Intrepid 4x5 Review - Falling in Love With Large Format Film

Love love your videos. I’ll take my Crown Graphic with a 135mm Schneider lens and shoot some B&W.

Thank you for the beautiful video. I saw lenses for 4x5 on ebay that have the same white dots and bubbling in them as the one you have with you. Does that affect the quality of the image? Do you see their reflection on the final image?
Thanks again

Faisal

My first training was with the 8x10 Deardorf in the military. Then used 4x5 press till discharge and then a Calumet 4x5 for college. Then I discovered the perfect combination, a 5x7 Intrepid!!! Now I have a 6x17 roll back for it. 5x7 GET HOOKED!!

I'm putting together an Intrepid camera setup and spending around $800 all together. I underestimated how many little accessories id need!

Thanks for this - great video!

Also budget for a decent tripod, and that means one that isn’t too lightweight.

Now here is an antidote to your A.I plugin and add 'a bunch of downloaded sunrises from your laptop to your landscapes from the confines of your warm bed ' mess .I have met the enemy and he is us ! Run !

The low price tag alone is a message that goes beyond photography: Here is a company that cares about the things they do, and they want to make photography accessible.

good to see you beginning at this, and confidently too, but yes it is harder with intrepid, as there is no detents, so it is harder to zero things.

You have a creative eye for art.

Can't really do large format where I'm currently at since i would probably have it stollen the moment i cover my head

DEFINITELY want a camera with detents for 0's on all movements.

I restarted to shoot photos with my 4x5 after wathcing several your videos. I now realized how shooting a photo is fun with my classic camera comapred with my Sony A3.

Which light meter is that?

I heard someone commenting on this camera on a podcast so was interested to see what you think. However what does tilting or moving the lens up or down do? Thanks

600 Dollars for a new large format Camera? That had to be a very crappy lens. You loose a lot of quality of the large format.

It seems there exists a inner urge of many film photographers to buy cameras with a larger format. 6x4,5, 6x6, 6x7, 6x9, 9x12, 13x18, 18x24 and so on. 35mm film is not good enough any more. Why? I don't know? Everything has to be bigger, larger in our lives.

Perhaps driven through inner emptiness, narcism, addiction, representation need i don't know, you name it. Spending our last money on things, that we don't need?

It should be considered. Larger film formats does't make us better photographers. Often in the contrary. Larger formats are more difficult to handle especially large format. Because of that the results are in many cases modest.

It seems that large format cameras makes photos looking empty or emotionless. I have seen it so much on other channels. I think, the lack of depth of field of large format ruins many shots? It appears the hole photo fall apart. Nothing to hold on for the viewer. Neither in the foreground nor in the background. Almost everything is out of focus. But not in a nice way especially for portraits.

Large format needs for sure many years of practice to come along with. And huge amounts of wasted film to get there. Therefore Large format should be chosen carefully for artistic purposes with meaningfulness and rather less for trivial every day shots.

You can shoot 50 photos of 35 mm film instead of one large format shot 18x24. And only three shots 4x5 corresponds to a full roll of 35 mm film with 36 shots. The stakes are high for each one shot. Either the large format shot blew us away or the shot was unworthy to take.

By the way, blew us away is very difficult to achieve in large format.

Great stuff mate as usual.

Intrepid reviews are either "my camera fell apart like Legos" or "this is a well built camera for the price". The level of quality control in their products seems to be really random and for the price of the cameras that makes me really uneasy

Love the photo of the gas-station. Well done!

Will always shoot digital as it suits my experimental style - but addicted to large format film videos on YT

I can't see any difference between full frame and large format on pictures. I think about to buy large format for different level of quality and sharpness, but where it is? Shoul be better for long exposure pictures.

oh man i want one so bad. I built my own 4x5 plate camera for wet plate collodion, but its not very good.... maybe ill save up for an intrepid.

What it is with 4X5 or larger cameras, is their longevity. You spend the money once, and it stays there till the camera or more likely the shutter breaks. None of this inbuilt obsolescence of the Digital dangle fangle BS. The all singing , all dancing 36 MP camera of yesterday, is considered obsolete today because Mr Sony or Mrs Canon have brought out a 47 MP camera with two dozen face detect modes, Birds in flight, Birds landing, Birds taking a shit, Birds copulating auto focus modes. Then you have the Fujis with their, wait for it, film emulation modes. Ah, the mirrorless, the answer to the ever bulkier and heavy DSLR and their lenses that resembled a telescope at times. Then what happened, they got bigger, bigger, lenses got huge, more and more expensive. Two dozen models each year, Z5, Z6, Z7 and so on till they ran out of letters of the alphabet. Ridiculous, if you asked me. You couldn't make this stuff up if you tried, could you?

