Okay story time. I shot this negative almost
two years ago. I bought an 8x20 camera as "working" but it turns out the holder it came with wasn't even close to fitting the back properly, plus the camera had numerous other issues. Sent the back/holder to Ritter to get refitted and also bought a new S&S holder. Back came back and everything seemed okay after doing some other work on the camera...shot one successful negative, but it was in a studio environment. I decided to take out the camera to a special spot down in Florida which is a hard slog to get to - only accessible by canoe but it's a magical place. Anyway, I shot 4 negatives out there in the sweltering heat, carried the 8x20 for miles, whew it was hard work. Came home, developed the first negative, and it was completely fogged. Turns out the back did not mate to the camera well and it was leaking light all around the edge. I didn't notice in the studio because it was too dark to fog it inside. So I packed the camera up and just put it away I was so frustrated, after spending so much money on the thing.
Fast-forward to last night. Finally decided to dig the camera out. I had repaired the leak previously with strips of the fuzzy side of Velcro, essentially making a light trap on the back/camera joint. I was about to just toss the 3 negatives I never developed but I decided hey, why not go ahead and develop them, maybe something is usable. First one - nope, fogged. Second one - less fogged, but still garbage. Third one - and I knew what image it was because I remembered there was one vertical panorama that I was really excited about...and somehow it escaped fogging! I think it was a short exposure and the camera was in deep shade from bushes and trees.
This shot took me like an hour to setup, precariously on the edge of a steep hill in some bushes to get the right angle while excluding some other trees in the shot, with my huge camera sitting sideways on my tripod. I think I used my Nikkor 450mm f/9, but it might've been the G-Claron 300mm f/9, can't remember for sure. Efke 100 film dev'd in HC-110 dil. H for 13 minutes:
Click on the image to see a nice big version.
Bookmarks