 360mm, usually the 360. I know people using a 100mm on 6x6 to do portraits, people using a 50mm on digital to do portraits, but just because they do it doesn't make it right.
P.S. Before you jump my sh%t the statement is made based on a head and shoulders portrait. If you do waist up it changes which lens you can use. If you back up you don't get the distortion from using too short a lens. You can use a 17mm for portraiture as long as you more then twelve feet away and perpendicular to the subject. Or in 4x5 speak a 65mm.
If I could afford only one lens for the work you want to do with a 4x5 camera, I would recommend a 240mm. This focal length affords you a good working distance from the subject and compression that will be flattering to your subject. Bellows draw should not be a problem for most cameras with this lens.
best to shoot a bit on the longer side with large format as you don't have the direct and real time way of viewing your composition as you do in a DSLR. Also when calculating the diagonal it's best to subtract a little as you will not be advisable to crop
to tight as you need a bit of margin due to the camera not being an SLR.
best to start a little long and then work towards a shorter focal length if you want.
For a 4x5 is would recommend a 240 or 300mm.
I shoot 8x10 and my main lens is a Schneider 480mm. I also use a 600mm
for faces that need more compression.
I've been shooting 4x5 for a little over a year now, and 120 for a few years before that. I just got a 210mm lens; I had been using the 150mm that came with the camera. I like the longer focal length, but I'm on the fence about which actual images I like better ... I think it's still too early to tell, since I've only done one shoot with the 210mm.
Objectively, if you're shooting colour film the 4x5 negative isn't an enormous improvement over a full-frame DSLR or medium-format digital camera, and within a few years will probably be worse than future FF DSLRs. I think it'll be quite a while before digital cameras can produce better black and white images than 4x5 film cameras though.
Subjectively, I don't think that anything beats a 4x5 camera. Except maybe an 8x10 camera. The images have a different look, and the camera forces you to slow down, and make different considerations in your work. A lot of images even show that "slowness." You also get to manipulate perspective using the rear standards to a much greater extent than tilt/shift lenses.
Before I got the camera I didn't think that perspective would be a big deal for portraits, but it lets you make someone's hips a little larger or smaller, and you can even slightly enlarge someone's head. I really like enlarging heads just enough to make the image look a little strange, but not enough that the viewer can tell that the head has been enlarged. I've done both of those things in images in my portfolio here.
Something to consider when using a large format camera is your depth of field. My 210mm lens, as mentioned before, is close to 60mm on a 35mm camera. That means I need to be very close to a subject to make a head and shoulders portrait - somewhere around 3-4 feet. But it's still a 210mm lens, so at that distance depth of field is VERY narrow. Even at f/16 I need to take a few frames to make sure I have both eyes in focus, since the sitter only needs to lean forward or back an inch or two to be out of focus. To shoot that picture reliably, you really ought to be using f/32, which means that your lights will need to be a lot more powerful than you'd need for a DSLR, if you're using them.
Also, you will be physically close to your subject, even when you think you will not be. This is going to result in a lot more distortion than you might think. The main reason I bought the 210mm lens was that with my 150mm, I was close enough for head and shoulders portraits that they were almost all at least a little distorted, and some were so distorted that even after Photoshopping them they were still unusable. Bendy heads, everybody looked chubby, stuff like that.
If you’re unsure whether you want to go with 210mm or something longer, one way to find out is with a convertible lens. Schneider made a 210mm f/5.6 Symmar that’s convertible to a 370mm lens by removing the front element.
This is probably a 1950’s or 1960’s lens, and it preceded the Symmar-S, Symmar-S MC (multicoated), and the Super Symmar XL lenses. The lens tests show that the later generations of the Symmar are sharper – but I doubt you could see the difference in anything smaller than a 30x40-inch print (if you could even see the difference at that size).
This is one of four large-format lenses that I kept when I sold my three 4x5 cameras and my 8x10 camera several years ago. (I still have a 6x9cm Cambo view camera.)
Any Symmar series or comparable lens with a 4x5 is so much sharper than any lens on a 35mm or full-frame DSLR, even in an 11x14 or 16x20 print, that you won’t believe the difference.
Toby Key
Posts: 312
Chichester, England, United Kingdom
When you pick a lens you also have to think about what shutter that lens will come with. 210mm normally come in copal #1's which have a top shutter speed of 1/400. 240's and 300's usually come in copal #3's which have a top shutter speed of 1/125. If you are out shooting in bright daylight this might make a difference to you. If you are only going to be using the camera in the studio chances are it won't.
For portraits, I mainly use a 300 but will pull out my 150 if need be. I only use a 300, 150 and 90mm. I find that these three satisfy my needs well. I've thought about picking up a 240, but always talk myself out of putting the money into it.
Legacys 7 wrote: I'd also state that 210 is good. I haven't shot 4x5 in some years. But I miss it. I own one and had to take a 4x5 class during my school years. It was part of the photography major. It you can, buy a mono rail camera. It's more flexible than the flat bed 4x5 camera.
That's like saying that Ferraris are red and Porches are blue. It really depends on the camera and the tradeoffs between weight, cost, ergonomics, and movements.
Vector One Photography wrote: The correct length is 300 or 360mm, usually the 360. I know people using a 100mm on 6x6 to do portraits, people using a 50mm on digital to do portraits, but just because they do it doesn't make it right.
That's pure bullshit.
I suppose you think that one should always use super wide lenses for landscapes, eh?
Zack Zoll wrote: Objectively, if you're shooting colour film the 4x5 negative isn't an enormous improvement over a full-frame DSLR or medium-format digital camera, and within a few years will probably be worse than future FF DSLRs.
Hm... logic and math say something quit different. A full-frame SLR is 24 to 36 megapixels, 2/3 of it interpolated since the sensor can't record color, and only has 1 color per photosite. Compared to the potential for a 100 megapixel, 16 bit per pixel image from a 4x5 slide, objectively the best that 35mm and even medium format aren't even in the same playing field yet.
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