Lake Louise, (No.337) Banff National Park Alberta, Canada, September 2012. Copyright © Gary Nylander. Scanned from 4 x 5 negative. Ebony RW45 view camera, 120mm lens, T-Max 400 film.
I was once called a dinosaur while photographing with my 4 x 5 view camera at a popular lake in Banff National Park several years ago. Another photographer saw me with my antique looking setup and called out to me "Hey dinosaur!" the comment was rather amusing and I felt flattered that I was "old school". After a friendly chat with him, he had told me that he too had been a large format camera user but had recently purchased a Nikon D800 digital camera (which had just come out on the market at the time). He was so impressed with the Nikon digital image quality that he stopped using his 4 x 5 view camera. When this photographer was telling me about how great his D800 camera was in comparison to his view camera and I believed what he was telling me.
To back up a bit, I started in the film photography days in the mid-1970s. By 1985 I was seriously into using a 4 x 5 view camera. Back then there was a reasonable justification for using such a big and bulky camera —it produced superior image quality retaining great detail while making large prints. It was the gold standard. When showing larger size prints the difference was obvious. Over the next three decades, I continued to use my view camera because that's the camera I owned and was comfortable using.
On my time off from my newspaper job at the Kelowna Daily Courier I shot a variety of subjects, mostly landscapes with the 4 x 5 view camera and sometimes even my 8 x 10 view camera. At the newspaper from 2001 to 2018 I shot all digital and loved it. From time to time I would run comparisons with my view camera and digital cameras and felt that the view camera was "The" camera to use for my black and white photography. I once did a side by side print comparison test in 2009 when a friend purchased a Nikon D3x with a 24-megapixel sensor, at think at the time it was $7000 (body only). The D3x was not a camera that the paper would want to buy and not something I could afford. The results of the print test were that the Nikon D3x was closer than I thought in terms of capturing fine detail, looking at a 12 x 18-inch print it was hard to tell which print was made with which camera, looking at larger prints the view camera started to show better detail.
When I first started using digital cameras in the fall of 2001 during my years as a staff photographer at the newspaper, my camera they issued to me at the time was a Nikon D1H which had a 2.7-megapixel sensor, I didn't think a tiny senor like that was much of a match for the much bigger size of 4 x 5 sheet film. There were many surprises and impressions along the way. The next year after having gone digital at the newspaper, I made a thrilling shot of an Osprey feeding it's young. The photo was very popular among Courier readers and many prints were sold. One of the larger sized prints was 16 x 20 inches that ended up in the Harvard Art Museums. The print had to be of the very highest quality possible. I had a local photography shop print it on their then-new Epson 7600 with Sommerset velvet paper. That particular print did turn out to be very impressive, considering that the image of the birds had to be cropped to help fill the frame and that was all from a 2.7-megapixel sensor!
Since I left the newspaper business at the end of 2017, I continue to pursue my art photography and I also shoot some commercial freelance work. I needed some better digital camera gear for the commercial side of my work so I ended up choosing the best I could afford which was the Nikon D850, as I already had some F mount lenses. I have to say that the D850 with its 45 megapixels sensor is very impressive. I still find it amazing when looking at digital images from this camera, zeroed in at 100% with an abundance of fine detail is available. I keep thinking I'm looking at one of my scanned 4 x 5 negatives but without the grain.
I also like to shoot with my 4 x 5 view camera and other film cameras ( 35mm, 120 even 8 x 10), although not I'm not quite ready to jettison the view camera entirely. However, I do wonder how I'm going to make use of this particular camera that uses sheet film which is getting more and more expensive as time goes on. Gone are the days when Kodak Tri-X 4 x 5 sheet film was 50 cents a sheet, one of my all-time favourite black and white films.
Now I am thinking of finding new ways to use my film cameras that I had not thought of the past. The digital camera will also be of interest where I was once limited to shooting a few sheets of film on a hiking excursion I will now have more opportunities to photograph due to the fact that I would sometimes be out of sheet film and passing by interesting photo possibilities having used up my 18 sheets of film for the day.
It will be interesting to see how the future unfolds with my photography and what creative potential opportunities lie ahead.
Back in August of last year, I did a Nikon D3 comparison with my Tachihara 4 x 5 field camera, in which I collaborated with fine art photographer and friend, Michael Breakey. When Michael said he had a Nikon D3X on order, we both thought it would be fun to repeat the test, as we had good fun with the first test. First off a disclaimer here, this is not meant to be an in-depth pixel vs. pixel duel to the death test, our test is not nearly that complicated, we just thought it would be fun to get out with our perspective cameras and make some photographs, okay actually just an excuse to get out and photograph on a sunny spring day after a long winter if the truth be told. So with that, we headed out on a recent Sunday morning in Kelowna's Mission Creek Regional Park where we hunted around for some good picture possibilities that would help showcase the best of each camera.
