Some more drivel,
I was still in the process of getting my gear together when a magical lighting was no doubt going to occur. There was a very even layer of clouds over the whole sky and the clouds were open to the west so I was fairly certain that the clouds would light up and be amazing. I had never set my camera up and practiced with it but I had made copies of the steps of how to use the view camera, which is on the LF home page here.
http://www.largeformatphotography.in...o-operate.html
The sky was changing quickly and in a half panic I raced home, grabbed all the camera gear, which was spread around the house, and retrieved the film from the fridge. It was amazing to have actually been able made it to where I wanted to shoot and having never made one image before it seemed kind of hilarious to be using the list step by step to take the pictures – and it worked! The pictures are great! What you see on the ground glass is what you will get on film if you don’t miss a step on the list and do things in sequence.
I have since made my own additions to that list
13a. Test fire the shutter – this will let you know if you forgot to close the lens which may save you from ruining the film, and you can sometimes tell if your shutter speed is not set correctly, and the cable release may glitch or stick.
15 Look at the subject, moving objects will be blurry at slow shutter speeds ALSO look at the lens to make sure nothing has landed on it.
18a Look at the ground glass to double check the image you just recorded, is it still in focus or did something move?
19b. Reset all the movements back to zero if you have used them – rise, shift etc.
19c. Open the lens and the aperture so you have one less thing to do on the next shot.
I had also used Velcro to set a small 6” stainless steel ruler (in mm) in it’s sheath to the bed of the camera so I could focus on distant hills, slide the ruler in the sheath to set it to an easy number to remember, focus on a near object and then split the difference on the ruler and note the length in mm to pick the aperture from the chart below. You can just stick small pieces of masking tape on the rail to mark the focus points to get started. The difference in mm (D mm on the chart) will give you an idea of the optimal F-stop as listed on this chart. The F 45 numbers should be rounded off.
D mm---- F-stop
.17-------- F8
.13---------F 11
.7----------F 16
1-----------F 16.6
1.3---------F 22
2-----------F22.6
2.7---------F 32
3-----------F 32.2
4-----------F 32.6
5-----------F 45
6-----------F 45.2
7-----------F 45.4
8---------- F 45.6
9-----------F 45.8
10----------F 64
11----------F 64
The chart above was created from this info
http://www.largeformatphotography.info/fstop.html
I eventually made a focusing knob out of PVC plumbing parts (a 1” coupler that is tightened by hand and some other bits) using a Dremel and it was well worth the effort.
Print up a list and get out and shoot! Have fun with it!
If anyone finds any errors with any of this information please let me know.
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