lemastre

Mr. Dixon, do you use your Paterson tanks, minus center posts, in total darkness?

If not, some light will enter along with new chemicals and cause some fogging.

My first shots were with a Pocket Kodak, Series II, that my mother acquired in

1922 or so. It takes 116 film, and if I had some, would doubtless do fine, since the

shutter works as it did 80 years ago. A slider in the back opens to allow writing

on the film by pressing a metal stylus on the backing paper. For some reason,

none of the pictures from this camera had any such writing on them.

The Medalist I see on eBay appears to be capable of using roll film as it stands.

At least the photos show no cut-film back in place. Of course, it may not be the

camera you're considering. At any rate, I'd pull off any auxiliary back and use the

camera as it was built. Respooling 120 onto 620 spools is no trick, especially if

you have a 120 camera in which to make the first transfer of the 120 film onto a

second 120 spool to get the untaped end on the outside for spooling onto the 620

spool.

I, too, suggest D-76 1:1, having used it with Plus-X for 35 years. I do think EI 80 is a

bit low, but then your meter may read different from mine. I used EI 100 for a

long time, but recently bumped up to EI 125. No difference in negs, but shadows

can go a bit empty if I underexpose a tad, whereas with EI 100 I apparently had a

little margin to compensate for that. If you have a whole lot of rolls to shoot, I

suggest acquiring a 220 back for your Hasselblad. This will cut your

film-processing time in half.

Not to throw water on your candles, but it seems to me that using candles to light

a possibly complicated process is needlessly risky. I trust you have plenty of

incandescent light or a lot of candles available if medical need arises. Use EI 1600

film and a tripod and you should be okay. Set up a test scene and meter it � you

might be able to get by with slightly slower film, but I doubt it.

You might find some neutral-density filter material that cuts off a

tenth of a stop. However, an exposure change that slight makes

virtually no visible difference in the density of a properly exposed

image. When I shoot paintings, I consider the lighting flat

enough when it varies by a tenth across the piece, because the

client and I won't see any variation.

I'd not reduce development time more than 25% for D-76 1:1.

However, that should give you easily printable negatives,

depending on how contrasty they are. I often inadvertently

overexpose my Tri-X a stop, i.e., 200 instead of 400, and my

usual processing works fine (8.5 minutes in D-76 1:1 @ 70 F).

I'd move the piece outside and shoot it in the shade and in the

sun. If you really want to shoot with artificial light, go to the library

or a good camera shop and find books on the subject of

photographing art objects. A large umbrella or soft box is my

suggestion for the first light unit to acquire. You can use

incandescent or strobe with it. Filtering requires some

experimenting to perfect.

I thought that only mirrors were silvered and that prisms used

internal reflection to bend the light.

Consider how close you work for most head shots, and depth of

field seems less likely to produce a sharp background, unless

it's very close to the subject. I find that at f/11, when the eyes are

sharp, the hair over the ears is just starting to go soft. I'm about

four feet from the subject using a 135mm lens on a 6x6 camera.

You have what I'd consider about the right amount of output for

head shots. With a hairlight, a background light, and a rimlight

or two plugged in, your key should call for about f/8 to f/16. I find

these stops give plenty of depth for head shots. The smaller

apertures pose no problem for me, since the only thing in the

shot is the person and a limbo background. Hanging a layer of

silk over the softlight would be the easiest way to reduce output.

I know of no dummy loads to plug into your system, although a

big resistor might work.. I wouldn't try this without consulting an

electrical engineer, though.

On my screens the split prisms exist only in the tiny circle in the

center of the focusing screen. Their small size and their

tendency to black out make them almost useless for focusing.

The screens work fine otherwise and offer enough ground glass

to permit focusing accurately. You learn to ignore the prism

area.

A big revamp of Hasselblad would probably render some gear

obsolete, which might alienate Hasselblad's big base of

longtime users and enourage them to look at other lines of gear.

Leica may be in the same mode. A certain tradition attaches to

some things the new user may find distracting.

The key thing is to file the negs in proper sequence and keep

them that way. No scheme works unless you stick with it.

