polaroid problems, and a foggy ground glass

[Los]

i've had my 4x5 toyo view g for about 3 weeks now. i bought some polaroid 54 and 59 stock. i've made about 10 exposures with the 54 stock, and the results were fine. earlier this week i made two exposures with the 59. the first exposure was fine, but i felt a little dark. so i made the second with a slower shutter. the polaroid came out black. i felt that maybe i missed a step in my technique and didn't expose it, but it looked a little fogged on the side.

today, i made a 59 exposure and again it was black. i'd thought to try an exposure on the 54 to see if mabe there was a problem with the stock, and the 54 came out black. i'm lost. i double check my steps and made sure the shutter was closed prior to making an exposure. i made sure the polaroid was facing the right way in the 545 holder. i've checked my bellows for leaks, and it is in good shape. i don't know what else it could be other than the stock. i'll check my rollers in the holder, but nothing has changed with the camera system from the original exposures other than my adding a hood to the exterior of the ground glass frame. has anyone had problems with bad polaroid stock?

exposure was 1/250 at f8 for the 54 and 59. scene is a day exterior around noon.

which leads to my second question. i've added a "hoodman" h600 hood to help shade my ground glass. today, after about 10 minutes outside my ground glass started fogging up until i could no longer see an image. mind you, i was a foot away from the hood (my reason for getting the hood) when this happened so it wasn't like the heat from my perspiration was fogging the screen. i moved the camera indoors and the fogging cleared after a minute out of the sun. do you think my hood is causing my screen to fog or is it possible there is cleaning residue on the screen that fogs when heated. or should i just not be out in the noon time sun with a view camera?

[Los]

picture of the hood. attached with velcro outside the ground glass frame.

[Patrik Roseen]

It could be that your groundglass is much cooler than the surrounding warm air which includes humidity hence the cool will make air condensate to fogging.

You might try by putting the groundglass inside a plastic bag while inside and then bring the bag out in the sun and see what happens.

[Brian Ellis]

"i don't know what else it could be other than the stock. ."

That's probably what it is. On a recent workshop outing six or seven of us were using Polaroids (furnished by the workshop IIRC) and quite a few came out black. Since we all were experiencing the same problem with different equipment it was obvious that the problem was with the film.

[Ron Marshall]

Try Scuba-Diving anti-fog drops on the ground glass.

[Donald Qualls]

Relative to the black Polaroids, if the clip on the film packet isn't catching in the bottom of the holder, you could be withdrawing the entire packet instead of only the sleeve. The result would be equivalent to exposing conventional film with the dark slide still in place -- no exposure = black print. You should be able to feel the difference between an empty sleeve and one with the chemical packet still inside, pretty easily, by gently palpating the area marked "don't squeeze here".

Alternately, if you have temp/humidity issues that cause fogging of the ground glass, you might also have condensation inside the shutter causing the leaves to stick -- again, resulting in no exposure. This is pretty easy to check by firing the shutter while looking into the lens, to ensure correct operation before loading the film. That's not a bad habit to get into anyway in large format -- cuts down on procedural problems, like forgetting to take an older shutter off T setting if you're used to one with press focus, as well as catching sticking leaves.

[Los]

update: l left the camera outside for a while and went to check on it, and the ground glass was clear. i guess the whole system needed to warm up. Ron, the anti-fog juice sounds like a good idea.

also, i cleaned the rollers on the 545 holder and then made another exposure. the polaroid came out fine. don't know what happened there, but i'll make regular practice of wiping off the rollers every two or three sheets. thanks for the feedback everyone.