This is the story of how I got into large format photography for £175 all in. It is the article I wish someone had written for me a year ago, when I had been wanting to try 4x5 for ages but kept putting it off because every starter kit I looked at was a four-figure investment.
The short version is that 4x5 is more accessible than the headline numbers suggest. The expensive bits (the lens, the camera body) can be found cheap if you are patient on eBay and you do not mind a camera that is older than your grandparents. The cheap bits (film holders) are still expensive but only once, and the missing bits (a lens board that fits your particular shutter) you can make yourself with an aluminium sheet and a hacksaw.
I am going to walk through what I did, what I spent, what went wrong and what worked. If you have been thinking about trying 4x5 and the cost has been the thing stopping you, read this. It might change your mind.
The lens: a happy accident in a Finnish outlet box
I buy a lot of cameras from Camera Rescue in Finland. Camera Rescue is an excellent project (they restore and resell vintage cameras that would otherwise end up in landfill, and they run the whole operation on a not-for-profit basis). One of the things they sell is what they call an outlet box, which is essentially a mystery grab-bag of cameras that did not meet their standard for individual resale. Sometimes you get a usable camera. Sometimes you get parts. Sometimes you get something extraordinary.
The outlet box that arrived in October 2020 had two cameras in it. The first was an Agfa Synchro Box (a 1950s bakelite roll-film box camera, which I covered in its own video). The second was a Zeiss Ica Ideal 225.
The Zeiss Ica Ideal 225 is a 9x12cm plate camera made by Internationale Camera AG of Dresden, Germany, from around 1924. It is a folding-bed field camera with double-extension bellows, designed to take 9x12cm glass plates (which are still available today, but are rare and expensive). The body of mine is hammered. The bellows have light leaks. The bed-pivot mechanism has stripped teeth and only intermittently grips. It came with six original plate holders that are essentially decorative at this point.
What it also came with, sitting on the front of the bed where the lens lives, was a Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar 135mm f/4.5 in a Compur shutter. Both in good working order. The Tessar lens design (four elements in three groups, patented by Paul Rudolph in 1902) is one of the most successful lens formulas ever produced. Carl Zeiss Jena Tessars from the 1920s have a kind of three-dimensional rendering that modern lenses do not quite replicate. The Compur shutter has its quirks (the speeds are off by varying amounts after a century of use) but it fires reliably and the iris is clean.
The whole outlet box cost me 35 euros. After deducting a notional 15 to 20 quid for the Agfa Synchro Box (which is worth that on the second-hand market), the Tessar lens with the Compur shutter cost me around 20 euros. About £17.
The reason this matters is that a clean, tested Tessar 135mm f/4.5 with a working shutter is currently retailing for around £200 to £400 from specialist large format dealers. I had effectively paid 5% to 10% of market price for a perfectly good large format lens, because the camera body it came in was scrap.
The lens was the unlock. With a working lens in hand, the rest of the project became doable.
The plan: a 9x12 lens on a 4x5 camera
A short technical aside, because the geometry matters.
The Zeiss Ica Ideal 225 shoots 9x12cm plates. The standard modern large format size is 4x5 inches, which is 10.16x12.7cm. The two formats are similar in size. The diagonal of a 9x12 frame is about 150mm. The diagonal of a 4x5 frame is about 162mm. So a 4x5 frame is about 8% larger across the diagonal than a 9x12 frame.
The Tessar 135mm f/4.5 was designed to cover a 9x12 frame with some headroom for movements. The lens projects an image circle considerably larger than the 9x12 diagonal. So when used on a 4x5 camera, the image circle should still comfortably cover the slightly larger frame, with a small amount of headroom remaining for movements like rise, fall and shift.
I could not confirm this without actually trying it, but the maths suggested it should work. The risk was that the image circle would fall just short, giving me dark corners. The upside was that the lens would cover with room to spare and I would have a useful wide-normal lens for 4x5 work.
I needed a 4x5 camera body to mount the lens to. Off to eBay.
The camera: a £90 Toyo 45C with no lens
I watched eBay for a couple of weeks. Most 4x5 cameras on the second-hand market are either field cameras (folding wooden or metal cameras designed for portability, like the Wista or the Linhof Technika) or monorail cameras (modular metal cameras built around a single straight rail, like the Sinar or the Toyo View). Field cameras are nicer to use outdoors. Monorails are more flexible mechanically and cheaper second-hand.
The eBay listing I eventually bought was a Toyo View 45C monorail body. £90. No lens. No film holders. Just the camera with a back and a single lens board. The lens board had the standard small-hole opening for a size 0 shutter.
The Toyo 45C is the original full-size studio monorail from Toyo View, in production from the 1970s onwards. It is a metal monorail with full standard movements (front rise, fall, shift, swing and tilt, plus all the same on the back), a Graflok back that accepts standard 4x5 film holders, and a bellows that can extend out to about 400mm for close-up work. It is heavy and not portable, but it is rock-solid in use. For a learning camera, it is hard to beat.