You have no big problem with your processing. You've

presented us with a fairly ordinary, mediocre snapshot to start

with � like we all make much of the time. The lighting is flat, and

the camera may have moved a bit. So we see a slightly fuzzy,

low-contrast scene. The film may be a bit underdeveloped, but

then maybe you need a harder paper. Grain is usually more

noticeable in a shot like this than in sharp ones, especially when

you blow it up a lot. I doubt that your processing is much at fault.

I found that the agitators need to be twirled a lot to provide the

same agitation as a couple of inversions. I much prefer

inversion, although the agitators will work once you figure out

how much twirling they require to provide uniform development.

I have no knowledge of Lubitel cameras, but the essential thing

with any twin-lens is that the the images on the film and the

viewing screen be in focus at the same time. I've been able to

adjust discrepancies in Mamiya C330 lenses by placing a

ground glass in the back of the camera and adding shims to one

lens until the images on the glass and in the viewing screen

matched focus. If your Lubitel lenses are independently

adjustable, you can do the same sort of thing. A piece of drafting

medium can stand in for a ground glass at the film plane. I used

a high-contrast, flat test pattern �� a newspape �� brightly

lighted. I sharpened the focus on one lens and shimmed the

other one till it matched. You might want to work outdoors and

set the focuses at infinity to ensure infinity focus is sharp.

I notice that one person suggested putting the reel on the center

post before loading it with film. I find it's easier to load the reel

before slipping it onto the post. Also, the idea of putting your

tools on a sheet of paper is good, but putting them in an 8x10 or

11x14 tray prevents your knocking them off the table. And if you

don't fill the tank with loaded reels, stack empty reels on the post

till the tank is full. Or put a rubber band on the post to keep the

loaded reels from sliding around when the tank is inverted.

I know nothing of the specific items you have, but my philosophy

is to find the screws and start taking things apart. If someone

put the parts together at the factory, I can do it, too. I'm wrong

only about half the time. When you work on flashes, be sure the

capacitors are discharged first.

First, reduce or eliminate those blurry shots by using a tripod. I've no idea what

meter you're using, although you write as though it's a reflected-light meter. I

assume it's the one in the camera. If you move in so that it's reading the

brightest facial areas, you need to about halve your film-speed setting. This is

because meters try to give a middle grey value to whatever they see, and

caucasion skin should be about one stop denser than that on the negative.

This means giving it more exposure. I have much more experience metering

with a hand-held incident meter. This usually works best if the dome is pointed

at the camera from the position of the subject's face, assuming you're shooting

a person. This way, the dome receives the same light as the subject.

Whatever gear and technique you use, be consistent and your results will tend

to be consistent. If they are consistently under- or overexposed, change your

technique or your film speed, etc.

Your negative is square, but your prints will probably be 8x10 or

some other size of like proportions. I have an 8-to-10 proportion

mask in my viewfinder for convenience in framing, and almost

never compose for the square format. Pose your subjects so

they're comfortable and let the relationship between them reveal

itself.

I'm not aware that the C series Mamiyas crank like Rolleiflexes.

That is, one turn forward and one turn backward. I think C

cameras crank only forward. At least that's how my C330 works.

Dig the old foam out with toothpicks or whatever tools it takes.

Pick up any remaining crumbs with tape. The grooves in the

camera back can then be lined with dark knitting yarn held in

place with a few dots of glue. You shouldn't need to pay anyone

to do this for you -- certainly not $100. Velcro is that

hook-and-loop fabric that's used on closures on all sorts of

luggage, sports shoes, etc. It can be bought in rolls or strips with

adhesive backing, which makes it easy to stick to your camera

back in the area where the large piece of foam was.

The C330 negative contains an appreciable amount of image

more than the viewing screen shows. Not as much as you

suggest, though. However, the parallax bar is right on the actual

top of the image, if the knob on the side of the camera is set to

match your lens. So if the bar cuts off some of your subject's

hair, you can count on the top of neg doing the same. I've never

calculated the actual percent the viewfinder covers.