The Wista 4 x 5 and 8 x 10 are view cameras. People often ask about these cameras when I break them out in a crowd. The most commonly asked question is if they are antique cameras. They are, in fact, not antique but fairly new. One can still purchase this type of camera brand new if he or she is willing to shell out a couple thousand dollars. The image that comes to mind the most when I think of a view camera is that of Ansel Adams on top of his car with the tripod mounted on the roof and the darkcloth over his head. The image to the right is the 4x5. The 8x10 is the big brother of the 4x5 and the camera Ansel Adams used for most of his images. Both of my large format cameras are Wista. The images below show the 4x5 next to the 8x10. I used to think the 4x5 was a big camera. That was until I got the 8x10!

A view camera is different from the typical 35mm camera in several ways. A 35mm camera with interchangable lenses has a built in prism with mirrors placed at angles that reflect the light coming into the lens. This configuration is used because if you saw the raw image as it entered the lens, it would be upside down and backwards. A view camera focuses the image on a ground glass (shown in the image on the left) at the rear of the camera and since there are no mirrors or prism, the image seen on the ground glass is upside down and backwards. This takes some time getting used to, but if you have been shooting for a long enough time, it comes as second nature. The darkcloth is used because the image on the ground glass is fairly faint due to the fact that light seen on the glass through the lens is significantly less than the surrounding light. So, one must block out the surrounding light in order to properly focus the camera. Different lenses can be used with the view camera (see "Lenses" below) for a variety of scenes. The view camera also does not have a built in light meter, which means that one must use a hand held light meter to determine the proper exposure.

Film for the view camera is carried in film holders which are inserted in front of the ground glass when the image is focused. Two sheets of film can be loaded into each film holder (one on each side), so if one is planning to shoot several images, several film holders are required. If you compare it to roll film (35mm) which has between 24 and 36 frames, you would have to carry 12 to 18 film holders to shoot the same number of images as with the 35mm! One can see why images are chosen very carefully and are well thought out before the view camera even comes out. Set up time for the view camera is significantly longer than that of a 35mm or medium format camera as well. The first thing to set up is the tripod. None of my images from the Wista are taken without a tripod. Next the camera is mounted to the tripod, is opened, and a lens is attached. Composing and focusing the image with the darkcloth can take a significant amount of time (Especially if one decides she is using the wrong lens for the job. Not that that happens to me....). Next in line is determining the exposure with the spot meter. Once the exposure is determined (with any compensation for filters that may be used), the film holder is inserted, the dark slide removed (don't forget this part!) and the shutter is released. All of this takes an average of 20-30 minutes. If you are thinking of taking up photography with a view camera, make sure you have friends that are VERY patient!

I currently have three Mamiya RB67 medium format cameras which I use predominately for shooting lightning. I do use the Wista on nights that are particularly active, but as noted above, film holders only hold two sheets and it is more expensive to develop.

Lightning is completely unpredictable and it is impossible to tell what is coming. I wanted to have larger negatives to print, but shooting lightning involves a LOT of wasted film. The answer was medium format. One gets the advantage of a larger negative, and the convenience of roll film. The Mamiya is easier than the Wista to set up, and I can get up to 20 shots on 1 roll of 220 film. This equals a significant savings in the film department and better opportunities to set up fast.

I bought my first RB67 in 1999 for the Arizona monsoon lightning season. I decided I liked the results, but I couldn't cover enough ground for the really active nights, so in spring of 2001, the second and third were purchased. I also have three lenses (see below) to use on the cameras.

Film for the RB67 is loaded into film backs and mounted onto the camera. There are 2 types of film backs, the 120 and the 220. The 120 film back holds enough film for approximately 10 frames and the 220 back holds enough for about 20 frames. I currently have 3 220 backs and 1 120 back.

