I have decided to shoot 4×5 images. Why? Because it is hard. Didn’t President Kennedy say the difficulty is why Americans would go to the moon? Yes, the comparison is extreme, but I think you get the point.
Inexperience with this medium is overcome by making mistakes, and I made more than a lion’s share today.
It was an overcast day, so I gave it a run. The even light would lessen the challenge of metering. I have read up on the zone system, but don’t pretend to be adept at its use. There was a very light rain, adding to the challenge.
I struggled with the camera in several ways. The most important problem was achieving good focus. The grain of the ground glass overtook things, impeding my ability to evaluate sharpness. Secondly, the front standard was mistakenly not zeroed. I had no way of knowing the issue with the plane of focus. It was invisible to me!
Before I went out I met a nice British woman who was gobsmacked by the camera. I composed an image and let her see it through the ground glass. As I was leaving I met a nice young woman and her companion as they were packing up from surfing. It turns out she shot lots of 4×5 during her time at Rhode Island School of Design. Leaving aside the issues with the Chamonix, meeting these new people made the day worthwhile.
For the time being I have decided to shoot still life at home
POSTSCRIPT
The earlier version of this post, discussing my futility, was shared on my Facebook page. Some commented about how good the images then displayed were. How wrong they were! I do appreciate the effort made to click on and read the post.
I visited my go-to source for shooting advice. On the Film Shooter’s Collective private Facebook page, James Niven (Chamonix user) gave a checklist for making a 4×5 image. James advised having both standards zeroed out to start. Roger Harrison suggested using a 50mm lens as a loupe. Roger uses a 50mm Olympus lens. Both suggested a 10X loupe was too much magnification, and a step-back to 4X or so.
As I think my process through, I did not take bellows extension into account. That led to underexposure, something I had to correct in Lightroom.
