Should lead fishing weights be sewn in the hem of a dark cloth?

[AtlantaTerry]

I bought a microfabric blackout curtain at Home Depot yesterday.

When the lady at my dry cleaning store cuts it and sews a hem, should she include some fishing weights in each corner?

Yes, I have read that a stiff breeze can flap the fabric with the potential of damaging the lens.
On the other hand, I don't want to struggle with it trying to keep out the light.

So I went over to my local WalMart to see what they might have in their fishing department. There I found a dizzying assortment of sizes and shapes of fishing weights.

151221

I finally bought a package of 16 split weights for 94 cents. I plan to cut some fishing line into 4 short pieces then pinch 4 weights onto each. I will leave a gap in the middle so the seamstress will be able to form a corner in the fabric ending up with 2 of the weights on each side of each corner.

So, how much weight do you think I should have her sew into the hem? Or possibly none at all?

[Drew Bedo]

Fishing weights? Well I suppose so. My dark cloth has hardware stor washers in the corners. What abput a length of wire cable rolled into the seams? Might be too stiff though.

My regular 4x5 kit includes a BTZS hood which works pretty well and folds up small. The dark cloth is used on my 8x10.

[Two23]

I would think the odds of a dark cloth flapping and hitting a lens would be extremely small. They're on opposite ends of the camera for one thing.


Kent in SD

[Jac@stafford.net]

No for the fishing weights.

Consider an old military dress uniform trick - chain sewn into the cuffs (and for Gendarme of the Sixties, into the bottom of their cape.) Sew it into the hem, or corners as you wish. Given the great variety of sizes and weights of chain you should easily find just the right stuff. You can consider sticking magnets on the back/top of the camera to help hold them down. Stop by your Ace Hardware. Take a look.

[Struan Gray]

Your seamstress may already have the kind of lead weight tape used for curtain hems. It comes in various grades of heavy, and is conveniently encapsulated in a cloth cover. Flexible, and easy to include in a hem. Cheap on eBay if you have to get some yourself.

Weighting the entire hem gives a better drape.

[Michael E]

My 4x5" dark cloth has coins as weights in the corners. Just some weird old foreign currencies from trips long ago. You can't see it from the outside, but I know :-) Works well.

[goamules]

Bring along the biggest split shot you can find. But don't sew them in. Crimp them on one day if it's windy. I bet you'll never use them. Here in AZ, yeah....very windy. We had steady 25 knots wind yesterday, and gust to 40 knots. Trying to keep a darkcloth that is not bungied down to the camera is a pain, at times.

[LabRat]

But what about the GG!?!!!

Steve K

[neil poulsen]

But what about the GG!?!!!

Steve K

That's a good point, and it provides a criteria of how much weight would be appropriate. While including some weight to keep the edges from flapping, one wouldn't to include the kind of weight that could, unintentionally break the ground glass.

But for 4x5, and probably for 8x10, I've stepped away from dark cloths in favor of the BTZS sort of solution.

http://www.viewcamerastore.com/4x5-btzs-focus-hood-dark-cloth/

Mine was made by a concern other than BTZS, but it's the same idea. I also found that my previous "4x5" version (also non-BTZS) worked well for a 6x9 view camera, but was a little small for 4x5. Correspondingly, the one I use for 4x5 was designed for 5x7, and it works quite well on 4x5.

As to colors, my personal preference is for black on the inside and a medium gray on the outside. Some of them (BTZS?) are a stark white on the outside, which I dislike.

But of course, it's functionality that really matters. I would never let form trump functionality. (But something that looks really cool (:cool:), and makes me look really cool, that's a different matter.)

[BrianShaw]

Your seamstress may already have the kind of lead weight tape used for curtain hems. It comes in various grades of heavy, and is conveniently encapsulated in a cloth cover. Flexible, and easy to include in a hem. Cheap on eBay if you have to get some yourself.

Weighting the entire hem gives a better drape.

I've been using this solution since 1982. It works FANTASTIC.

[BrianShaw]

... I would never let form trump functionality. ...

