Cameras I've Clicked With...
Lotus Rapid View 5 x 7
Burkhardt Kiegeland came over from Austria in April 1998 and discussed, amongst other things, life, the landscape and large format; here is an extract of the latter subject from a couple of days of chatting together in the hills of mid-west Wales...
Editor - Ed Buziak: What really started you off in making cameras?
Burkhardt Kiegeland - Lotus View Cameras: About fifteen years ago I met a woodworker and had first discussions that it would be great to do cameras - BIG cameras - because there is still a market. But it was not the right time, and I was myself quite apart from photography as well at the time. I used to use a 35 mm camera as a kind of notebook, but wasn't motivated properly.
Then later in 1987 or 1988 I went to Linhof in Munich and bought a Master Technika camera. I wanted to do photographs in bigger sizes, but after using the Linhof for a couple of months I realised that it couldn't be used for what I wanted of it. I wanted more, not so much in respect of technical aspects as in terms of detail and more subtle tonalities. Accordingly I jumped into 8 x 10 inch format and bought a Phillips Compact, a camera I liked very much: very lightweighted and very easy to handle in the field.
But of course there are limitations too which come along with extreme light weight and limited movements. I couldn't use my longer lenses because of it's short bellows draw, and there were no back movements either - nevertheless I made a lot of pictures using it.
Editor: And all the time you felt you were trying to go to with bigger and bigger negatives?
Burkhardt: Ja, that tendency came up. At that time I started taking part in discussions in the Internet - the darkroom newsgroup as well as rec. photo. equipment-large format. Furthermore I tried to get more detailed information on what is offered on the market by other companies.
One by one all the old and new field cameras entered my collection, including a Korona, a Folmer & Schwing and Kodak Master View, which is a great design. Finally I bought - and this turned out to be the initial bang - from someone a heavy used wooden field 4 x 5 inch including panoramic back 4 x 10 inch and some Mido holders. Unfortunately every one of these holders leaked and even after repair they showed still a somewhat temperamental performance.
So one day I went to my friend Heiner who runs our wood-shop asking him - OK, let's do something, I need some fine wooden holders according to the old tradition. And so we did.
Editor:So really you started making the film holders before cameras?
Burkhardt: Yes, and we got cheers and very nice feedback from other camera makers - just up to the point where we started to make our own cameras!
Editor: But you couldn't compete against regular film holders from Toyo and Fidelity.
Burkhardt: That's right. Our wooden holders are handmade with special tools we developed. Accordingly the price is higher than that of the plastic moulded ones in standard sizes from 4 x 5 to 8 x 10.
Editor: Therefore you will be able to make sizes not available from Fidelity?
Burkhardt: Yes, we do all the odd sizes, the metric sizes, the panoramic sizes and the really big ones like 20 x 24 inch. Today we can give lifetime warranty on our holders - they are light proof, we guarantee for that.
In addition we started to make wooden holders in common sizes too. They are more expensive than plastic moulded ones - but much lighter in weight and absolutely beautiful to look at.
Editor: Do you feel that the revival of large format is not just in really big sizes but in large format cameras generally?
Burkhard: Yes, exactly that is my impression - and of course it will have its strongest impact on sizes like 4 x 5 inch, 5 x 7 inch and 8 x 10 inch whereas the really big ones will be a niche in a niche market - a very exciting niche nevertheless.
 Editor: I see this "movement" as well, away from auto-everything cameras which although they have a brain are brainless cameras... the camera is actually very clever but the person using it is not required to use his or her brain at all apart from the decision on what to point it at and when to press the shutter.
In fact on this magazine I get a lot of such comment from many readers and the trend is the same... they are fed-up with automation. They don't necessarily have the persuasion to go into the large format arena but they are certainly considering roll-film as the starting point. They say they would love to try large format eventually, but have to start on something smaller like an old Mamiya C330 or Rollei. And of course one can buy a new Seagull or Lubitel for a very reasonable amount, (or a Holga for $20 or so to have some fun with) but of course it's all a stepping stone to better quality.
I've struggled for 30 years trying to get beautiful prints from 35 mm, and it's not easy. I occasionally do it - and when I do it I sometimes don't know what I've done... it's almost a happy accident where everything was just perfect from the exposure to the processing. I've actually had more "happy accidents" with Leica rangefinder cameras, and I'm currently having a few more with an old Leica "screw" model as well. Perhaps it is something to do with the older lenses, but I'm sure it is also to do with an attitude of mind where you actually try harder because you are "doing" it yourself.
