In my previous South African video, I had tried to take photos of wildlife with a 4x5 view camera and failed spectacularly. I had concluded that you cannot shoot wildlife on a view camera because animals move and view cameras do not.
I went back. I had a think. I thought screw you physics, screw you biology, I am going to take photos of wildlife on large format.
So I came back to Cradle Moon Game Reserve outside Johannesburg, this time with proper preparation: a full morning to spend (rather than the rushed last-ten-minutes attempt last time), better light (sun this time, not the grey overcast of the previous outing), and a 360mm lens specifically bought to give me as much reach as the camera could handle.
Here is what happened, and the more interesting question of what I learned.
This article is the “yes, but” companion to the Bronica ETRS wildlife piece which followed a few weeks later, after I had accepted the obvious and used the right tool for the job.
The setup
Camera: my Stenopeika Air Force 4x5. The camera survived multiple flights to and from South Africa, plus one significant impact that required Samuele to send replacement parts to me in the UK between trips. It is back together and working perfectly.
Lens: a 360mm. (Quick correction: in the original video I kept calling it a “300mm” lens. I genuinely had 300 stuck in my head when I bought it. It is a 360. Substitute “360” wherever you would have heard “300.”) This was an enlarger lens picked up cheap from Mr Cad, which means no shutter. Lens cap on, lens cap off, lens cap back on. The old way of doing things, which I will return to.
Film: Ilford FP4 Plus in 4x5 sheets.
Location: Cradle Moon Game Reserve, a fenced reserve outside Johannesburg with various antelope species, giraffes, and other plains game. Easier to find animals than a true wilderness setting, but still genuinely wild animals on their own terms.
Time: a full morning rather than the last-10-minutes-of-the-day approach that had failed previously.
The impalas
First subjects spotted: a small group of impalas working their way through bushes toward a path.
Impalas are common enough that most safari photographers ignore them, but they are genuinely beautiful animals and I quite like them. They also have the practical advantage of being numerous and somewhat predictable in their movements when grazing.
I set up on the path with the 360mm trying to anticipate where they would cross. Dark slide stays in until the last moment because with a non-shuttered lens the only thing keeping light off the film during setup is the lens cap, and lens caps are not perfectly light-tight over extended periods.
The impalas crossed the path. I pulled the dark slide. I took the lens cap off for what I judged to be the right duration. I put the lens cap back on.
The impala moved during the exposure. Of course it did. The exposure was several seconds because the enlarger lens has no shutter and I was working under tree cover. Several seconds of exposure means that any moving animal becomes a blur, and even a “stationary” animal is not actually stationary on the timescale of large format exposure.
Two sheets of film exposed. Both useless. Continue walking.
![PLACEHOLDER: the first frame from the impala attempt, showing motion blur and basically no usable subject]
The Thompson’s gazelle (probably)
I came upon what I thought was a Thompson’s gazelle (my African wildlife identification is not great) lying down in the sun. Crucially: lying down. Stationary by choice rather than by circumstance.
This was the best subject I had encountered. I crept closer slowly, keeping the camera and tripod low, trying not to spook it.
Got within reasonable range. Set up. Framed. Pulled the dark slide. The gazelle was watching me but had not moved.
I took the exposure.
The gazelle moved. Just at the moment when several seconds of exposure could absolutely not handle any movement. Frame ruined.
The lesson kept repeating: the exposure window for an unshuttered enlarger lens is incompatible with a living animal’s natural fidgeting. Even a “still” animal blinks, twitches, shifts position slightly. Several seconds of exposure converts every fidget into motion blur across the entire frame.
The giraffe stalk
The most interesting wildlife sighting of the morning: a giraffe in some scrub up the trail.
Giraffes are slower-moving than impalas or gazelles, which made them theoretically better candidates for slow large format exposure. They also have to lower their heads to feed, which gives you brief periods when their massive subject is doing something specific in a predictable position.
But giraffes also do this thing where they turn their backs to you as soon as they notice you. Whether this is genuine evasion or just how they handle attention I am not sure, but it is consistent across every giraffe I have ever tried to photograph. They turn their backs to you.
I worked closer slowly. Found a giraffe at a tree. Set up. The giraffe turned its back to me and started chewing the same mouthful for ten minutes while I stood there waiting.
The giraffe eventually wandered to a different tree. I moved with it (camera, tripod, focusing cloth, all of it). Got close again. Different tree but same problem: back turned, slow chewing, unbothered by my existence but actively avoiding cooperation.
Eventually one giraffe gave me a brief moment with its head turned toward the camera. I took the exposure. Worked through the process. Got the negative back.
There is genuinely an image of a giraffe on the frame. You can tell it is a giraffe. With a heavy crop down to the giraffe’s head, the resulting image is acceptable. Not good. Not what I would call wildlife photography. But acceptable.
