Large format refers to any imaging format of or larger. Large format is larger than " medium format", the or size of Hasselblad, Mamiya, Rollei, Kowa, and Pentax cameras (using 120- and 220-roll film), and much larger than the frame of 35 mm format. The main advantage of a large format, film or digital, is a higher resolution at the same pixel pitch, or the same resolution with larger pixels or grains which allows each pixel to capture more light enabling exceptional low-light capture. A 4×5 inch image (12.903 mm²) has about 15 times the area, and thus 15× the total resolution, of a 35 mm frame (864 mm²). Large format cameras were some of the earliest photographic devices, and before enlargers were common, it was normal to just make 1:1 contact prints from a 4×5, 5×7, or 8×10-inch negative.

Formats

The most common large format is 4×5 inches (10.2x12.7 cm), which was the size used by cameras like the Graflex Speed Graphic and Crown Graphic, among others. Less common formats include quarter-plate (3.25x4.25 inches (8.3x10.8 cm)), 5×7 inches (12.7x17.8 cm), and 8×10 inches (20×25 cm); the size of many old 1920s Kodak cameras (various versions of Kodak 1, 2, and 3 and Master View cameras, to much later Sinar monorail studio cameras) are 11×14 inches (28x36 cm), 16×20 inches (41x51 cm), 20×24 inches (51x61 cm), various panoramic or "banquet" formats (such as 4×10 and 8×20 inches (10x25 and 20x51 cm), and metric formats, including 9×12 cm, 10×13 cm, and 13×18 cm and assorted old and current aerial image formats of 9×9 inches, 9×18 inches (K17, K18, K19, K22 etc.), using roll film of 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, or 10 inches width or, view cameras (including pinhole cameras), reproduction/process cameras, and x-ray film. Above 8×10 inches, the formats are often referred to as Ultra Large Format (ULF) and may be 11×14, 16×20, or 20×24 inches or as large as film, plates, or cameras are available. Many large formats (e.g., 24×24, 36x36, and 48x48 inches) are horizontal cameras designed to make big negatives for contact printing onto press-printing plates. The Polaroid 20×24 camera is one of the largest format instant cameras in common usage and can be hired from Polaroid agents in various countries. Many well-known photographers have used the , wheeled-chassis Polaroid.

Control

Most, but not all, large format cameras are view cameras, with fronts and backs called "standards" that allow the photographer to better control rendering of perspective and increase apparent

depth of field The depth of field (DOF) is the distance between the nearest and the furthest objects that are in acceptably sharp focus in an image captured with a camera. Factors affecting depth of field For cameras that can only focus on one object dist ...

. Architectural and close-up photographers in particular benefit greatly from this ability. These allow the front and back of the camera to be ''shifted'' up/down and left/right (useful for architectural images where the scene is higher than the camera, and produces images where the scene is lower than the camera), and ''tilted'' out of parallel with each other left/right, up/down, or both; based on the Scheimpflug principle. The shift and tilt movements make it possible to solve otherwise impossible depth-of-field problems, and to change perspective rendering, and create special effects that would be impossible with a conventional fixed-plane fixed-lens camera.

Ansel Adams Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advoca ...

' photographs, and those of the other Group f/64 photographers, demonstrate how the use of front (lens plane) and back ( film plane) adjustments can secure great apparent depth of field when using the movements available on large format view cameras.

Operation

A number of actions need to be taken to use a typical large format camera, resulting in a slower, often more contemplative, photographic style. For example, film loading using sheet film holders requires a dark space to load and unload the film, typically a changing bag or

darkroom A darkroom is used to process photographic film, to make prints and to carry out other associated tasks. It is a room that can be made completely dark to allow the processing of the light-sensitive photographic materials, including film and ph ...

, although prepackaged film magazines and large format roll films have also been used in the past. A tripod is typically used for view camera work, but some models are designed for hand-held use. These "technical cameras" have separate viewfinders and rangefinders for faster handling. In general large format camera use, the scene is composed on the camera's ground glass, and then a film holder is fitted to the camera back prior to exposure. A separate

Polaroid Polaroid may refer to: * Polaroid Corporation, an American company known for its instant film and cameras * Polaroid camera, a brand of instant camera formerly produced by Polaroid Corporation * Polaroid film, instant film, and photographs * Polar ...

back using instant film is used by some photographers, allowing previewing of the composition, correctness of exposure and depth of field before committing the image to film to be developed later. Failure to "Polaroid" an exposure risks discovery later, at the time of film development, that there was an error in camera setup.