Please be mindful of potentially political statements. :o

Ha ha ha

[Drew Wiley]

I shoot in the wind quite often. To me the notion of weights in a darkcloth seems outright insane. I would have lost either an eye or my groundglass, or a lens long long ago with that idea. Velcro.

[goamules]

You have a narrow window of wind force where this may help at all.

For winds of 0-10 Knots: plain cloth
10-20 Knots: light weights or cloths pins or split shot. Enough wind to be helped by slight weight, but not enough to blow the edge into the ground glass.
20-35 Knots: velcro and duct tape
35- full gale: stay home

[vinny]

Mine has rare earth magnets sewn in and more magnets epoxied to the camera. It works okay. I just like magnets

[Jerry Bodine]

Another option and lots of videos for use and sizes:

http://quietworks.com/FRAMES_FILES/BJ_SPECIFICATIONS/BJ_NEW_HOME_FRAME_.htm

[Drew Wiley]

We not only get sneaker waves here on the coast, but in Spring some real sneaker gusts of wind. I've turned my back for a moment and even had my 8x10 and
big heavy Ries tripod lifted up just like a kite and tossed twenty or thirty feet. Luckily, each time it landed on something soft like a lupine bush. I gave up trying
to shoot by mid-afternoon a week ago due to the wind atop a ridge. Then those mountain storms... I've got a few shots where I lay on the ground below the tripod acting as my own ballast, holding a long cable release. Most likely, I removed the darkcloth completely after the ordeal of tying to compose and focus the shot in the wind. But all it takes is a second or two of calm, and the shot is bagged. Might take half an hour waiting for that moment; but heck, that is what the game is all about!

[Kirk Gittings]

I shoot in the wind quite often. To me the notion of weights in a darkcloth seems outright insane. I would have lost either an eye or my groundglass, or a lens long long ago with that idea. Velcro.

Ditto, I have had a broken ground glass from a lead weighted dark cloth blowing around in the wind. Velcro rules in this application.

[HMG]

Bring along the biggest split shot you can find. But don't sew them in. Crimp them on one day if it's windy. I bet you'll never use them. Here in AZ, yeah....very windy. We had steady 25 knots wind yesterday, and gust to 40 knots. Trying to keep a darkcloth that is not bungied down to the camera is a pain, at times.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000ZKR4I6/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_1?pf_rd_p=1944687642&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B003ZZBSDU&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=13DHE71JHHFF191B9BYA

[Mark Sawyer]

"Should lead fishing weights be sewn in the hem of a dark cloth?"

If the dark cloth is wrapped around a lawyer and you're pushing him into a lake, yes.

[Kirk Gittings]

"Should lead fishing weights be sewn in the hem of a dark cloth?"

If the dark cloth is wrapped around a lawyer and you're pushing him into a lake, yes.

:)

[EdWorkman]

I tried a heavy motel style dark-drape material. Wind defeated it, plus a simple dark cloth let too much light , reflected from the ground, into the dark.
So I use a black tee shirt [ on a Kodak 2D] with my head thru the neckhole and the waist wrapped around the ground glass. [ kinda like the one in the url above]
Not elegant, but it works well and doesn't take up very much room in the case

[Struan Gray]

FWIW, the curtain hem tape is less likely to break anything, because both the weight and any impact it has when windblown are spread out.

That said, I use a Blackjacket, and greatly prefer it to a darkcloth.

[Doremus Scudder]

Another vote for Velcro. My homemade darkcloth has Velcro all around, with hooks on one side, loops on the other. I can close it up around the camera and around me. I haven't had a ground glass broken, but have had a strike in the head from a darkcloth weight that was painful enough to cause me to change.

I am lucky enough to have a bright enough Fresnel screen on most of my cameras that allows me to focus many shots without the darkcloth. I compose with a viewing frame, so don't need to spend a lot of time composing on the ground glass; just make sure the edges are correct, that the movements and focusing are correct.

FWIW, my darkcloth is white Gore-Tex on the outside, black on the inside and doubles as reflector, rain poncho and trendy-looking Superman cape :)

Doremus

[Alan Gales]

Bricks or Cement blocks work the best according to Drew Wiley. Unless of course you are shooting in a hurricane or tornado.