When that, in 35 mm, is multiplied many times, with a much larger area of film, then the results are staggering. Having looked at many of your 12 x 24 inch contact prints I'm amazed and in awe of the quality that is obtainable. I have never seen contact prints that size before and I've not often been as impressed with a print since I visited "The Land" exhibition at the V&A Museum in London in 1976 where I remember standing in front of Ansel Adams' "Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico", one of the bigger versions, and thinking how it glowed. Since then I've seen very little really that has left it[base ']s mark on me. So to see your contacts I feel that a mark has been made again, and that's just from a simple contact print. Whether I'm going to copy you I don't know [laughs] but at least I know that there is a point where I have got to make a start.
Burkhardt: I was drawn into this large-size enthusiasm very, very fast because its quality is so obvious.
 Editor: It is, isn't it. I bought a large-format camera in March, a Gandoifi Variant Level III from Robert White, and I used it for a couple of weeks. Then I had your Lotus 4 x 5 camera for review and fell for it immediately... it was a blend of the traditional materials, and also a wonderful smell from the camera... of linseed oil and rubberised cotton, all slightly erotic!
Burkhardt: Yes, a camera must have a kind of erotic quality. Like a Leica, which is beautiful to play with, something sensual.
Editor: Of course. It's not just a case of you press a button and the camera does the rest, as George Eastman used to say; you really have to struggle initially with the knobs in order to focus and correct for any movements, Scheimpflug, etc. And viewing the upside-down image really concentrates the mind. I worried for some time before I made a photograph... thinking for more than an hour... is it right, and checking, checking, checking; I kept on opening the aperture and looking through the back again to check everything was as I thought it should be, and it took a long time to make an exposure.
Burkhardt, do you feel that you have a favourite format? You have shown me a portfolio of 12 x 20 inch contact prints; do you feel you want to go bigger or is there simply a physical limit as to what you can do outdoors.
Burkhardt: Actually you can do any size outdoors if you have enough money to pay handlers to carry your stuff! [much laughing]
Editor: Then what is your market for a 20 x 24 inch camera?
 Burkhardt: They are for portrait studios which are coming more and more to the really big sizes. The Polaroid effort many years ago in this size was a "push" and now the waves are spreading out. Now people are becoming interested in very big portraits which has again something to with sensuous qualities. You can "touch" these portraits, they "jump" on you.
Besides of portrait work 20 x 24 inch is used for landscape, for special tasks in industrial photography as well as for architecture.
Editor: Do you find that your market is for the enthusiast rather than the professional, because 4 x 5 or bigger sizes are not as popular now with professionals?
Burkhardt: There are professional enthusiasts, too, you know! The professional however in his daily routine will not use really large sizes because it's a question of his financial calculations... his customers wouldn't pay for that as a routine. On the other hand when he has something in mind like the expression of a deeper level of photography, when he thinks about photography as an "art" form then he is very interested in these bigger sizes.
Editor: Which is your best selling format?
Burkhardt: 4 x 5, because it is the starting block... and then comes next 8 x 10 and next 12 x 20. This panoramic size gains some popularity. In my understanding the tendency towards these wider views has to do with our reception of the world in general which is changing; we start to see more and we start to widen our horizon - we start to include into our view what's in the far distant...
Editor: Yes, people in general have very limited vision. I remember at art college we were told, when walking along the street, to look up and not just at people's eye-lines... and you see that many buildings are more than two stories high!
Burkhardt: In my impression many photographers who tend to panoramics have a liking for music too, and I often look at those big contact prints as "scores" - there are rhythms in landscapes or layers of rhythms, which attract me very much.
Editor: With your printing you are doing bigger than 8 x 10 so you don't use an enlarger. Therefore you must be getting real satisfaction from making contact prints.
 Burkhardt: Yes. I don't need more than that - a contact print is so complete - nothing is missed. Of course my preference for contact printing has to do with certain tonalities. When you look at Ansel Adams, who is obviously one of the most influential photographers of the century, there's lots of drama. This drama can easily be amplified in the darkroom by dodging and burning-in. I'm not so attracted by the drama, I'm more attracted by subtle rhythms and the subtle tonalities - and I would say that this can best be achieved by a good contact print.
Editor: I remember looking at your prints; when we got to about the half way point and I said that my mind was confused. And you said that it is because there is so much detail you cannot take it all in. In fact you cannot surely see it all when you are stood there looking at the scene because the eye scans, but when you make the photograph and capture the image you can then see all that detail for the first time; so a photograph is very revealing because you can see so much more than when you were there.
Burkhardt: That's an interesting point because at the beginning you don't see what you are seeing, and this has to be to understood: you see, but you don't see consciously everything what you are seeing. It hits your system, but you don't realize...