Uses

The 4×5 inch sheet film format was very convenient for press photography since it allowed for direct contact printing on the printing plate, hence it was widely used in press cameras. This was done well into the 1940s and 1950s, even with the advent of more convenient and compact medium format or 35 mm roll-film cameras which started to appear in the 1930s. The 35 mm and medium format SLR which appeared in the mid-1950s were soon adopted by press photographers. Large format photography is not limited to film; large digital camera backs are available to fit large format cameras. These are either medium-format digital backs adapted to fit large format cameras (sometimes resulting in cropped images), step and repeat Multishot systems, or scanning backs (which scan the image area in the manner of a flat-bed scanner). Scanning backs can take seconds or even several minutes to capture an image. When using a Sinar Macroscan unit and 54H data files, over 1

gigabyte The gigabyte () is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The prefix ''giga'' means 109 in the International System of Units (SI). Therefore, one gigabyte is one billion bytes. The unit symbol for the gigabyte is GB. This defini ...

of data is produced. Large format, both film-based and digital, is still used for many applications, such as landscape photography, advertising photos, fine-art photography, scientific applications and generally for images that will be enlarged to a high magnification while requiring a high level of detail. High quality fine art prints can be made at sizes in the range of 40x50″ from a 4×5″ original, and well beyond that for larger negatives. The Library of Congress uses various large format digital scans for "American Memories" (its website of old images and maps) in the current JPEG 2000 format (which allows quick small images, remote tiling, remote enlargement), and the older MrSID,

JPEG JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and imag ...

, and TIFF formats. In the printing industry, very large fixed cameras were also used to make large films for the preparation of lithographic plates before computer to film and

computer to plate Computer-to-plate (CTP) is an imaging technology used in modern printing processes. In this technology, an image created in a Desktop Publishing (DTP) application is output directly to a printing plate. This compares with the older technology, co ...

techniques were introduced. These are generally referred to as a " process camera" and consist of vertically mounted models for smaller work and horizontal units mounted on rails for very large works such as maps and plans.

National Park Service documentation programs

Large format film is also used to create a record of historic places and things for the National Park Service documentation programs. The Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), and the

Historic American Landscapes Survey Heritage Documentation Programs (HDP) is a division of the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) responsible for administering the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), and Historic American Landscapes ...

(HALS) require large format film-based photography. 4×5″, 5×7″, and 8×10″ large format film formats are the only acceptable formats for inclusion in these collections at the Library of Congress. 4x5 and 5x7 are generally used in the field (5×7″ is preferred for very significant buildings) and 8×10″ is generally utilized for photo-duplication of historic photographs, documents and blueprints. Through HABS/HAER/HALS, buildings and sites of historic significance are recorded with large format cameras and black and white film and using techniques that document the key features of the historic resource with special care not to distort the angles and views. This rectified photography can be accomplished with large format cameras by keeping the film, lens and subject perfectly parallel. Smaller format cameras need to be tilted to view high or low subjects, but the same subjects can be captured by shifting the lens element of a large format camera up or down to keep the film, lens, and subject planes parallel. HABS, HAER, and HALS also requires the increased resolution of large format film. A sheet of 5×7″ film has almost twice the resolution of 4×5″ film, and 4×5″ is almost 16 times larger than a 35 mm film image (24×36 mm). This added negative size not only allows for more detail, but the large format

polyester Polyester is a category of polymers that contain the ester functional group in every repeat unit of their main chain. As a specific material, it most commonly refers to a type called polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Polyesters include natural ...

film is also far more durable than

acetate An acetate is a salt (chemistry), salt formed by the combination of acetic acid with a base (e.g. Alkali metal, alkaline, Alkaline earth metal, earthy, Transition metal, metallic, nonmetallic or radical Radical (chemistry), base). "Acetate" als ...