Drew was once shooting 8x10 in a hurricane with several tornados in it. As usual he was using his A100 Ries tripod so the camera stayed put. His dark cloth did fly up due to the high winds and hit Drew in the head several times. The bricks were pulverized so they had to be replaced later for his next adventure. Drew still has the pictures but you really can't see anything in them. Unfortunately Drew used a crappy Zeiss lens and not the Dagor that Andrew Glover had wisely suggested to him.

[Drew Wiley]

Cute, Alan. But I do have some immaculately sharp prints taken in very high winds. Sustained wind can work. It's gusts which shake a camera. Not that I like
difficult scenarios; wind can spoil shots. It just tends to come with the territory sometimes. We have something called mountains out here, and I have taken
thousands of large format trips in them. Ice and snow also happen to make lovely photographic subjects. I know that this is kinda a mystifying topic for people
who come from states where the highest peak changes every day depending on how much a bison left behind on the ground, if you still have any bison. But
even bison pies get transformed into photogenic abstractions when they are covered with a fresh layer of snow.

[Alan Gales]

Cute, Alan. But I do have some immaculately sharp prints taken in very high winds. Sustained wind can work. It's gusts which shake a camera. Not that I like
difficult scenarios; wind can spoil shots. It just tends to come with the territory sometimes. We have something called mountains out here, and I have taken
thousands of large format trips in them. Ice and snow also happen to make lovely photographic subjects. I know that this is kinda a mystifying topic for people
who come from states where the highest peak changes every day depending on how much a bison left behind on the ground, if you still have any bison. But
even bison pies get transformed into photogenic abstractions when they are covered with a fresh layer of snow.

Drew, I was wondering how long it would take you to find this. ;)

I tried my hand at writing a story like Andrew does on his Dagor77 Ebay listings. Unfortunately, I'm not quite the writer that Andrew is.

We have Bison here in St. Louis but they are at a place called Grant's Farm where they are on display like at a zoo. We have hills too but no mountains. When we get high winds it's usually in the spring during tornado season which is not exactly a good time for shooting large format. You are safer in your basement.

[Kevin Crisp]

Bricks and cinder blocks really don't do it. Unless you have a vacuum film holder to hold the film flat, all of this is pointless. Lens? Nah. Tripod? Nah. Isn't going to be sharp.

[Noah A]

I like velcro. It lets me snug the darkcloth around the camera when needed, but it's easy to take off and you can choose to use it or not depending on the situation.

I've never owned one of those fancy hood or jacket type things, but I've had students use them during my workshops and I don't really like them, they seemed slow and cumbersome to me. It's a personal preference of course.

I have, in a pinch, used everything from a black t-shirt to a fleece jacket with fine results, but I do rather like the Harrison dark cloth. I think I have the small one, or maybe medium.

[mdarnton]

I carry a handful of small plastic spring clamps. They can hold the cloth in place on the camera, but a couple clipped on the bottom can be weights, or clipped under can close the bottom, or . . . they can be anything you want. :-)

[Alan Gales]

I like velcro. It lets me snug the darkcloth around the camera when needed, but it's easy to take off and you can choose to use it or not depending on the situation.

I've never owned one of those fancy hood or jacket type things, but I've had students use them during my workshops and I don't really like them, they seemed slow and cumbersome to me. It's a personal preference of course.

I have, in a pinch, used everything from a black t-shirt to a fleece jacket with fine results, but I do rather like the Harrison dark cloth. I think I have the small one, or maybe medium.

I agree that they are slower to use but darker underneath. It's a trade off. I have a BlackJacket that I use with my 8x10. I used to use a BTZS with my 4x5. The BlackJacket is the slowest to use but also the darkest underneath. I am in no hurry when shooting 8x10 but someone shooting in fast changing light would feel differently.

[Drew Wiley]

Besides the velcro on the darkcloths, I always keep a couple of ordinary wooden clothespins in my kit. Use em on my darkroom film drying line too.

