danger - beginner question - ignorance at work

[pierods]

Hello,

I am trying to hack my way into LFP.

I talked to the guy that develops my rolls yesterday, and he said that to adjust focus on a LF camera, you need a magnifying lens, and also, to calculate aperture/shutter, you need to keep into account the length the bellows are extended at.

On the other hand, reporters in the 30's used rangefinder LF cameras, (no magnifying lens I suppose), and also I can't fathom a reporter calculating the square root of the lenght of the bellows when photographing a shooting or similar misdeed.

I am thinking about cameras like pacemaker crown graphic, buschman pressman etc.

So, how did they do it? I presume that very exact focus is not paramount for action photos, and you can also get by with the sunny f16 rule, but adjusting for length of bellows?

thanks

piero

[Ash]

Press photographers usually used a flashbulb, so at most distances the image will have been fairly well exposed. The latitude of film is pretty good when under/over exposed.

The lenses on press cameras were usually short as well, which is similar to a normal or wide angle lens, so your depth of field is greater (in comparison to longer lenses) and your bellows compensation you mentioned is negligible.

When doing still life at 300mm, you'll need to compensate, for example.

Any rangefinder 4x5 or 2x3 usually has a cam that gives accurate focusing..


Look for a Speed Graphic, you can use the rangefinder on them, but usually they are well aged, or use the rear glass to focus.

[Ron Marshall]

A loupe (magnifier) is not mandatory, but helps. Some LF cameras are equiped with a rangefinder, and so can be focused while looking through a viewfinder, instead of looking at the ground glass.

Correction of the exposure for bellows extension is only necessary when focussed on objects very close to the camera, such as for a head-and-shoulder portrait. For landscape or street photography it is not a factor.

[gregstidham]

Calculating shutter/aperture is easy. Sunny 16 works very well. After you shoot a film long enough, you get a feel for how it exposes. When I was working as a photographer everyday I didn't really need a light meter. I shot with my Leica M4P and FM2 without a meter all the time. When using a flash, aperture is set based on the power output of the flash in relation to the subject distance and shutter is any you choose depending on how much ambient light you want to include with the flash.

Focus is simple as well. For sports you would preset the focus and wait for the action to come into the preset focus zone. With a small enough aperture setting, depth of field would cover any small focus error in the focus zone. While using flash, an example would be when you are waiting for the perp to walk, you set your focus and wait for the perp to come into the frame and the focus zone. Or move your body and camera closer or further away until you achieve your focus zone.

I would think that bellows factor was never an issue with press cameras. When working in the field there was never a need to extend far enough to matter. At least for most assignments.

[steve simmons]

When doing still life at 300mm, you'll need to compensate, for example.

what the heck does this statement mean? Maybe, maybe not, it depends on such things as the focal length of the lens, the reproduction ratio, the bellows extension, etc., etc. Your answer is much too sweeping and vague.

You should do some additional reading

Using the View Camera, User's Guide to the View Camera and Large Format Nature Photography are books you should look for.

Getting Started in large Format is a free article in the Free Articles section of the View Camera web site


www.viewcamera.com

There are several other articles there as well that might be helpful.

Ask more questions and hopefully you will get some good advice.

steve simmons

[lenser]

Just to a quick note to what's already very accurately said.

You only need to worry about compensation for the bellows when you are doing rather extreme close-ups. We're not talking the average head shot here, but rather approaching macro work.

There is an easy way to calculate this with something like the kit that Calumet sells which involves a square plastic chip that you put in the image area and a scale that you use to measure the image of the chip on the ground glass. It gives the appropriate exposure changes in either the f stop or shutter speed on that scale. (Take the chip out of frame before exposing.)

The is also a download of a similar system somewhere in the archives of this site. You might find it by searching under bellows extension, or close up compensation. Then just print it, laminate it, and you've got your own kit.

As to using a magnifying loupe, it is for absolute surety in fine focusing and is appropriate for still, life, architecture, and portraiture.....definitely not for sports!

Good luck.

Tim

[neil poulsen]

As someone said, compensation isn't that much of a worry, unless one's doing extreme closeups.

But in those cases, Calumet Photo sells this neat little gizmo-thingy that makes compensation calculations easy. Actually, there's no calculation to it. (See link.)

http://www.calumetphoto.com/item/CC9201/

Just put the target in the scene so that it's roughly parallel to the film plane and measure the width of the target on the ground glass with the special ruler that comes with the device. Presto, you know the number of stops for which you need to compensate the exposure.

I have one, and it works great. I've used it with both medium and large format cameras.