The seller had it listed for parts because there was no lens. I bought it knowing exactly what I was going to do with it.
Total spend so far: about £107 (the £17 outlet-box lens plus the £90 camera).
The lens board problem
This is where the project got interesting.
Large format lenses are mounted in shutters that come in standard sizes. The most common modern standard is the Copal shutter (sizes 0, 1 and 3). Vintage shutters like the Compur use slightly different threading but the size designations are broadly compatible. A “size 0” shutter has a mounting flange about 35mm across. A “size 1” shutter has a mounting flange about 42mm across. A “size 3” shutter has a mounting flange about 65mm across.
The lens board on the Toyo 45C came with a hole drilled for a size 0 shutter. The Compur shutter on my Tessar is a size 1. The shutter would not fit through the existing hole. I had two options:
The first was to enlarge the hole on the existing lens board with a drill or a hole saw. This would have worked but would have left me without a size 0 board, which I would probably want at some point if I ever bought a more modern wide-angle lens (most of which come in size 0 shutters).
The second was to make a new lens board from scratch. This required an aluminium sheet of about the right thickness, some basic measuring, a hacksaw or jigsaw, a hole saw and some matte black paint to seal the cut edges and prevent reflections.
I went with the second option. The aluminium sheet I had in a kit box from an unrelated project was almost exactly the right thickness (about 1.5mm) and large enough to cut out the right shape. I marked out the dimensions of the original Toyo lens board with a pencil, cut to size with a hacksaw, marked the centre, drilled a pilot hole and finished the central opening with a hole saw at 42mm. The shutter dropped through cleanly.
The painting was the only bit that went wrong on the first attempt. I sprayed the lens board with the only matte black paint I had to hand, which turned out to be a rust-prevention paint designed for outdoor metalwork. The finish dried with a sticky residue that picked up dust and would clearly transfer to the front standard when the board was clipped in. I sanded it back down to bare aluminium and re-painted with chalkboard paint, which is dead matte, dries hard and is cheap. Result: a clean, light-tight, deep matte black lens board that fits the Toyo and accepts the Tessar.
Time invested: about two hours, including the re-painting. Cost: zero (the aluminium and the paint were both from existing kit boxes).
The film holders: the bit I had to pay for
You cannot make 4x5 film holders. They are precision-engineered light-tight cassettes with sliding dark slides, and they need to be flat to within fractions of a millimetre to keep the film flat against the focal plane during exposure. There is no DIY shortcut.
You can buy used holders for cheap on eBay (often around £20 to £30 for a working second-hand pair) but the quality varies and a leaking holder will ruin every frame on a shoot. For a starter camera, new is the safer option.
I bought a pack of two Toyo double-dark-slide holders from Intrepid Camera in the UK. They sell them in two-packs for around £65, which is a couple of quid less per holder than buying them individually elsewhere. Each holder takes two sheets of 4x5 film (one on each side). So a pack of two holders gives me four sheets of film loaded and ready to shoot, which is enough for a decent first outing.
(A note on Intrepid: they make their own 4x5 camera, which I would later buy and review in a separate piece. But they also sell accessories for other large format cameras at sensible prices. Worth supporting.)
Total spend including the dark slides: about £175.
The first shoot: Gertie the mannequin and Worcester Warriors
Setup complete. Lens mounted. Lens board fitted. Camera body assembled. Dark slides loaded with two sheets of Fomapan 100 each.
I should have done a sensible first test. A single frame of a static subject at a moderate aperture in good light, just to confirm the lens reached focus and the camera was light-tight. That is what someone with half a brain would have done.
I did not do that.
I decided that since I was now a large format photographer, I should do a full large format setup for the first frame. A three-light studio portrait setup, using my mannequin Gertie (an ex-escape-room display dummy who lives in my studio for testing lighting setups) as the model. Gertie was dressed in a Worcester Warriors rugby shirt for the occasion. The lights: a key and a fill on the model, with a back/rim/edge light (different names for the same thing) for separation from the background.
I also decided to try one of the movements that large format cameras are famous for. I tilted the front standard forward by a noticeable amount, intending to demonstrate Scheimpflug focus-plane manipulation. The idea was to put Gertie’s whole face in sharp focus despite the camera being quite close to her.
Two frames went into the holders. Dark slide out. Cable release. Exposure. Dark slide back in. Move on.
The first shoot: what went wrong
The first frame came back as a thin negative with almost no usable image on it. The second frame was even thinner. I had to scan and aggressively manipulate the curves to pull any detail out of either of them.
I assumed at first that the century-old shutter was firing inconsistently and that the actual exposure was much shorter than the indicated speed. I tested the shutter the next day with a proper testing rig and confirmed that the speeds are slightly off (a 1/100 indicated is more like 1/120 actual) but the speeds were not far enough out to explain how thin the negatives were.
The actual problem was something I had never heard of, because I had not yet read any of the standard introductory texts on large format. Bellows extension compensation.
