I have much cleaning and organizing of my home -- but for some reason I am drawn here to 'waste' time, but hopefully not yours.
In the past month I have had 250+ people look through my various LF cameras, from the 100 yr-old 5x7 Eastman View No.2, to my first-big-trip new Chamonix 11x14. About 99% of them had never looked thru a LF camera before. A large proportion of them had no idea what they were looking at until it clicked for them that everything was upside-down. I got to the point where I waited to hear the slight gasp of recognition from under the darkcloth.
One of the most interesting early moments of using a LF camera was when I came out from under the darkcloth and the world looked upside-down, just for a heartbeat. One of the two processes I print with reverses the final image (single transfer carbon), and I need to compose an image based on which process I will use (some negs can go both ways, the little devils!) I have grown accustom to mentally flipping the image on the GG differently depending on what the final print will be orientated.
A lens throws an image that is upside-down and backwards. We view that image from the backside of the GG, so the image we are looking at is still upside-down, but not backwards...relative to how it would look as the print. To view it as a platinum print I just have to mentally rotate the GG image 180 degrees on the same plane (like a pinwheel). For carbon printing I mentally spin the image 180 degrees on it horizontal axis. My brain does it automatically, but it is interesting to observe how it all works.
Anyone else have a personal way of working with the image on their GG? Perhaps I have spent too much time under the darkcloth this past month!
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