Then, after some experience your consciousness starts speeding up - the perception of a scene starts to happen at different levels at the same time. Everything comes together - the visual seeing, the breathing in of what is out there, the sensuous feeling which is a resonance you can feel in your body. Doing large-format photography is a kind of one-man self-experience group...
Editor: Do you find that because you capture so much information and so much satisfaction, that you find one exposure is enough, because visually to see the result of one photograph as so exciting.
Burkhardt: Maybe I should describe the way I take photographs. When I feel attracted by a subject I jump under the big dark cloth. And from that moment I don't come out of the dark cloth except for the exposure. Once I had learnt - from Michael A. Smith - to trust what the ground glass is showing me, I discovered a world totally new.
Editor: Yes I noticed that when you were photographing the clematis montana climbing up our barn here you stayed under the dark cloth then picked up the camera and tripod and walked around like some strange creature.
I can't work like that at the moment... it isn't easy and I think this is the whole problem with large-format. The results look so good but it's so much of a (different) struggle to get them, or I find it so, and one really has to work at it.
Burkhardt: Yes, and it leaves you breathless. It's so beautiful, this creative act; you are totally surrendering under the dark cloth and you discover the world in a way you have never seen it, and you come out and you are really there!
Editor: After I had taken my first couple of sheets of film I couldn't wait to get into the darkroom, get the dishes out and have that meaningful ten minutes or so of total darkness just listening to the liquid lapping and film nudging against the side of the dish. It is a form of meditation because you don't think about your problems or suchlike: you just think totally about what you have done to get the image and what you hope is going to emerge from the liquid. It is a very concentrated effort you have to put in - not like the inversion agitation of a daylight tank with 35 mm - which seems almost like monotonous automation again by comparison.
Burkhardt: I would like to add a different view on that. At the beginning there is concentration as you learn to grip all the knobs and how it works. When this is achieved the camera becomes a part of you, and taking photographs becomes a dance... that kind of dance in which you lose yourself into something bigger. This is not a state of trance, it's a very awakened experience where the world dances with you... and that's meditation!
Editor: You're taking much larger sheets of film, up to six sheets of 12 x 20 at a time; what goes through your mind?
Burkhardt: Well, I tray develop six sheets of film at a time in PMK Pyro. I use four litres of solution in 16 x 20 inch trays - it is a cheap developer because of its high dilution. I pre-wet a couple of minutes and then adjust my pile of films by pulling the bottom one out and laying it on the top, and so on. I develop by inspection, by which I mean I use a dark green safelight and I have a foot-switch. After about five minutes I switch on and look at the back of sheets. I develop face down, and actually it is easy to learn - it's not a witchcraft thing.
It is possible to develop, stop, fix and wash the six big sheets in about half an hour. It was not too difficult to handle six sheets of 12 x 20 after I had overcome the initial block.
There was another block though - wearing gloves because it is not a good idea to work with your bare hands in Pyro. I was anxious about feeling the edge of the sheets with gloves, but in fact it was easy to learn. Now I use thin Nitrile gloves because Latex is not safe enough.
Editor: I remember my first nervousness, not with the camera but in getting into the darkroom faced with a new processing method. Everything was set up correctly, I knew where everything was by touch; the darkslide catch was off, ready to take the film out and the timer was set for ten minutes. I turned the white light off, pulled the film out of the holder, flicked the switch on the timer... and four red safelights came on! [loud laughs] I hadn't pulled the safelight plug out of the wall-timer. My very first sheet of film was ruined! But it was a part of that learning cycle where you are your own best teacher.
Burkhardt: Yes, terrible things can happen. Imagine holding six sheets of 12 x 20 prior to the pre-wash - I hold them like a fan of cards - and suddenly one slips from my hand. How to find again without losing the other ones? Or making sure that the films do not stick together on immersion in the pre-wash. But all this is not as complicated when you just do it.
Editor: I notice that you use Kodak Azo paper for your contact prints. What is so special about Azo?
Burkhardt:Azo is a silver-chloride paper with an extremely long tonal scale, in fact a longer scale than with platinum prints. Azo is a contact paper - you wouldn't use it for enlargements because of its low sensitivity. Azo too is one of the oldest photographic products still available - over 100 years in production. I learned about Azo by an article written by Michael A. Smith in the excellent American "View Camera" magazine.
Editor: Is there any threat by Kodak to stop making Azo?
Burkhardt: So many beautiful papers were discontinued during recent years. I think everything depends on demand and I feel myself as a member of that world-wide bunch of Azo users who keep it alive just by using it.
Editor: What developer do you use for Azo?