![PLACEHOLDER: the giraffe frame from the morning, cropped down to show the kind of result this approach actually produces]
What I actually learned
Two specific things, both of which I should have understood before going out.
The exposure problem
This was the obvious one. With a view camera you have to set up the shot, close the shutter (or cover the lens), load the film holder, remove the dark slide, take the exposure, replace the dark slide, and unload. Each step takes time. The total time between “I see a good moment” and “I have captured the moment on film” is substantial.
For wildlife, substantial time is fatal. The moment is gone by the time the camera is ready.
There are workarounds (pre-set up at a likely subject location, anticipate movement, work with stationary animals like the lying-down gazelle), but they all narrow the kinds of photographs you can make to a tiny subset of what wildlife photography is supposed to be.
The focal length problem (the one I had not really thought about)
This was the embarrassing one. The Stenopeika Air Force 4x5 with standard bellows can accept lenses from 65mm to 360mm. That is a good range for a 4x5 camera. The 360mm at the long end is on the better side of typical large format reach.
But 360mm on a 4x5 frame is equivalent to roughly 120mm on a 35mm camera.
This is the focal-length equivalence point that most people understand for wide-angle work (a 35mm lens on 4x5 is a super-wide, equivalent to maybe a 14mm on 35mm) but tend to forget for telephoto work. The same physics works in the other direction: what looks like a long lens on 4x5 is actually a short telephoto in 35mm terms.
For wildlife on a 35mm or digital camera, you want 300mm minimum, often 400mm or 500mm. To get that equivalent reach on a 4x5 frame, you would need a lens roughly three times longer.
A 1200mm lens on a 4x5 camera. Which would be physically about a metre and a half long with the necessary bellows extension. Possible to acquire, possible to mount, completely impractical to use in the field.
This means I am structurally undersized for wildlife. Every frame I captured was wider than I wanted. Every animal was further away than I would have liked. Every keeper required a heavy crop, which defeats the whole point of using a 4x5 negative in the first place.
The crop question
A specific frustration worth pulling out.
The keeper-ish frame I got of the giraffe is acceptable when cropped down to maybe 1/4 of the original 4x5 frame. This means I am using maybe 1/4 of the negative area, which is about the size of a 6x4.5 medium format frame.
If I am going to crop a 4x5 frame down to a 6x4.5-sized portion of it, why not just shoot 6x4.5 in the first place? A Bronica ETRS with a 200mm lens and a doubler (so 400mm effective) gives me far more reach for the format, far less setup time, and a proper shutter to freeze motion.
Which is exactly what I did next. The follow-up Bronica ETRS wildlife article covers that approach. The 35mm-format Bronica with a long lens and a doubler gave me actually-good wildlife frames within an afternoon. The 4x5 attempt gave me one heavily-cropped giraffe.
So why did I do this
The honest answer.
I did it because I had been told it could not be done. That is a stupid reason to make a photograph, but it is the reason. There is something about being told a thing is impossible that makes me want to try the thing.
I learned something. Specifically, I learned why this is impractical, in concrete terms that no amount of reading about focal length equivalence would have taught me. The understanding now sits in my hands and my muscle memory, not just my brain.
I got one frame I am not embarrassed by. The giraffe head image, cropped. Not a great photo, but a real one. Hanging it on a wall would be ridiculous. Looking at it later and remembering what it took? Worth it.
It made me appreciate the Bronica. When I came home and shot wildlife properly with the ETRS and the 200mm doubled to 400mm, every part of the workflow felt blissfully fast. Push the shutter button. Have a frame. Wind on. Take another. The contrast with the 4x5 wildlife attempt was huge.
The verdict
Can you shoot wildlife on a 4x5 view camera? Technically yes.
Should you shoot wildlife on a 4x5 view camera? No.
The constraints are wrong. The exposure time is wrong. The focal length is wrong. The setup overhead is wrong. Every component of the system is mismatched to the subject.
What 4x5 is good for: landscape, architecture, still life, environmental portraits, anything where the subject is either stationary or willing to hold a pose. Wildlife is none of these things.
For wildlife, use a medium format SLR with a fast shutter and a long lens, or a 35mm or digital camera, or whatever has the workflow speed and the lens reach for the subject. The right tool for the job is not the 4x5.
But if anyone tries to tell you it cannot be done at all: it can. I have the negative to prove it. It just should not.
Where to go next
For the more sensible wildlife approach: my Bronica ETRS bird photography using the right tool for the job.
For more on the camera that I used for this brave/stupid attempt: the Stenopeika Air Force 4x5 is still my favourite large format camera for the things it is actually good at.
And big thanks to Samuele at Stenopeika for sending out replacement parts so quickly between my two South African trips. The camera surviving my carelessness is partly his work, not just mine.
Comments below if you have your own “I tried something stupid with a view camera” stories. We can compare notes.