The intrepid is cheap because its rough around the edges. Rather than using natural wood its made with plywood, the finishing is poor and adjusting the movements is rough. At the end of the day a large format camera is just a box and it won't reduce the quality in the image, but the experience won't be as slick as something more expensive.

Hi! Thank you for your channel, it is very hi level quality! Tell me please, what is the name and where to buy such a dark cloth, as in this video.

I am missing 4x5 shooting so much ah tempting

thanks for the insight kyle! what you didn't mention is a proper tripod to go along with it, speaking of which, what tripod were you using as I see it`s not the typical Gitzo was it? :) thanks!

I can't for the life of me find that abandoned gas station near Trout Creek. Any chance you'd be willing to share the location?

I bought a Graflex after your last video. Now I need to go buy another one.

$600 for the camera and then $10,000 for the film.

Try 10x8....it's sublime.

Welcome to the dark side :)

Digital can’t touch it. Take that gas station shot: Look at the spatial “sound stage”. The entire image is in focus, but look at the spatial separation with the foreground weed! You could walk into the scene! 8x10 blows 4x5 away in this regard BTW. Joel Meyorwitz’ “Cape Light” is a classic in this regard.

Big format film is a hassle. No doubt. But you can’t match it anywhere. $400 blows away a $10000 digital rig. Not even close.

An addition to what was said in the video. I agree fully that it would be nice to have some hardstops to zero out the various movements. Large format is anyway a slow process so anything that helps is useful. However, as was stated one does get a procedure for the zero out process. For others, this is actually a great, practical hands-on review for starting with the Intrepid (or really any 4 x5). Great Job!!

What makes Intrepid really nice is the customer service that one gets from the company. I in the U.S. have had several email exchanges with Intrepid in the U.K. The responses came very quickly. In one case a question was answered in addition to text with an image in which the pertinent areas of the camera were marked with arrows. Someone took some time to ensure that I got the proper perspective. They are friendly folks who are dedicated to their product and the users that buy them. I've bought several accessories from them and they are also reasonably priced. This besides cost is another reason to start your large format photography with Intrepid.

now we just need some affordable 4x5 color film :(

Great video! It was excellent to see all the work that goes into taking the photos, all the movements and adjustments. Another great review, I really enjoyed! Ps. your photos look great, you should be excited :)

I enjoyed the photos, instruction and review of the Intrepid. I have a Lindhof Kardan super color and an intrepid Mk3 (with new mk4 base). I really enjoy both cameras. I love the portability of the Intrepid. I enjoy not having to worry about whether my bellows have pin-hole links as they are new on the intrepid. I love the movements and the feel of the intrepid and I loved dealing with the company via email in the U.K. If you want to get into 4x5, I would advise buying a new intrepid over a used speed or crown graphic. You will have a new camera with new parts and actual support. They sell lens boards if you want new. They even sell an adapter kit to turn your intrepid into an enlarger. This is the way to start your large format journey. I believe the review here was just enough to give you a feel for the camera. That is what you need rather than a lot of details about knobs, etc. Thanks!

Very impressive,excellent shots and cool camera!!

I took my first 4x5 shot with a Crown in 1982. Still have the negatives! So cool to still see people enjoying the process. Developing film is like opening Christmas presents. Good job.

Can you use your dslr to get your meter setting?

time flies by when watching your reviews. Loved this one !

Thank you for sharing your enthusiasm for large format photography. I like these derelict and abandoned urban spaces that you choose to photograph. I am considering the Intrepid also for my first 4 x 5 camera but the lack of hard stops is putting me off. And also the fact that both the shift and swing movements can be locked by the same knob could make things really awkward. On the other hand, being able to use 75mm and 90mm wide angle lenses as well as longer lenses with the one bellows is a huge draw card. It seems that this is not possible with many other view cameras. And with some of them, you have interchangeable bellows and use a bag bellows in particular to accommodate very wide lenses. I'm not sure if a recessed lens board would fix this issue in some of these cameras.