I recently began shooting with the new LomoGraflok 4×5 instant back from Lomography on my Chamonix 4×5 camera and found that I needed to use a spacer every time we compose a shot.
This article is dedicated to a very helpful yet often-overlooked photographic accessory. After scouring the Web, I have only been able to find few brief entries dedicated to those devices, so I hope my writing will be found helpful by inquisitive minds interested in the history of photo equipment.
Did you know that you can make your own ground glass focusing screen? In his latest video, wet plate photographer Markus Hofstätter shows you exactly how by making a ground glass screen for one of his large format cameras.
Iranian photographer Alireza Rostami loves experimenting with camera equipment, from flipping a lens element for "magic bokeh" to creating a working analog watch camera. His latest experiment is also off the beaten path: he found that a display from a broken laptop works perfectly as a view camera's ground glass.
Here's a new short film titled "Peripheral" by freelance film photographer and cinematographer Casey Cavanaugh. An interesting thing about it is that the story is told entirely through the ground glass viewfinder of a Hasselblad 500C/M.
I’ve been taking photos all of my life. Something that I realize now started from a young age: I’ve been genetically disposed with bad eyes, but it was only discovered around the age of ten. This forced me to look closely at what was in front of me for a long time. Once I got tested and got glasses an entire world opened up. As a result, I’ve always looked at things and people with an appreciation I doubt I could’ve had any other way.
It’s a hunger to try and capture what I see in the moment as it presents itself, be it a theme or a feeling, a relationship or a time. There’s always a story to tell and that’s why we take photos.