Here is the principle. A camera lens projects an image that gets dimmer as the lens-to-film distance increases. With a 35mm camera (where the lens is always close to the film), the change in lens-to-film distance between a landscape shot and a tight portrait is small enough to ignore. With a 4x5 camera (where the lens-to-film distance can vary from about 130mm at infinity to 400mm or more at close focus), the change is large enough to matter.
The formula is straightforward. The effective exposure is reduced by a factor equal to the square of the ratio of bellows extension to focal length. If your lens is 135mm and your bellows are extended to 270mm (twice the focal length) for a close portrait, you are losing 2 squared = 4 times the light. Two stops of exposure are lost to bellows extension alone. You need to compensate by opening the aperture two stops, or by extending the shutter time by a factor of 4.
I had not compensated for any of this. Gertie was about a metre from the lens, which put the bellows at maybe 200mm of extension. My meter said 1/30 at f/8 (or whatever it said, I do not remember the exact numbers) and I shot exactly what the meter told me. The actual exposure needed to be about a stop and a half more.
There was also a secondary problem: the aggressive front tilt I had applied for Scheimpflug had also put the back light directly into the lens path, producing massive flare across the frame. The combination of underexposure plus heavy flare meant the first frame had almost no usable data.
The second attempt: success
The same evening, I reset everything. Front standard back to neutral. Bellows extension compensation factored in. Aperture opened a stop and a half from the meter reading.
The second pair of frames came back sharp and well-exposed, with edge-to-edge clean coverage. The Tessar was sharp from corner to corner, including in the corners (which is the standard test of whether a lens designed for one format actually covers a larger format). No vignetting, no dark corners, and the image circle was comfortable.
One of the frames includes my own face, which my wife has since pointed out is a thoroughly unfortunate expression. But the frame is sharp. The frame is correctly exposed. The frame demonstrates that the lens works, the camera is light-tight, and the homemade lens board is doing its job.
The cost breakdown, summarised
For anyone keeping count:
- Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar 135mm f/4.5 in Compur shutter: ~£17 (allocated from a £30 Camera Rescue outlet box)
- Toyo View 45C monorail with back and one lens board: £90
- Two Toyo double dark slides from Intrepid: £65
- Homemade aluminium lens board, painted: £0 (existing materials)
- Total: ~£175
For comparison: a starter 4x5 kit from any of the standard suppliers (Intrepid, Chamonix, Stenopeika) is currently £400 to £600 minimum, before lens. A Linhof Technika in good condition will run you £800 to £2000 on the second-hand market, and a new Schneider lens with a Copal shutter is another £400 to £800. So the typical “sensible” entry into 4x5 is closer to £1500 to £2500. My route in was a tenth of that.
What I learned
A few things that I would tell anyone considering this route.
Camera Rescue outlet boxes are an excellent way to find vintage lenses. Most of the cameras in those boxes are not worth restoring, but the lenses are often perfect. If you are willing to do some research on what lens designs from which eras will work for your purposes, you can find absolute steals.
Building a lens board is straightforward. If you have any access to basic metalwork tools (a hacksaw and a hole saw are sufficient), making your own lens board is a couple of hours of work and very cheap. There is nothing precision-engineered about a lens board; it just has to be flat, the right outline, light-tight and have a hole of the correct diameter in the middle. Aluminium of about 1.5mm thickness is the ideal material.
Bellows extension compensation is the lesson I would have most liked to know beforehand. This is mentioned in every large format introductory text. I had not read any of those texts. If you are reading this and you are about to start shooting 4x5, this is the one piece of technical knowledge that is essential for getting your exposures right. Look up the formula. Print it out. Stick it in your camera bag. Every close-up frame needs bellows extension factored in.
Do not try Scheimpflug movements on your first frame. The movements on a 4x5 camera are genuinely transformative once you understand them, but they require you to think carefully about lens flare, focus-plane geometry and depth of field. The first frame should be a straight, neutral, no-movements composition just to confirm everything works. Save the fancy stuff for frames three onwards. (I would absorb this lesson in a later piece where I tested architectural vertical correction.)
The 100-year-old Tessar is genuinely excellent. The image quality on the second-attempt frames is as good as anything I have shot since on more modern lenses. The Tessar design has aged remarkably well. If you find a working 1920s Tessar at a sensible price, buy it.
You can do this
If you have been thinking about trying 4x5 and the cost has been the thing holding you back, you do not need £1500 to start. You need patience on eBay for the lens and the camera, a willingness to make your own lens board, plus one significant outlay on a couple of dark slides from somewhere that sells them new. £175 to £250 will get you everything you need.
The lens is the hardest part. Wait for a Camera Rescue outlet box, or watch eBay for a folder camera with a Tessar that the seller is listing for parts (because the body is hammered but the lens is fine). Patience pays off.
The next outing on this lens was a narrative portrait shoot with the actor Ashley Robson, where the Tessar came into its own. After that I started experimenting with the camera movements that I had been too eager to try on the first frame. The whole project has been one of the most enjoyable things I have done in years.
Welcome to large format. You can do this.