Level help please!!!

[ellwilson]

Hello,

I have a toyo 45II field camera,

I have a spirit level that I have bought from my local home depot.

Where is the best place on the camera to level it from?

On the top section, on the horse shoe mount, in front of the lens??

Thanks

Hello,

I have a toyo 45II field camera,

I have a spirit level that I have bought from my local home depot.

Where is the best place on the camera to level it from?

On the top section, on the horse shoe mount, in front of the lens??

Thanks

[Tom Perkins]

You may want to start with the bed, either underneath or along the rails, where ever you can find a flat area to rest the level. It should be leveled side to side and front to back. You will also want to check the vertical on the rear standard and perhaps the front standard. The rear is more critical than the front, and it can be difficult, and not entirely necessary, to get the front exactly parallel with the rear. After some time, you will find out how your camera trues up and it will be easier for you to tell what you have to do.

[Gem Singer]

Level the back of the camera horizontally and vertically. The front standard has detents that help keep it parallel to the back.

What is a "horse shoe" mount?

[Archphoto]

With the Maste Techika I allways had the level in the hot-shoe mount.
For the new Shen Hao I need to mount one, should have the parts in stock.

Peter

[Rick Floyd]

The rear standard or the horse shoe mount gets my vote. If you use swings and tilts often just be sure you camera is back to neutral before reading the bubble. I have two 4x5's, one field and one studio rail. The studio camera has a bubble on the front standard and my field camera has it on the back. I prefer the back because it's faster to check as I actively level the camera with a quick glance to the top of the rear standard bubble. Hope this helps.

RF

[ljsegil]

Ok, here's the stupid question. When I set the camera at a comfortable height for viewing the ground glass, I am unable to see high enough to view the spirit levels, which sit on top of the rear standard of my camera (Canham 8x10 Woody, much to my continued delight). Or should I be setting the camera lower and be a bit crouched while viewing the GG (gets pretty uncomfortable if the setup is challenging and takes a little time, which describes most setups for me). Is leveling of the tripod head (those levels I can easily see, vertically challenged as I may be) sufficient if the camera settings are neutral? Replies suggesting that I learn how to use my camera better and more quickly may be valid though not helpful, as I'm always trying to do that every time I take the camera out. So maybe I'm both vertically challenged and a slow learner, but I hope not hopelessly so.
LJS

[Archphoto]

I was refering to a Hama double level.
The left to right part can be seen from the rear, and the front to back part from the side.
In that way you can have your GG at a comfortable height.

The Hama can be slid into the hotshoe of your camera.
I even use it when taking pictures with my DSLR.

(My Sinar P2 4x5/8x10 has levels build into it.

And yes, your rear standard is the most critical one, esp when you want to take pic's from architecture.

Peter

[Gem Singer]

I'm 5 foot six and also shoot with an 8X0 Canham Traditional.

The camera has bubble levels mounted on both ends of the carrying handle. Difficult to see when the camera is mounted high up on the tripod.

I carry a small clear acrylic cube-type spirit level in my kit. Use it when I can't see the levels on the camera.

[drew.saunders]

Ok, here's the stupid question. When I set the camera at a comfortable height for viewing the ground glass, I am unable to see high enough to view the spirit levels, which sit on top of the rear standard of my camera (Canham 8x10 Woody, much to my continued delight).
LJS

You could probably use a small mirror. Something like this: http://www.ebonycamera.com/articles/special_offer.html
You could save quite a few bucks (pounds, euros, etc.) by getting one from the cosmetics section of your local store.

[Steve Hamley]

Ok, here's the stupid question. When I set the camera at a comfortable height for viewing the ground glass, I am unable to see high enough to view the spirit levels, which sit on top of the rear standard of my camera (Canham 8x10 Woody, much to my continued delight). Or should I be setting the camera lower and be a bit crouched while viewing the GG (gets pretty uncomfortable if the setup is challenging and takes a little time, which describes most setups for me). Is leveling of the tripod head (those levels I can easily see, vertically challenged as I may be) sufficient if the camera settings are neutral? Replies suggesting that I learn how to use my camera better and more quickly may be valid though not helpful, as I'm always trying to do that every time I take the camera out. So maybe I'm both vertically challenged and a slow learner, but I hope not hopelessly so.
LJS

Larry,

I'm not sure how helpful this will be but it's something I've considered. Why not order one of the rear bubble/mirror assemblies used on Ebony cameras? I've been thinking about retrofitting one to a RW45. My SV45U and 8x10 have them, and they do solve the problem. One of my physics professors always said "Look for the elegant solution".

Cheers, Steve

[Don Wilkes]

I use a small mirror on an extendable rod (much like a car aerial), which I think I found quite cheap at a tool supply place. It collapses down to about 4 inches, so stows easily in the bag. Quite useful (if a bit awkward) for setting aperture and shutter speed, too, when the camera's a bit high for me to see the top of the shutter.

As for the level, I carry one of the shoe-mount cubic ones, although I use it less now. I got a good Manfrotto tripod a while back, with levels built into the yoke and the head, so I don't need the shoe-mount one except when I have to do something odd, like extreme rise via tilting the bed up, and correcting the standards to level.

Cheers,
Don Wilkes

[Leonard Evens]

You should spend some time thinking about what you might do with a level.

Usually `leveling the camera' means making sure the back is plumb (vertical) and that the top of the frame is horizontal. To accomplish the first thing, you should place alevel against your ground glass or any surface on the back which is parallel to the ground glass. For this you need something which has a bubble which is centered when the surface is vertical. A simple torpedo level would work, but I use levels I found at B&H Photo, e.g.,
www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/431884-REG/Acratech_6001_Double_Axis_Spirit_Level.htm
(They sell a variety of such levels, which are designed to fit in a hot shoe, but I use them without that.) You can also use such a level to check if the top of the rear standard is level.

I don't know what kind of level you got at Home Depot, but a simple bubble level isn't much use since you can only check to see if a horizontal surface is level. A standard level which has cells pointing in two perpendicular directions may be hard to use to check the ground glass simply because it is too big.

When taking a picture of a building facade, you usually want the lens axis perpendicular to the facade, so that rectangles parallel to the film plane are imaged as rectangles. You can't use a level to do that, but you can usually do it well enough by using grid lines on the gg, provided the back is level from side to side.

Finally, you can use a level to check if the standards are parallel. If the back is vertical---as above, I've found that the easiest way to check just vertical paralism is by putting a torpedo level vertically across the lens mount rim. Checking side to side parallism is harder. What I do is to point the camera downward using the tripod so the rail is plumb. I then make sure the back is level in all directions. Finally I check if the frront is also level in all directions. That checks horizontal as well as vertical parallism when the camera is back in normal position.

[mandoman7]

I was shooting on a hillside trying to deal with some fast moving clouds yesterday and was reminded of the importance of working simply for speed. Over and over the perfect composition kept slipping away while I was fiddling with one thing or another; couldn't find the compendium shade, etc.. I can't imagine having to carry a mirror in addition to all of the other stuff.
I used to carry a hand level, but it would get separated from the camera bag at the wrong time fairly often. For those reasons, I make sure I have a level that's viewable under the dark cloth, even if it means drilling a hole in a camera. My mind is already fried with the list of things to remember in that bag.

[ki6mf]

I get a small pocket level and do a final check on all standards once they are in place!