Fujifilm PA-145 Polaroid back centering

[koh303]

Polaroids give the added advantage of being able to see if focusing was correct right on location.

While it would have been interesting to analyze and break down the rest of your post , this little bit is my favorite:
If you are shooting hand held, with a rangefinder, you will have moved quite a bit between loading and unloading the polaroid back, then loading the film holder for the polaroid to be any reference for focusing.
If you are working on a tripod, why not just check the focus on the GG before loading in a film holder? It must be cheaper, faster, and far more useful, if you wanted to confirm the focus before shooting actual film.

If the point is to have giveaways or create "rapport", i am not sure how the focus confirmation comes into play, but i am sure yo have your reasons.

Good luck with your mask.

[Dumb Handsome]

4x5 without a tripod? Now that I can agree is totally silly and scandalous in our present age where digital tech that does handheld infinitely better. It remains doable in a pinch, maybe with flash, but totally is the worst thing for getting the super hi-res we all crave. I suppose Fuji FP3000 is so grainy it doesn't matter.

[StoneNYC]

4x5 without a tripod? Now that I can agree is totally silly and scandalous in our present age where digital tech that does handheld infinitely better. It remains doable in a pinch, maybe with flash, but totally is the worst thing for getting the super hi-res we all crave. I suppose Fuji FP3000 is so grainy it doesn't matter.

??

Have you ever used FP3000B? Definitely not grainy.

You could handhold 8x10 if you wanted to, it depends what you want out of shooting, and the only thing silly or scandalous is this post. Lol.

I don't say that to be mean, I just think you've lost perspective of creating art vs doing commercial work. Sometimes we do something not because it is easy, but BECAUSE it is a challenge, there's a satisfaction in the accomplishment and it isn't about how easy digital is, it's about creating something with your hands.

If we wanted easy, we would all be shooting collages and stitching them in Photoshop and no one would be using LF at all.

[photonsoup]

4x5 without a tripod? Now that I can agree is totally silly and scandalous in our present age where digital tech that does handheld infinitely better. It remains doable in a pinch, maybe with flash, but totally is the worst thing for getting the super hi-res we all crave. I suppose Fuji FP3000 is so grainy it doesn't matter.

I thoroughly enjoy 4x5 handheld with my Crown Graphics and an Aplehause Polaroid 900 conversion. Older people especially like the portraits I give them taken on an old Crown. The younger crowd thinks the Fuji instant stuff is really sick (sick=cool=groovy=neat, I think that's the proper translation).

I am tired of spending so much time at a computer. For me analog photography is about personal enjoyment. I still take lots of digital photos, but it's not as much fun.

To box in your thought process about art and creativity is what is actually silly and scandalous. Try to be a little more open minded and think outside that box.

[Dumb Handsome]

I am tired of spending so much time at a computer. For me analog photography is about personal enjoyment. I still take lots of digital photos, but it's not as much fun.

To box in your thought process about art and creativity is what is actually silly and scandalous. Try to be a little more open minded and think outside that box.

Ha ha, this is really funny. I'm very, very loose shooting 95% of the time, medium and large format have always killed the fluidity of my practice, so the last five years I've been doing most of my work on (good quality) compact 35mm cameras, scanning the film, and more recently, very small digital cameras with some nice resolution (which are as nice as handheld medium format used to be as far as cropping / pulling out a usable image from a big negative, it's really great!). Being able to push mastering way beyond anything I could get in the darkroom, and quickly looking at photos in sequence are some of the better aspects of this approach.

Everyone should be free to do what they want to, but for me, shooting handheld is better covered with digital, what with image stabilization and other tricks. The Technika's anatomical grip does make it really tempting to experiment, though, I just probably won't shoot handheld under 1/250 of a second. The high resolution and shifts make "slowing" down really worth it for specific types of photos, but not the end all.

[koh303]

This has been nailed in, but just for kicks:
the rangefinder is there for handheld use when the GG is not an option.
If you are not shooting hand held, why are you so concerned about a minor aspect of the frame shift in the view finder (which has nothing to do with the actual frame anyways)?
Even in most if your "high quality" cameras you say you use, at best you get a 92% representation of the frame in the view finder...