what's the difference in photography.........?

Question

I'm fairly new to photography and I need to know what is Large, Medium, and Small format. I have searched some websites but i can't find anything at all. I could also use some good places to take photos besides our creek and this trail behind our house. THANX!!

Answer 1

In film, format refers to the film size. 35mm would be considered small format, then the medium is 120 or 220 or 4x5, and large format film comes in sheets. Many landscape photographers use 8x10 sheet film to get a lot of detail in their landscape images. The bigger the film, the more detail can be captured on the final print.
As for suggesting places to take pictures, I think a trail and creek would be lovely. Shoot at different times of day. Don't forget to shoot the small stuff as well as the big picture.
There are many interesting places all around your town, I'm sure. You have to learn to see through a different eye, to look at ordinary things in a new light. Ask your friends to serve a models so you can practice shooting people. Take pictures of your family and pets.
Get a book or two on beginning photography. Read your camera manual thoroughly, find out what the settings are on it and how they affect your picture. An excellent book is "Understanding Exposure", by Bryan Peterson.
Look at photos you like from professional photographers in books or magazines. What do you like about the photo? How can you create a similar one?
Then get out there and practice! Don't forget to have fun while you're at it!

Edit:
Karl is correct. What I MEANT to type was 6x7, numbers don't stick into my head or in my fingers either, evidently!

Answer 2

I wanted to make one correction to Ara57's response. To my knowledge, 4x5 and above is considered "large format". 35mm and anything smaller (APS, half-frame, etc.) is small format. 120 and 220 film, producing frame sizes of 6x4.5 cm, 6x6cm, 6x7cm, 6x9cm, etc. is considered medium-format.

Although some medium format cameras have movements (the ability to tilt and shift the lens) and even some 35mm lenses can do this - the real difference when going to the large-format cameras (4x5 inch, 5x7 inch, 8x10 inch, etc.) is the camera movements. By orienting the lens on planes not parallel to the film, a number of things can be achieved. First off, perspective can be corrected, i.e. when photographing buildings. Also, you can achieve sharp focus in the foreground and background at the same time - even better than when just using a small aperture.

Something to be aware of is that focal lengths (i.e. a 50mm lens, 135mm lens, etc) gives a perspective depending on the format size. Many people who have only used 35mm cameras think that "135mm is a short telephoto". Well, this is only true for 35mm and would be considered a moderately wide angle lens on a 4x5 camera. Or, the other way around, a 40mm lens would be considered "moderately wide" on a 35mm camera, but would be considered "normal" on a digital camera with a 1.5 sensor size factor.

And then of course is the amount of resolution, with the larger negatives offering far more resolution just by the fact that the film has a much larger surface area. There is a clear difference between 35mm and 120 photographs already. Then there is another very noticeable difference between 120 and 4x5. There are those that say "if you are printing at 8x10 size, there is no advantage to going past 35mm. I don't agree with that at all. I think it is easy to see the difference between the formats, regardless of how large the images are reproduced.

One final thing is that large-format negatives are often large enough so that reproduction may be done by contact printing. In fact, Edward Weston only made contact prints from his 8x10 and 11x14 cameras.

Here are some useful web sites:

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/format.htm
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/filmdig.htm

This is a great web page showing the comparison between formats in terms of "real world resolution":

http://www.kalons.nl/otten/Comparison.html

-Karl

Answer 3

You've already received some fanstastic answers on formats by some knowledgble people, so I will only answer "the where do I go to take photos" part of your question. Getting a little bored is normal and when this happens to me, I do one of the following:

-- I grab up some gear and head to the zoo...always some interesting stuff there

-- I grab my camera, pick a lens and head downtown to walk around the city

-- If the weather is lousy - I might go into the studio and try some sort of creative lighting technique I've been wanting to explore (if you don't have a studio - play around with macro photographs of coins or try shooting water droplets).

There is always something to shoot... sometimes we just need to walk around a bit to get inspired. Have fun!

Answer 4

The previous answers are pretty detailed,if you are looking for actual sizes of prints.
I have also know large, medium, and small formats referred to when using a digital camera. If you are looking at your settings and have to choose one of these, it has to do with quality of pictures. If you set it to large, you will have more detailed photos (that use more megapixels) and also take up more room on your memory card. This is what you need to use, especially if you are planning on enlarging your prints.
If you choose small, that is mostly for images that will be used on the internet, since the file size will be smaller and it will take less time to upload onto other computers and it will still have good quality since a monitor is pretty forgiving.
I would recommend shooting in large, if you can. Medium is okay if your pictures will be small and Small is for web-based photos.

Answer 5

The meaning depends on the context in which you saw those words.

Some digicam menus use Small/Medium/Large to refer to choices in pixel dimensions (Resolution). Other digicams just give you the pixel dimension numbers to choose from. If this is where you saw S/M/L, choose Large to record in the highest resolution available on your camera. That gives you the most flexibility to resize or crop your pics.

Small/Medium/Large has also been historically used to categorize film size in film cameras. Over time there have been several film sizes that fit into each category. (Standardization over 150 years has been tough to get!!)

Good Luck