Ryan submitted a new blog post: Tom Cobbs & The Savage Truth Of Large Format Film Continue reading the Original Blog Post
For everything I’ve posted from the Tom Cobbs archive so far, I’ve kept my hands off the images... no edits, no tweaks, just raw history as it was scanned. But this one felt different. A large format negative deserves a little respect, so I brushed off the dust, evened out the tones, and gave it the same care any film shooter would before hanging it on the wall. The scan came in at a ridiculous 100 megapixels. I’ll never be able to show it online with the kind of crisp, surgical sharpness it has here on my screen… but trust me, fellas - this one’s a monster.
You can get a rough idea of what it looks like, and it remains incredibly sharp when zoomed in. Regards, Harald
Pretty unique front bearing (?) on the blower. Is that an oil pressure feed for each end? For all he recorded and contributed to racing back then plus having this rare hi def image, I imagine there is a large print that will be made for your shop, Ryan.
Bob D'Olivo's photography talents are legend! In my opinion, his center spreads of antique firearms in GUNS & AMMO are his best work.
That picture is Dope. Detail well done. What's really crazy is for those with little to no knowledge of your photography experience or film detail risk taking might think (with the world we live in now) might think the full size version is AI....... The detail in this one well done.
It's hard to say... All I have is the scan. But Bob was known for shooting portraits with both a 4x5 Graflex and a 8x10 Deardorff field camera. The scan is essentially 20,000 by 25,000 pixels.
Quick outline of the bits. The other leg goes down and back to the firewall. Oil gauge inside? Also looks like a drain below the nose.
I’ve never shot, held, or even fondled a large-format camera. Medium format? Barely. I’ve sniffed around a few, but never pulled the trigger. Still, there’s a dark, festering corner of my mind that keeps whispering Hasselblad 500… some day, I’ll cave and buy one just to see what the world looks like through that square glass portal. But what really keeps me up at night isn’t format... it’s aspect ratio. I’m obsessed with the shape of the frame. For years, I ran my dad’s Hasselblad X-Pan which is a strange, glorious bastard of a camera that shoots two 35mm frames at once to make a panoramic negative. Here’s an example from the X-Pan: Glorious, right? That’s the 65:24 aspect ratio - basically Super Panavision 70, the same cinematic canvas that carried Lawrence of Arabia, The Sound of Music, and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. It just feels right... epic, sweeping vibes of classic Hollywood. Problem is, the X-Pan has turned into a collector’s racket. I sold my kit for something like $12k because I couldn’t justify carrying a camera worth more than a decent Honda Civic. Plus, they’re all ticking time bombs... the electronics rot out, and once that motherboard dies, it’s a very expensive paperweight that can't be fixed. So now what? I still want that cinematic frame, that movie-screen scope… but film options are thin, overpriced, or unreliable. You know what’s not? Old digital rigs with BIG sensors. Pair one with the right glass, and suddenly it’s just a software problem. I can crop to 65:24 all day, but I want to see that ratio through the viewfinder, not imagine it after the fact. Anyway, this is all a long, nerdy way of saying: I’m cooking up a DIY monstrosity to scratch the itch. And if it works, you’ll see the results soon enough.
It is a beautiful image and camera work. I can read the tire size up front...550-16. There's a pretty fine spring behind the blower that you can see too. I also like the subject matter. Tom Cobbs did a lot of offbeat Hotrods, a bit of a trendsetter, like Isky and Blair who also did things that mixed up the diversity of the sport of go fast... I went from Brownie Hawkeye to a 35mm bayonet lense camera but still never got even close to making things work as they should. I can certainly appreciate your knowledge of such things @Ryan. We are better for it. Your blogs are inspiring and a joy to witness especially since much of it is uncapsuled material...rarely or never before seen to boot.
Crisp detailed photo awesome! Scanning from negatives is the best, bigger the better a couple samples from my collection scanned using Epson 850 pro
My Dad used to be a professional photographer, did a lot of weddings and studio portraits, along with developing his own black & white film. He once restored an old photograph of a panoramic view from a local lighthouse; he told me the camera that took the image advanced the film as it was pivoted 360 degrees on the tripod. The photograph itself was about six inches tall and close to three feet long! I always enjoy studying old black and white photographs; there's a certain crispness and warmth to them that always appeals to me.
I'm sitting here looking at those shots you did, being one of the lucky Ones, who was fortunate to snag them in time . Pure beauty ,I tell you..
Do you even have any idea if that negative was drum scanned, or is there an even newer process that has managed to sneak past me in the last few years?
Digital is handy, and has vastly improved over the years but large format film is still the coolest of all to me.
First test shot of my pseudo DIY X-Pan digital camera... Not great... Think I need a bigger more modern sensor to pull this off...
The framing and composition are pretty good. The perspective does a great job of drawing you into the photo. And someone spent some time getting the exposure right. There's hardly any areas that are pure white or pure black. And there's a lot of grades of gray between the two extremes.
I tried to "calibrate" the sensor distance on this camera so that I could accurately focus to infinity on an adapted vintage Leica lens... And... It WORKED! But in the process, I damaged the sensor itself. Now, I get really bad vignetting, strange color shifts, and terrible IQ. Just as well I guess... This old camera body was pretty beat, I need a bigger sensor to start, and it was a pretty good learning experience. From what I've learned, I can absolutely pull this off... I just need to gather my confidence, spend a little money on a body with a bigger sensor, and fucking send it. I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. The end goal here is to have a dedicated digital camera that I can take 65:24 aspect ratio images with. From there, I want to develop a LUT that spits out colors similar to Kodachrome. The dream is to have a camera that I can shoot hot rods with that look straight off a Super Panavision 70 screen from the early 1960's.
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