35 mm stock. HABS, HAER, and HALS require that all submissions to the Library of Congress include the original film (archivally washed) and it must also include contact prints on fiber-based paper; these contacts are the same size as the film being submitted, 4×5″, 5×7″, or 8×10″, and the large size allows people to readily see the prints, while 35 mm contacts would be too small and would require magnification.

Photographers noted for having used large format

* Robert Adams * Takashi Amano (8×20" and 11×14") *

Eugène Atget Eugène Atget (; 12 February 1857 – 4 August 1927) was a French ''flâneur'' and a pioneer of documentary photography, noted for his determination to document all of the architecture and street scenes of Paris before their disappearance to mod ...

* Richard Avedon * Tina Barney * Gabriele Basilico * Bernd and Hilla Becher * Margaret Bourke-White *

Marilyn Bridges Marilyn Christine Bridges (born 1948) is an American photographer noted for her fine art black and white aerial photographs of extraordinary ancient and modern landscapes. She has photographed sacred and secular sites in over 20 countries, includ ...

* Richard Bryant *

Christopher Burkett Christopher Burkett (born 1951) is an American landscape photographer known for large format photography of woodlands. Photography Burkett has been making prints since 1980. His works include very large Cibachrome color prints (40x50) from 8x10 tr ...

* Edward Burtynsky * Clyde Butcher * Julia Margaret Cameron *

Keith Carter Keith Carter may refer to: * Keith Carter (American football), American football coach and tight end *Keith Carter (basketball) (born 1976), American basketball player and college athletics administrator * Keith Carter (comedian) (born 1969), Engli ...

* Paul Caponigro * Chuck Close (20×24", 40×80") *

Anne Collier Anne Collier (born Los Angeles, 1970) is an American visual artist working with appropriated photographic images. Describing Collier's work in ''Frieze'' art magazine, writer Brian Dillon said, "Collier uncouples the machinery of appropriation so ...

Linda Connor Linda Connor (born in New York, November 18, 1944) is an American photographer living in San Francisco, California. She is known for her landscape photography. She has photographed in a multitude of countries throughout her career including, bu ...

* Thomas Joshua Cooper * Gregory Crewdson * Rineke Dijkstra * Elsa Dorfman (20"×24") *

William Eggleston William Eggleston (born July 27, 1939) is an American photographer. He is widely credited with increasing recognition for color photography as a legitimate artistic medium. Eggleston's books include ''William Eggleston's Guide'' (1976) and ''The ...

* Mitch Epstein * Walker Evans * Andreas Feininger * Miguel Gómez * Emmet Gowin * Peter Gowland * Timothy Greenfield-Sanders *

Olivier Grunewald Olivier Grunewald (born 1959) is a French photographer and author, with the main focus on nature, landscapes and wildlife. Olivier Grunewald was born in Paris in 1959. He started photographing birds at the age of 14. He studied commercial adve ...

Guido Guidi Guido Guidi is an Italian comic book artist and penciller. He is best known for his work on Transformers comics. Dreamwave Productions A longtime Transformers fan, Guidi was brought in by Dreamwave Productions to be artist for their '' Trans ...

(8×10") * Andreas Gursky (5×7") *

Milton Halberstadt Milton Halberstadt (1919–2000) was a US photographer in fine art and commercial photography who left a body of work covering genres from abstract art to commercial photography. Early life and education Halberstadt grew up in Boston, Massachuset ...

* Charles "Teenie" Harris *

Evelyn Hofer Evelyn Hofer (January 21, 1922 – November 2, 2009) was a German-American portrait and documentary photographer. Life and work Hofer was born in Marburg, Germany. The family moved to Geneva in 1933 in order to escape Nazism, and later to Mad ...

(4×5") * Yousuf Karsh (8×10") *

Seydou Keïta Seydou Keïta (1921/23 – 21 November 2001) was a Malian photographer known for his portraits of people and families he took at his portrait photography studio in Mali's capital, Bamako, in the 1950s. His photographs are widely acknowledged not ...

Mark Klett Mark Klett (born 9 September 1952) is an American photographer. His work is included in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Life Klett was born in Albany, ...

