Large format refers to any imaging format of or larger. Large format is larger than "

medium format Medium format has traditionally referred to a film format in photography and the related cameras and equipment that use film. Nowadays, the term applies to film and digital cameras that record images on media larger than the used in 35&nbs ...

", the or size of Hasselblad, Mamiya,

Rollei Rollei () was a German manufacturer of optical instruments founded in 1920 by and in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, and maker of the Rolleiflex and Rolleicord series of cameras. Later products included specialty and nostalgic type films for the ...

, 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 print A contact print is a photographic image produced from film; sometimes from a film negative, and sometimes from a film positive or paper negative. In a darkroom an exposed and developed piece of film or photographic paper is placed emulsion si ...

s 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 The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...

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

ing 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

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 Tag Image File Format, abbreviated TIFF or TIF, is an image file format for storing raster graphics images, popular among graphic artists, the publishing industry, and photographers. TIFF is widely supported by scanning, faxing, word processin ...

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 Computer to film (CTF) is a print workflow involving printing from a computer straight to film through an imagesetter. Designs are typically created in Adobe Illustrator or CorelDRAW, however they can also be produced in AutoCAD, Inkscape and ma ...

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 The National Park Service (NPS) is an agency of the United States federal government within the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages all national parks, most national monuments, and other natural, historical, and recreational propertie ...

documentation programs. The

Historic American Buildings 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 ...

(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 The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...

. 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 was a professional track cyclist, photographer, designer, and aquarist. His interest in aquaria led him to create the Japanese company Aqua Design Amano. Amano was the author of ''Nature Aquarium World'' (TFH Publications, 1994), a three-boo ...

(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 Tina Barney (born October 27, 1945)Full text of "John L. Loeb Collection"
retrieved ...

Gabriele Basilico Gabriele Basilico (12 August 1944 – 13 February 2013) was an Italian photographer who defined himself as "a measurer of space". Born in Milan, Italy in 1944, he originally studied to become an architect before pursuing a career in photography. H ...

* 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 *

Edward Burtynsky Edward Burtynsky (born February 22, 1955) is a Canadian photographer and artist known for his large format photographs of industrial landscapes. His works depict locations from around the world that represent the increasing development of indust ...

* 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 Paul Caponigro (born December 7, 1932), is an American photographer from Boston, Massachusetts. Early life Caponigro started having interests in photography at age 13. However, he also had a strong passion in music and began to study music at B ...

Chuck Close Charles Thomas Close (July 5, 1940 – August 19, 2021) was an American painter, visual artist, and photographer who made massive-scale photorealist and abstract portraits of himself and others. Close also created photo portraits using a very l ...

(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 Elsa Dorfman (April 26, 1937May 30, 2020) was an American portrait photographer. She worked in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was known for her use of a large-format instant Polaroid camera. Early life and education Dorfman was born in Cambridge ...

(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 Walker Evans (November 3, 1903 – April 10, 1975) was an American photographer and photojournalist best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Much of Evans' work from ...

Andreas Feininger Andreas Bernhard Lyonel Feininger (December 27, 1906 – February 18, 1999) was an American photographer and a writer on photographic technique. He was noted for his dynamic black-and-white scenes of Manhattan and for studies of the structures ...

* Miguel Gómez *

Emmet Gowin Emmet Gowin (born 1941) is an American photographer. He first gained attention in the 1970s with his intimate portraits of his wife, Edith, and her family. Later he turned his attention to the landscapes of the American West, taking aerial photogr ...

Peter Gowland Peter Andrew Gowland (April 3, 1916 – March 17, 2010) was a famous American glamour photographer and actor. He was known for designing and building his own studio equipment and was active professionally for six decades with his business part ...

Timothy Greenfield-Sanders Timothy Greenfield-Sanders (born February 16, 1952) is an American documentary filmmaker and portrait photographer based in New York City. The majority of his work is shot in large format. Early life Greenfield-Sanders was born on February 16, ...

* Olivier Grunewald *

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 Andreas Gursky (born 15 January 1955) is a German photographer and professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany. He is known for his Large format (photography), large format architecture and Landscape photography, landscape colour photogr ...

(5×7") * Milton Halberstadt *

Charles "Teenie" Harris Charles "Teenie" Harris (July 2, 1908–June 12, 1998) was an American photographer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Harris was known for his photographs of residents and prominent visitors to Pittsburgh, including musicians and baseball playe ...

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 Yousuf Karsh, FRPS (December 23, 1908 – July 13, 2002) was a Canadian-Armenian photographer known for his portraits of notable individuals. He has been described as one of the greatest portrait photographers of the 20th century. An Armenian ...

(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 Herman Leonard (March 6, 1923, in Allentown, Pennsylvania – August 14, 2010, in Los Angeles, California) was an American photographer known for his unique images of jazz icons. Early life and education Leonard was born in Allentown, Pe ...

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. * Janelle Lynch (8x10") *

Sally Mann Sally Mann HonFRPS (born Sally Turner Munger; May 1, 1951) is an American photographer who has made large format black and white photographs—at first of her young children, then later of landscapes suggesting decay and death. Early life and e ...

* 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 Joel Meyerowitz (born March 6, 1938) is an American street, portrait and landscape photographer. He began photographing in color in 1962 and was an early advocate of the use of color during a time when there was significant resistance to the idea ...

(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 Thomas Ruff (born 10 February 1958) is a German photographer who lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany. He has been described as "a master of edited and reimagined images". Ruff shares a studio on Düsseldorf's Hansaallee, with fellow German ...

* 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 Julius Shulman (October 10, 1910 – July 15, 2009) was an American architectural photographer best known for his photograph " Case Study House #22, Los Angeles, 1960. Pierre Koenig, Architect." The house is also known as the Stahl House. Shulman ...

Michael A. Smith Michael Smith or Mike Smith may refer to: Arts * Michael E. Smith (artist) (born 1977), American sculptor * Michael Paul Smith (born 1950), American artist and photographer *Michael Smith (performance artist) (born 1951), American performance ar ...

(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 Joel Sternfeld (born June 30, 1944) is an American fine-art color photographer. He is noted for his large-format documentary pictures of the United States and helping establish color photography as a respected artistic medium. Sternfeld's work is ...

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 Paul Strand (October 16, 1890 – March 31, 1976) was an American photographer and filmmaker who, along with fellow modernist photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, helped establish photography as an art form in the 20th century. ...

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 is a Japanese photographer and architect. He leads the Tokyo-based architectural firm New Material Research Laboratory. Early life and education Hiroshi Sugimoto was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. He reportedly took his earliest photographs ...

George Tice George A. Tice (born 1938) is an American photographer. His work depicts a broad range of American life, landscape, and urban environment, mostly photographed in his native New Jersey. He has lived all his life in New Jersey, except for his serv ...

Arthur Tress Arthur Tress (born November 24, 1940) is an American photographer. He is known for his staged surrealism and exposition of the human body. Early life and education Tress comes from a Jewish background; his parents immigrated from Europe. He was ...

Brian Ulrich Brian Ulrich (born 1971) is an American photographer known for his photographic exploration of consumer culture. Life and work Ulrich was born in Northport, New York, and lives in Providence, Rhode Island. He received a BFA in photography from Un ...

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 Edward Henry Weston (March 24, 1886 – January 1, 1958) was a 20th-century American photographer. He has been called "one of the most innovative and influential American photographers..." and "one of the masters of 20th century photography." ...

References

External links

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

Formats

Control

Operation

Uses

National Park Service documentation programs

Photographers noted for having used large format

See also

References

External links