As with the Wista, there is no prism or light meter in the RB67, although there is one mirror used to assist in focusing. This means the image is not upside down, but it is just reversed on the glass (left side swapped with right side). The glass is located in the flip-top box on top of the camera body. This takes a bit of getting used to when composing an image, but because after using the view camera, I am quite used to it. The RB67 is the perfect compromise between the convenience of the 35mm and the image quality of the large format.

Lenses play a big role in the composition of any image. If you have a zoom lens on a 35mm camera, you know the difference it can make when you are trying to get a close-up versus a wide angle picture. The same is true of my large and medium format lenses. I have a variety of lenses to use for each camera and for different situations. The collection continues and will likely never be complete to my satisfaction.

For the Wista 4x5, I have four different lenses. The first is a 90mm f8 Schneider Super Angulon. This is considered a wide angle lens for a view camera. This lens comes out for those images that require the largest angle of view. The 90mm was the lens of choice for most of the images I took on the Grand Canyon trip in July of 2001. The next lens in the group is my 170mm Fuginon f5.6 lens (equivalent to about a 70mm lens for 35mm). I bought this lens when I purchased the camera in 1995. This is considered just a bit longer than a normal lens for the view camera (not wide angle or telephoto) and is good for general landscape images that need to be a little tighter than the 90mm would allow. The third lens is a 210mm Schneider Symmar f5.6. I use this when I want to bring subjects in a bit tighter, but still want some of the surrounding scene. My final lens is a 360mm Schneider Tele-Xenar f5.5 telephoto lens. This lens is my longest lens to date and it brings things in significantly closer than the 210mm lens. I am still hoping to get a 270mm and a 65mm superwide lens, but I won't hold my breath just yet. Sometime in the future, I will be adding these to my collection.

For the Wista 8x10, I currently have two lenses. The first is a 375mm lens with an Ilex shutter. This somewhat longer than normal lens for the 8x10 and creates some beautiful images. The second lens is a 210mm Wollensak which is closer to a normal lens. I am using the 8x10 mostly to get back into black and white photography. I am finding that I see much better in color and am trying to find my way back to black and white. Hopefully I can add a B&W gallery soon.

I also have 3 lenses for the Mamiya RB67s. My first lens is a 90mm lens which is considered a normal lens for medium format (equilavent to the 50mm lens in 35mm format). This lens was purchased along with the camera in 1999. It is a great lens to use when the lightning storms are close enough to make the hair on the back of our necks stand up and make us sit in the truck. My second lens, a 180mm lens, was purchased late in the Arizona monsoon season in 1999. The 180mm lens allows lightning in the distance to be brought in closer and make it appear larger. The 180mm lens is used in almost all lightning storms. The third lens is a 250mm lens just purchased this year. This lens has been used a couple of times this year for storms that are too far off in the distance to get good images with the wider angle lenses. Lightning always looks bigger when you are watching it than when you get the images back from the lab. The 250mm lens should help to make some of the less impressive strikes look better. Hopefully you will see the results after summer 2001. I still have a wish list for the Mamiya as well. This list includes a 140mm macro lens, a superwide and a longer telephoto lens. The large format takes precedence over the medium for the time being, so these lenses are pretty far off in my future.

I recently purchased extension tubes for the medium format cameras as well. The extension tube allows for close up shots, and when using them together, can produce shots that are greater than 1:1. That means that if I shot a picture of a quarter, it would be the same size on the film as in real life. This allows for greater detail in small images. I will be using the extension tubes for flower images like "Alien Flower"

