Apologies for beginning my first post with some very newbie questions and mistakes - I hope I can learn something useful and return the favor in the future. I should also add that I've googled and searched the forum, but I haven't found any definitive answer to my question - I hope you can excuse my ignorance, if I've missed some obvious search-terms.
I've been interested in large format for a while, and decided to try my hand at (what I thought) was an 'easy' introduction by getting a camera with helicoid focussing, very few movements, and fitting a 6x9 film-back to the 4x5 back: a Cambo Wide 750.
My assumption with the helicoid focussing, was that it would allow for hyperfocal focussing for landscapes in a similar way to 35mm - that is, by aligning the infinity marker with the correct f-stop marker (ie: if shooting at ƒ/22, aligning infinity with 22 on the lens, and stopping down to shoot without trying to check focus for the stopped-down, and obviously very dark, ground-glass image).
Luckily I only exposed a few rolls of 120 film, because when I scanned these I could see that my assumption was completely wrong - the images are only really sharp for the first 3 or 4 meters in front of the camera, and then successively more blurred to the horizon.
Now I guess a few experienced photographers are rolling their eyes - but I'd love to learn how to do this with large-format. Have I simply made totally wrong assumptions? How should one use the scales on a large-format camera? Or is it possible (unlikely I guess) that there's some fault with the lens calibration?
With large-format, do I need front tilt to get everything in focus (from say 5 meters to the horizon)? Is such an aim even possible when working with negatives of this size?
As an additional question, I think my ground glass is very dim and unsharp compared to examples I've seen on youtube videos. Where should I look for the brightest possible GG, especially recommendations from Europe?
Many thanks for help!
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