Burkhardt: Amidol and Azo is, in my opinion, simply the best combination; it gives the most rich and beautiful tones. Developing time is short - just one minute - to achieve that unique depth of the image Azo is famous for. Some of my prints are done by 30 seconds Amidol and 30 seconds in a water-bath.
There was the question you asked about how many sheets I expose during a day. Well, large format photography isn't "shooting" - we "take" pictures, that is just the opposite of "shooting" with a 250-exposure magazine on a Nikon. However when I'm in this "flow," it's possible that I expose twenty sheets in an afternoon just by moving around one spot... and all sheets are different!
Many years ago I just got rid of the idea that I could take a part of the scene as representative for "this part of the world" or "that part of that day" - there are so many subtle differences and I feel attracted to work with these subtle differences.
Indeed, people are "educated," for want of a better word, by photographic magazines and how-to books to look for "highlights." One magazine in Germany has a ridiculous contest asking photographers to "copy" the example illustrated - that is just one of the many "efforts" in our time to bring people away from life. But when you are open minded, open hearted and moving in your usual environment you should be just fulfilled with the density and importance of this movement.
And by experiences, when people start to feel that at their place where they are at right now, incredible things are happening - incredible photographs are waiting. For people to do that would be a boost to photographic quality around the world. It would not be "highlights" but the "real" thing... which is now.
Editor: I've noticed that your photographs are full of quality in the accepted traditional sense, and yet you are also interested in digital negative making... which are really two extremes being brought together.
Burkhardt: I don't see any controversy in that - I don't see that traditional and digital is opposite worlds. I think that new technologies can be used to support the old ones.
Digital negatives are so useful and convenient for all of us guys working on say platinum or salted papers... you get fine negatives without much waste of film and chemistry.
Editor: I have a number of readers who have said they are not buying the "Camera & Darkroom" magazine any more because they are going "digital." And of course you know that they are buying a £500 digital camera and a computer with which they think they're going to produce better photographs.
Burkhardt: They will not. At the beginning they will feel invited to use all these "circus tricks" such as planting different heads on different bodies and distorting faces, but soon all this stuff will sit in some corner and unfortunately they will forget about traditional photography too...
Editor: Hmmm; I have too much equipment that sits in a corner and I am always faced with the dilemma of which camera do I take out today, and then which lens to put on it. With a dozen cameras and two dozen lenses the combinations are endless... so what should I do? I actually take out an old screw Leica with a standard 5 cm or 3.5 cm lens and get better pictures as a result of no other constraints - by keeping things simple. Which is the kind of thing I'm looking to with large-format... hoping it will indeed simplify my life generally.
Burkhardt: It will... although it's a bigger camera, it's simpler.
Editor: How many people do you have working at Lotus View Camera?
Burkhardt: About six - they are making cameras and film holders full time. We run a big milling machine for making metal parts including the gears and knobs. The wooden parts are made from American and European Cherry.
The camera's finish is either oiled and waxed or a thin and hard coat of lacquer. Bellows are made in the United Kingdom by Camera Bellows of Birmingham... a fine company with over 100 years of tradition.
Editor: Of course one of the first things one notices about the camera is that it isn't just double or triple extension, but quadruple extension.
Burkhardt: It is so funny - this market of course is a market for "boy's toys" and accordingly comparing their toys all boys impress each other by the best and the longest... but seriously, there are two bellows for our 4 x 5 available. The "studio bellows" which can be used down to a 75 mm lens, and the "bag and field bellows" which is for lenses from 45 mm up to 240 mm. It is a, funny new design combining a bag with some pleats.
Editor: Have you any new projects on the go?
Burkhardt: We will present at photokina '98 in September our new design of a 20 x 24 inch "folding bed" camera equipped with motorized movements. Mounted on a caddy this camera adds dimensions - it is actually movable by a single man!
Editor:Burkhardt, thank you for being our guest here in Wales. I know the readers will enjoy your thoughts which I hope will be of inspiration in this new area, for many of them, of the larger formats.
Click here for linking to Lotus View Cameras.
Burkhardt Kiegeland is a large format photographer, fine art printer, and author of various articles about photography, a writer for the magazine "SchwarzWeiss" and numerous books, among them a widely circulated handbook for hobby photographers and one about the photographic laboratory. Take a look here for his Workshop information.
He regularly holds workshops which usually take 3 days (Thursday evening till Sunday lunchtime), with small groups of up to 5 participants. There will be courses on the following subjects:
1. Large Format Photography and Work in the Darkroom.
2. Alternative Printing Methods(Platinum/Palladium Print, Kallitype, Van Dyke...)
3. Fine Art Prints from the Inkjet Printer.
9:14:08 PM 
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