[John Kasaian]

You want to experiment with a press camera, eh? Then get yourself a press camera! Yes you can shoot quickly and get great LF negatives too. You can use the sportsfinder, focus at infinity and sunny 16 and have a blast. Check out www.graflex.org and find a copy of Graflex Photography at a thrift shop and you'll be on your way! If any old timey press photographers are still alive in your neck of the woods, bend their ears and you'll get stories that will make your experience even better.
When you decide to mess around with movements, bellows extension and louping the ground glass on a view camera, deal with those issues then---they simply don't (or very rarely) apply to shooting press cameras IMHO.
Have fun!

[lenser]

I'm going to add a very small challenge to what John just wrote. While he's absolutely right that a press camera and view camera are designed for very different functions, the press camera can marginally do double duty in a view camera situation. You just can't expect anywhere near the full range of swings, tilts, rise and fall, and bellows extension or flexibility that a good view camera system will allow.

BUT, you can view and focus on the ground glass with a loupe, you can do do near macro work (especially with about a 90mm lens), you can use a fairly wide range of focal lengths, and many a great product photo was once, and still can be done with one of these critters mounted solidly on a heavy tripod or camera stand.

As Justus DaHinden, an architect from Switzereland once said, "It's not the camera, it's the eye!"

Having said that, a press camera is truly designed to have duty as a portable news or sports camera and before the advent of 35mm systems, no news photographer and many wedding photographers wouldn't work with anything else.

So, if you get one have a ball with it.

[domenico Foschi]

Don't worry for compensation, those are great "little" cameras: your new 35 mm.;)

[climbabout]

As some of the previous posters alluded to - exposure compensation for bellows extension is really only neccesary when doing close up work. Here's a quick and easy way to calculate it. Convert the focal length of the lens you are using into inches - 1"=appox 25mm, so a 210mm lens is approximately 8-1/4". Think of the 8-1/4" as F8. If you have 8-1/4" or less of bellows extended, no compensation is needed. If you have 11"(f11), then 1 stop is needed, if you have 16"(f16) you need to open up 2 stops and so on. This works fairly accurately for any focal length lens and with the f stops printed on the lens already, there's little to remember.
Tim

[Ken Lee]

If you are looking at the groundglass, then the ease of focusing will depend on your eyesight, how dark it gets under your dark cloth, and how bright the image is.

If you are near-sighted, then you might just take off your distance glasses and be good-to-go. If not, you can purchase an inexpensive focusing loupe, or simply get some stronger-than-normal reading glasses, for an affordable sum. I use some cheap reading glasses that I bought at a local pharmacy. If I lose them (or step on them) it's not the end of the world.

It can get hard to focus or see what's going on, when the subject is dark, or when the lens is stopped down, or when your groundglass is poor, or when you are using a lens that is so wide that it shows "hot-spots" on the groundglass.

Most of the time, after focusing with the lens wide open, we stop down the lens a few stops to get best optical performance, and that usually gives enough depth of field to accomodate errors in focusing.

Unlike the big lenses used in ultra-large format, normal lenses (135mm-180mm) for 4x5 have a fair amount of depth of field when stopped down a bit.

[John Kasaian]

I'm going to add a very small challenge to what John just wrote. While he's absolutely right that a press camera and view camera are designed for very different functions, the press camera can marginally do double duty in a view camera situation. You just can't expect anywhere near the full range of swings, tilts, rise and fall, and bellows extension or flexibility that a good view camera system will allow.

BUT, you can view and focus on the ground glass with a loupe, you can do do near macro work (especially with about a 90mm lens), you can use a fairly wide range of focal lengths, and many a great product photo was once, and still can be done with one of these critters mounted solidly on a heavy tripod or camera stand.

As Justus DaHinden, an architect from Switzereland once said, "It's not the camera, it's the eye!"

Having said that, a press camera is truly designed to have duty as a portable news or sports camera and before the advent of 35mm systems, no news photographer and many wedding photographers wouldn't work with anything else.

So, if you get one have a ball with it.

I agree! You can take wonderful landscapes and portraits with a graphic, architecture as well so long as any required movements are minimal, and you can focus on the ground glass too if you desire---and the film isn't going to know the difference between an Ebony or a Speed Graphic!

[Glenn Thoreson]

Press cameras are fun to use. I have a rather large accumulation of them. Don't let technical issues get in your way. Press cameras are not designed to be "technical". For landscape, street shooting and even portraits, they will give you fine results if you do your part. If you have one with an accurately set up rangefinder, so much the better. If not, a focus scale, accurate for the lens in use, is a great help, even if you have to make one up yourself (easy). Ground glass for critical focus. If you use a rangefinder or scale focus, small apertures will take care of minor focus errors. You can move up to more technical gear as you learn, if you want. The biggest thing to remember is it's a camera, just like any other, in that it's simply a box to keep your dark in and a shutter on one end and film on the other. Get yourself one and go have some fun.