* Nick Knight (8×10") *

An-My Lê An-My Lê (born 1960) is a Vietnamese American photographer, and professor at Bard College. She is a 2012 MacArthur Foundation Fellow and has received the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1997), the National Science Foundati ...

(8×10") * Herman Leonard *

Sze Tsung Leong Sze Tsung Leong (born 1970) is an American and British photographer and artist interested in urban studies. Biography Born in Mexico City, he grew up there and in Los Angeles as a youth. He then continued on and studied at the Art Center College of ...

O. Winston Link Ogle Winston Link (December 16, 1914 – January 30, 2001), known commonly as O. Winston Link, was an American photographer, best known for his black-and-white photography and sound recordings of the last days of steam locomotive railroading on t ...

Rodney Lough Jr. Rodney Lough Jr. (born 1960) is an American landscape photographer and gallery owner. Early life Rodney Lough Jr. was born 1960 in Jacksonville, Florida. Lough spent part of his childhood in Lake Oswego, Oregon. His first camera, an Olympus OM ...

Janelle Lynch Janelle Lynch (born 1969) is an American artist who uses a large-format camera and alternative processes in the discovery of ecological, spiritual, and human connection. Combining portraits and nature imagery, Lynch’s work explores and imagines ...

(8x10") * Sally Mann * George Masa *

Louis Mendes Louis Mendes (born June 15, 1940) is a photographer from New York City who is known for his signature press camera, portraits and street portraits. Life and work Mendes was born in a working-class family in Jamaica, Queens, New York (state), Ne ...

* Joel Meyerowitz (8×10") * Richard Misrach *

Andrea Modica Andrea Modica (born 1960) is an American photographer and professor of photography at Drexel University. She is known for portrait photography and for her use of platinum printing, created using an 8"x10" large format camera. Modica is the author ...

(8x10") *

David Muench David Muench (born June 25, 1936) is an American landscape and nature photographer known for portraying the American western landscape. He is the primary photographer for more than 60 books and his work appears in many magazines, posters, and priva ...

* Nicholas Nixon (8×10") * Eliot Porter *

Mark Power Mark Power (born 1959) is a British photographer. He is a member of Magnum Photos and Professor of Photography in The Faculty of Arts and Architecture at the University of Brighton.Judith Joy Ross *

Paolo Roversi Paolo Roversi (born 1947) is an Italian-born fashion photographer who lives and works in Paris. Early life Born in Ravenna in 1947, Paolo Roversi's interest in photography was kindled as a teenager during a family vacation in Spain in 1964. Ba ...

* Thomas Ruff * John Sexton *

Stephen Shore Stephen Shore (born October 8, 1947) is an American photographer known for his images of banal scenes and objects, and for his pioneering use of color in art photography. His books include ''Uncommon Places'' (1982) and ''American Surfaces'' (199 ...

* Julius Shulman * Michael A. Smith (8×10", 8×20" and 18×22") * Alec Soth *

David Stephenson (photographer) David Stephenson (born 1955) is an American-Australian Fine-art photography, fine art photographer known for his representations of the Sublime (philosophy), sublime. His photographic subjects have included landscapes from America to Australia, th ...

* Joel Sternfeld *

Ezra Stoller Ezra Stoller (16 May 1915 – 29 October 2004) was an American architectural photographer. Early life Stoller was born in Chicago, IL. but was raised and schooled in New York. His interest in photography began while he was an architecture student ...

* Paul Strand *

Thomas Struth Thomas Struth (born 11 October 1954) is a German photographer who is best known for his ''Museum Photographs'' series, family portraits and black and white photographs of the streets of Düsseldorf and New York taken in the 1970s. Struth lives ...

* Hiroshi Sugimoto * George Tice * Arthur Tress * Brian Ulrich *

Jeff Wall Jeffrey Wall, Order of Canada, OC, Royal Society of Canada, RSA (born September 29, 1946) is a Canadian artist best known for his large-scale back-lit Cibachrome photographs and art history writing. Early in his career, he helped define the Van ...

* Peter Watson * Weegee (4×5") * William Wegman * Brett Weston * Edward Weston

References

External links

''HABS/HAER/HALS Standards & Guidelines''
National Park Service website {{Authority control Film formats