I’m not sure exactly how to start this thread but after a private messaging conversation with another user, @Ari he suggested I post my experiences with hand held shooting. I hope my experiences are of some benefit to others.

I started with a goal of shooting hand held portraits on 4x5 using something like a converted Polaroid camera. I ended up buying a converted Polaroid 180. It looks like a Chamonix Saber. But uses the full 4x5 frame. And has a Fujinon-NW 125mm lens. I use it with a Godox AD200 open bulb on the extension head, and a small 40cm diameter shoot through brolly (soft directional when indoors) on a pimped Lastolite flashgun grip that sets the light about 50cm above and 20cm to the left of the lens. It’s a half decent light source that seems to balance facial aesthetic with brutal honesty. The cam in the Polaroid seems remarkably well suited to the lens. Shooting on fomapan 200 which I really like, and is cheap as chips, at ~f8 @ 1/30th has treated me reasonably well. The only issue being that this Frankenstein of a camera can only focus to about 2.2m, which on a 125mm means a pretty wide portrait. Which is often great, but not always close enough. So I’ve just received a Wista 45RF. When it arrived the RF wasn’t aligning at infinity when the bed was fully retracted. It was already indicating infinity when the bed was still about 3mm extended. A screw-adjusted cam lever located at the bottom left of the chassis - as you look at the camera from the front, allowed me to correct this pretty quickly. So I’m now ready with a Nikkor-W 135mm to start testing this beast of a point and shoot! If this goes well I’ll buy the Nikkor-W 180mm and see how that works out.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro