Medium and Large Format Accessories for High-End Photography
Medium and large format accessories include view camera bodies, camera backs, monorails, and much more. Medium and large format cameras are ideal for film photography, but most accept digital camera accessories such as imaging-sensor backs and viewfinders that attach with adapters.
Accessorizing Medium and Large Format Cameras
The most important accessory of large-format systems is the view camera body itself. Bodies consist of either flatbed cameras (field cameras) or monorail cameras. Field cameras can be hand-held, telescoping on a bed frame normally with a fixed bellows as you focus on your subject. Monorail cameras mount on a tubular channel. You can alter the length with modular rails for varying the focusing length, along with system-specific or universal replacement camera bellows for wide-angle, telescopic, or macro photographs.
The other significant accessory for a view camera includes a digital back which replaces the ground-glass view-finding system with a digitized system. A variety of digital and film back adapters transform view cameras into digital cameras by allowing photographers to attach both DSLR and medium-format camera bodies to the rear standard of the view camera.
Other Accessories for Medium and Large Format Cameras
Besides large camera bags for housing and transporting medium-format and view cameras, several accessories are critical to overall performance. Format frames and functional carriers give versatility to your lens with rise and fall, shift, tilt, and swing effects. Other accessories for both medium format and view cameras include a variety of viewfinders, including those with split-screen and inverted ground-glass imaging, focusing screens for previewing images, and focusing cloths to block ambient light from the photographer’s image sightline. Large camera backpacks are also available for safe transport.