Sascha Welter
20-Nov-2009, 07:07
I'm almost ready to patent my new invention: A camera for doing combined Large Format and Pinhole photos, in one single exposure!
Here is an example shot, with a superb use of the same theme (trees and twigs) for both techniques:
http://betabug.ch/ouzo/water/arca/street_with_lightleak_small.jpg
So... yesterday evening I took an LED head lamp to my old Arca-Swiss with the leather bellows and found not one, but two very, very tiny holes in two different folds of the bellows.
I can only recommend the old "lamp into camera in the dark" trick to everyone suspecting or looking for a light leak. It took quite a while to find the holes and I was ready to give up a couple of times. Had to repeat the test with the light in different positions. In the end I removed the bellow from the camera, held the lamp inside it and rotated the bellows, at the same time stretching and twitching them.
Not all pictures had shown light coming in, pictures taken when the camera was in the shade or at night were mostly unaffected. Other times a twist on the bellows seems to have closed the holes, so pictures were ok. Sometimes one shot in a series was ruined, the others ok. One picture taken at sunset was almost totally overexposed. I hope I've nailed the cause now... knocking on wood here.
Here is an example shot, with a superb use of the same theme (trees and twigs) for both techniques:
http://betabug.ch/ouzo/water/arca/street_with_lightleak_small.jpg
So... yesterday evening I took an LED head lamp to my old Arca-Swiss with the leather bellows and found not one, but two very, very tiny holes in two different folds of the bellows.
I can only recommend the old "lamp into camera in the dark" trick to everyone suspecting or looking for a light leak. It took quite a while to find the holes and I was ready to give up a couple of times. Had to repeat the test with the light in different positions. In the end I removed the bellow from the camera, held the lamp inside it and rotated the bellows, at the same time stretching and twitching them.
Not all pictures had shown light coming in, pictures taken when the camera was in the shade or at night were mostly unaffected. Other times a twist on the bellows seems to have closed the holes, so pictures were ok. Sometimes one shot in a series was ruined, the others ok. One picture taken at sunset was almost totally overexposed. I hope I've nailed the cause now... knocking on wood here.