Film plays a significant role in how the images you see will look in the final print. When I first started shooting with the Wista, I was using negative film because I had access to a darkroom with facilities to allow me to print my own color images. Since moving to Arizona, I do not have the opportunities I had in New Hampshire. Saturation of negative film does not reach the levels it does with transparency (also known as "slide" film). Colors in transparency film are truer to life than in negative film and generally, you will not find many landscape photographers shooting with negative film. My film of choice for daylight landscape film is Fugi Velvia. It's ASA (or ISO) rating is 50, which means the grain is very small. This improves the quality of the final print, especially if the image is being enlarged significantly. For lightning, I needed a slightly faster film, so I am shooting now with Fugi Astia film (ASA 100). I was using Kodak VS100 last season, but I have decided to start experimenting with different films when shooting lightning. Lightning photography is significantly different than daylight landscape photography because the shutter is left open for several seconds to several minutes. If you leave the shutter of the camera open for a long duration, a phenomenon known as color shift can occur. This is a shift in the color balance in film, generally to the magenta (purplish) or red. The color shift is different for all films, so the effect is different when shooting lightning. I like to experiment with different films to see what kind of shifts I get and how the lightning reacts to a particular film. I still only use transparency film because of the color and fine grain.

Filters are used in photography to manipulate the light coming into the camera one way or another. There are creative filters that allow a photographer to place a rainbow in the image without there actually being one there, filters that make star-bursts appear on bright highlights in an image, filters that keep the object in the center of the frame in sharp focus while throwing everything oustide the center out of focus. These are called creative filters. I am not currently using any creative filters because I don't like to manipulate the beauty of the landscape. I do, however, use filters for some of my images. The filters I currently carry in my bag at all times include the polarizing, neutral density, split neutral density, and enhancing filters. The polarizing filter "cleans up" stray light and can make the sky much more dramatic, especially if there are clouds for added contrast. The neutral density filters are used when there is too much light for the shutter speed I wish to use, or if I am trying to shoot lightning during the day (the shutter needs to be open for at least 30 seconds which is difficult if the sun is still up). The split neutral density filter is used when the sun is setting and I am trying to make an image with a foreground no longer lit by the sun. In this case, the contrast between a bright sky and a darker foreground is too much for the film to handle, so the split neutral density cuts light from the bright top and allows the more light to come in on the darker foreground. The enhancing filter is used most commonly in foliage images and any image that contains red as a dominant color. The enhancing filter boosts the natural red in an image without significantly altering the other colors in the image.

OLYMPUS E-10

A lot of people have asked me if I shoot digital. I used to answer no. That was until Keith bought me an Olympus E-10 for my birthday. I use the E-10 for snapshots and for friends and family. I still do not use digital for any of my landscape images. While digital imaging is certainly improving, it still has not reached the level of medium and large format clarity. There are digital backs for the medium format and large format cameras, but I do not have several thousand dollars lying around for that, not to mention a computer beefy enough to handle files that big. I am sure there will come a day when a digital back for my 4x5 will find it's way into my pack, but not anytime in the near future.

I first discovered my love for photography when I was in college and took my first black and white class. At that point, I borrowed my mother's Minolta X-700 35mm SLR. This was a great camera and served all my purposes very well. I was given my first camera (also a Minolta X-700) that year for Christmas. In the following years, I decided photography was something I would like to continue to pursue, so I purchased a Minolta Maxxum 9-xi (Minolta's professional model at the time). That was the camera I used for several years until I enrolled in a few courses in Manchester, NH and was introduced to large format photography by Mark Fernald (and I will be forever grateful for that introduction and his continued help and advice). I have some images taken on the Minolta that are offered on this website. These images are from early on in my photography exploits and likely shot before I started using larger formats. Any image that is offered in sizes only up to 16 x 20 are taken on the Minolta 9-xi. The reason for only offering them up to this size is because the amount of enlargement required to make an image of that size makes the grain very large and the image appears fuzzy (even 16 x 20 is pushing it). I still use my Minolta for family pictures and general use, but anything offered on BloomPhoto.com from now on, will have to be from the Wista or the RB67s.

In the hopes of getting a kick-back from Toyota on our payments, I'd like to mention that without this awesome 4x4 (not a 4x5), we would not be able to get to some of the places seen on this site. It is an essential part of our equipment - especially during lightning season in Arizona. It gets us past the washes flowing with water and carries us into the off-road lands. It also has very convenient places to put 3 tripods and 3 cameras! In short, it rocks!