[cotdt]

i got rid of the rangefinder on my camera, found i liked using the ground glass better. no need for a magnifying glass either. i try to maximize the DOF by calculating the hyperfocal distance. i keep a calculator in my backpack.

[mdd99]

As some of the previous posters alluded to - exposure compensation for bellows extension is really only neccesary when doing close up work. Here's a quick and easy way to calculate it. Convert the focal length of the lens you are using into inches - 1"=appox 25mm, so a 210mm lens is approximately 8-1/4". Think of the 8-1/4" as F8. If you have 8-1/4" or less of bellows extended, no compensation is needed. If you have 11"(f11), then 1 stop is needed, if you have 16"(f16) you need to open up 2 stops and so on. This works fairly accurately for any focal length lens and with the f stops printed on the lens already, there's little to remember.
Tim

I second Climbabout's technique. It's fast and it works.

[CG]

As some of the previous posters alluded to - exposure compensation for bellows extension is really only neccesary when doing close up work. Here's a quick and easy way to calculate it. Convert the focal length of the lens you are using into inches - 1"=appox 25mm, so a 210mm lens is approximately 8-1/4". Think of the 8-1/4" as F8. If you have 8-1/4" or less of bellows extended, no compensation is needed. If you have 11"(f11), then 1 stop is needed, if you have 16"(f16) you need to open up 2 stops and so on. This works fairly accurately for any focal length lens and with the f stops printed on the lens already, there's little to remember.
Tim

Climbabout is right. And, there is even more freedom, since it doesn't matter what system of units you use, inches, mms, cm, meters...yards or furlongs. If you have a 16 inch lens extended to 22 inches that's a stop. If you have a 16 centmeter lens extended to 22 cm, that's a stop.

You can even make up units - as long as they are consistent within the calculation - say a twenty inch lens extended to forty inches is 2 units of ten inches extended to 4 units of ten inches... Simply put 2 somethings extended to 4 somethings is two stops.

C

[cyrus]

Think of a press camera as a snapshot camera, but bigger. Press photographers used hyperfocal focusing. When it came time to shoot, they just pointed the camera in the general direction of the subject and pressed the shutter release (before that, they used the camera as a weapon to push away the other photographers)

No time to fiddle with apertures and sunny 16 rules and loupes etc. There was no need for compensating for bellows extension either since they really didn't have to extend the bellows too far at all. Certainly, no tripods around either.

With those clunky old cameras, they covered celebrities, riots, wars, whatever. Serious kudos.

[Leonard Evens]

I think others have covered when you need to worry about exposure compensation and different focusing methods. Let me add one comment. Assuming your LF camera doesn't have a mechanism for rangefinder focusing, you have to focus by looking at the ground glass. (This is not fundamentally different from what one did with old fashioned SLRs without autofocus.) You most often focus with the lens wide open and then stop down to get appropriate depth of field while at the same time adjusting the shutter speed appropriately. In many circumstances, since the stopping down increases depth of filed, except in critical situations, just looking at the image on the ground glass without optical aids suffices. This is particularly true if you are young and can get your eye close to the ground glass. But in critical situations or if you are older and can't see well that close up, you will need a magnifier. Of course the higher the quality of the magnifier or loupe the easier it will be to focus, but even andinexpensive 4 X magnifier will help considerably.

It is interesting to note that while near vision deteriorates universally with age, starting at about 40, people with myopia can solve the problem simply by taking off their glasses. For example, in my case, I was so myopic that the natural place for my eye to focus without glasses was within inches of the ground glass. I often read that way and I avoided getting bifocals until I was in my middle fifties. When I had cataract surgery in my late 60s, my ophthalmologist was able to effectively eliminate the myopia by choice of the lenses she implanted. I had great distance vision without glasses but now couldn't see anything clearly that was closer than two or three feet. So I started using a loupe. Before my cataract surgery, in order to use a loupe I needed to keep my glasses on. I also had my optician make me some special reading glasses which allowed me to view the ground glass from about 7 inches. With that and some tricks of focusing, I am almost always able to focus without a loupe.

You would be well advised to study up on large format photography. The one by Steve Simmons, Using the View Camera, is a very good place to start. The large format web page with this forum, www.lfphoto.info, also has a lot of useful information, including a detailed discussion of how to focus. See in particular the near-far point method.

[panchro-press]

Someone once said that the key to good press photography is, ' f8 and be there!'.

[pierods]

Thank you all so much for the tons of info.

piero