New direction

During our holidays in Romania I decided it was time to take a new direction with my photography. For a long time I was intrigued about shooting film with a large format camera.

In the beginning of September I got my new Intrepid 4×5 camera (black version). The following 2 weeks the rest of the large format stuff arrived (light meter, film back, sheet film holders, Large format lenses, 120mm roll film, 4×5 sheet film, developing and scanning materials).

Shooting film is a big change. With my digital Fujifilm setup I shot around 100 to 150 images on an average photo walk. Most of the time all those images taken were focused on 4 to 5 compositions. Somehow it became more and more of a game to shoot a lot of different compositions on one photo walk. You can call it being trigger happy. All in all this did not result in more photographs to my liking. It only took more memory space on my computer.

Somehow this way of photographing also made me stray further and further from my original reason for doing photography. Namely being outdoors and experiencing the beauty of nature. My time outside was not focused on really connecting to that beautiful nature but more and more on the race for getting ca lot of different compositions as much as possible.

Shooting film is more tactile and does not deliver instant feedback. The choice of different film stocks, the setting up of the 4×5 large format camera, the metering , the developing of the negatives, the editing and printing all takes time before you really can see the result. It does makes me more contemplative before I fire the trigger. I have only a limited amount of film with me.

For me the main positive aspect of shooting film is that it slows me down. Somehow this slow method of photography full-fills my personal goal more, namely to be outside and really connect with nature. I think on the long run the photographs will also be more to my liking.

I have enclosed some first results of black and white images. All images are shot with Fomapan 400 4×5 sheet film using my Intrepid 4×5 camera (Black version) in combination with the Nikkor W 150mm f5.6 lens. I prefer the versions cropped to the 16×9 format. It suites more the specific composition. It are images of a closed down mill (ENCI) near Maastricht. Interesting to see how this location will develop in the near future.

All black and white film is developed at home with 510 Pyro (stand development) en edited with Film Lab pro (negative conversion), Affinity photo (spot and dust removal) and Capture One pro (main editing). I used my Fujifilm XT3 and a loawa 65mm macro lens for scanning the negatives.

Yes I still will be using my digital setup. But the focus will be more on shooting film. For me large format photography is a fresh new exiting adventure.

All content and photographs are (C) Copyright Ruud Maas. All Rights Reserved.