There comes a time in every photographer’s life when you look at your perfectly competent, modern gear and think, “This is too easy. I need to make my life harder.” For me, that moment arrived last year when I decided to photograph drag racing—not with my trusty Nikon Z9, a camera that spits out 20 frames per second like a caffeinated Gatling gun—but with a Toyo View VX-125, a 4×5 film camera roughly the size of a small microwave oven. On black and white film, no less. Because why shoot action in glorious, high-speed digital color when you can lug around a tripod-mounted relic and turn a split-second sport into a sepia-toned exercise in masochism?
The idea hit me like a bad carburetor adjustment: slow, smoky, and with a faint whiff of regret. The plan was simple, if unhinged: set up near the starting line, where I could catch the raw chaos of a drag race’s launch—soft rubber tires wrinkling under torque, front ends clawing skyward, nitro fumes thick enough to choke a buzzard. Drag racing is all about that split-second starting-line fury, and here I was with a camera better suited to still lifes of fruit bowls or bearded poets in velvet jackets. The Toyo has no autofocus, no burst mode, just a bellows lens and a ground glass you squint at upside-down like a pirate with a hangover. I wanted a challenge, sure, but this was like entering a pie-eating contest with a teaspoon.
My usual dragstrip companion is the Nikon Z9, a mirrorless marvel that could probably photograph a hummingbird’s sneeze at 1/32,000th of a second and still have time to email the RAW file to my wife. The Toyo, by contrast, is the photographic equivalent of a steam locomotive: majestic, ponderous, and faintly absurd in the modern age. With the Nikon, I’d have one hundred 48-megapixel RAWs before the parachute deployed. With the Toyo, I’d be lucky to get one frame off before the next pair staged. It’s the difference between a cheetah and a Galápagos tortoise—one’s built for the chase, the other’s just happy to be there.
So there I was at Thunder Valley, tripod planted on the sticky track just off the starting line, looking like a mad alchemist who’d escaped a steampunk novel. The process was glacial: pick a spot where the tires would bite and the noses would lift, pre-focus the lens (because tracking a 220-mph car with a manual bellows is a fantasy for fools), slide in the film holder, pull the dark slide, cock the shutter, and wait. Then came the trick—I’d watch the starting light tree like a racer, counting down amber-amber-amber-green, and trip the shutter about a second after the green dropped. That’s when the magic happened: tires buckling, chassis twisting, raw horsepower frozen in 4×5 glory. One shot, five minutes to reload, repeat. Meanwhile, the digital shooters around me were racking up gigabytes like they were playing a video game on cheat mode.
No kids were allowed up there with me, of course—Thunder Valley’s starting line isn’t a playground. But later, in the pits, they’d swarm like moths to a porch light, sticky-fingered and wide-eyed, peering at my contraption. “Can we see the picture?” they’d ask, expecting instant digital gratification. I’d chuckle and explain that this was film—black and white film, at that—and they’d have to wait days, maybe weeks, until I got it developed. They’d stare at me like I’d just confessed to riding a horse to the track, then shuffle off to pester someone with a smartphone. Fair enough. In their world, waiting five seconds for a TikTok to load is an eternity; five minutes per frame is a crime against nature.
And yet, against all odds, I got some keepers. Not a flood of them—large-format film doesn’t forgive misfires when your subject’s a blur of nitro and rubber—but the ones that worked had grit. Black and white turned Thunder Valley into a time capsule: wrinkled tires and lifting front ends etched in stark contrast, backgrounds melting into a creamy haze thanks to the Toyo’s shallow depth of field. They looked like stills from some lost ’60s drag flick, all mood and muscle. Sure, I missed most of the action, but nailing that one perfect launch felt like I’d outsmarted my own stupidity.
Will I drag the Toyo back to the drag strip again? Probably, if the mood strikes and I’m feeling particularly unhinged. There’s a twisted thrill in turning a split-second sport into a slow-motion ordeal. But let’s be real—next time, I’ll probably sling the Z9 over my shoulder and let it rip at 20 frames a second. Life’s too short to spend it hunched under a focusing cloth—unless you’re chasing the kind of crazy only a 4×5 can deliver. In which case, I’ll be the guy near the starting line, tripod in the dirt, counting down the lights like a racer with a death wish and a dinosaur for a camera.
James Pratt is a photographer, gearhead, and occasional madman who can be found at www.james-pratt.com when he’s not tormenting himself with obsolete gear.