[Drew Wiley]

Alan, where the hills start leveling off toward the Valley floor inland, I had friends with enormous ranches, two of them in the half million acre category apiece
(now largely broken up). Adjacent to one of them was a corporate ranch that specialized in exotic breeds and hybrids. They had quite a bison herd of their own,
plus big Scottish longhorns, Texas longhorns, Zebus, etc. They specialized in export hybrids, and were early into that game. But the ranch I roamed around quite
a bit on raised rodeo Brahma bulls, specifically bred to be mean. When the winter tule fog would start lifting, and some hazy white thing twenty yards away started staring back at you, and the nearest fence or tree was two miles away, then every little dip or culvert in the ground was quickly sought out. I realize that
Missouri does have some topography; but I used to kid a coworker here who grew up in Nebraska about topographic maps of the plains being drawn with contour lines in millimeters.

[Alan Gales]

[QUOTE=Drew Wiley;1332487]Alan, where the hills start leveling off toward the Valley floor inland, I had friends with enormous ranches, two of them in the half million acre category apiece
(now largely broken up). Adjacent to one of them was a corporate ranch that specialized in exotic breeds and hybrids. They had quite a bison herd of their own,
plus big Scottish longhorns, Texas longhorns, Zebus, etc. They specialized in export hybrids, and were early into that game. But the ranch I roamed around quite
a bit on raised rodeo Brahma bulls, specifically bred to be mean. When the winter tule fog would start lifting, and some hazy white thing twenty yards away started staring back at you, and the nearest fence or tree was two miles away, then every little dip or culvert in the ground was quickly sought out. I realize that
Missouri does have some topography; but I used to kid a coworker here who grew up in Nebraska about topographic maps of the plains being drawn with contour lines in millimeters.[/QUOTE

Drew, the furthest west I have been is Los Vegas for a wedding. I'm not a gambler so I wasn't thrilled about the town. I did like visiting the desert though. I have been in the Smokey Mountains. A lot different then the terrain here! I really enjoyed it. I need to get out to California. My Step-son, his wife and kids live in San Jose. I just dread the plane ride. Vegas for their wedding was tough enough on my fused back. I'd love to see your neighborhood! I bet it's beautiful.

We have a bar and grill near my house that serves Bison burgers. Pretty good!

[John Kasaian]

We have a bar and grill near my house that serves Bison burgers. Pretty good!
Dang! Now I'm hungry.

[Drew Wiley]

Alan - I detest Vegas itself, but there is a lot of darn pretty desert country not far away. They even have a brief ski season atop the Spring Mtns slightly to the
north. I briefly worked from some Nevada mustangers who went from a half million acre ranch in Nevada to a smaller one in Calif. I got thrown quite a few times by half-broken mustangs, but they liked them as working horses because they had so much spirit and endurance. My personal horse was a friendly Appaloosa left at home because he wasn't good for much except being a pet, and specifically a clever, mischievous pet. Haven't been on a horse in a long long time. I'm more my own pack mule. But gosh, this incremental increase in gravity is starting to bug me. It's like sea-level rise and just won't go away. My pack feels heavier every year. But on those two week outings even the darkcloth is switched out to thin ripstop nylon instead of heavier Goretex. I'm starting to count every ounce.

[Fred L]

I use binder clips to keep there focus cloth attached to the camera and prefer velcro on the user side to keep thing tight. I'm using Harrison cloths which have stretch cord/ material sewn into the hem to make things snug after velcro-ing myself inside ;)

My Zone VI cloth has weights which so far hasn't been an issue but I prefer the lighter weight Harrison. If I were to use weights, the curtain weights would be better as mentioned before with the weight spread along a larger surface and I would presume less likely to damage the gg which would be my worry.

[John Kasaian]

We just had a window get cracked from a weighted corner of sun cloth

[joselsgil]

One of my dark cloths, has the velcro sewn in the corners.

My other dark cloths do not. What I like to use with those cloths to keep from going all over the place, are the inexpensive plastic clamps.

I have attached a photo of one of the clamps in service. They are cheap and very effective.