steven_seitz

Dave: it is not possible to not take up a triple-dog-dare. I know

from muth ethperienth.

You might try the Chesapeake/Delaware Bay areas as well. Some great

sunrises and sunsets over lighthouses, marsh reeds etc.: Cape

Henlopen State Park in Delaware; Kent Island area near the Bay

Bridge. There are a number of wildlife refuges on the Eastern Shore

of Maryland and Deleware that are within a 3 hour drive: Bombay Hook

National Wildlife Refuge north of Dover; Prime Hook National Wildlife

Refuse between Rehoboth Beach and Dover.

Thanks for the advice especially about the tornados and hailstorms -

LBJ was such a font of wisdom!

 

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Any advice on state/nationalparks or other public locations in the

Houston-Austin area for shooting?

I will be travelling to the Houston-Austin TX area this spring and would like to spend a couple of days with the spring wildflowers. I have some flexibility in travel dates, so I would like to know both the best times and locations in TX for shooting the flowers. Any suggetions? Thanks.

This forum has been a tremendous help to me and I don't want to see

it die either. Yahoo is in the dark ages when it comes to usability,

and so are most other similar options as far as I can tell. This

software is terrific! Seems to me the best option would be to go with

photo.net unless one of the other offers appears to be solid for the

long run. The Web is very unpredictable on its best day re: providers

and servers staying in place, but we should find as reliable a home

as possible.I would not hesitate to pay a fee for the service if need

be. For something of this high quality we should be willing to pay to

find a solid and reliable home we can depend on. Many of the posts

above have talked about the quality as the reason they use the forum -

anything good costs money and takes time and effort.

I would be interested in knowing how Adam modified the HP Photosmart

to accept 4x5 tranies.

 

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Thanks

Simple question (I think). I have an original 4x5 #500 Polaroid film back in good working order (its nice to have something solid made out of metal). I have begun using type 55 positive/negative film, and of course in the field it is difficult to process the negative with the sodium sulfite solution and fix. It is also very cumbersom to try to hold the negs in water until I get home to process them.

 

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I notice on my 500 back a metal latch at the bottom of the back and I am wondering if this will release the film packet so I can remove it without processing, then I could put it back in after I am home and processing normally. If I obviously could just try it to find out, but didn't want to waste a sheet of film if someone out there already knew the answer.

 

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Has anyone tried this?

I particularly like the idea of more information on digital

processing of LF images including transparency scanning, equipment,

techniques, camera backs etc.

Thanks for the great advice - I'm taking my 4x5 on vacation next week

with both Velvia and Provia F - I'll let you know the results.

This is a couple hours after my last message - turns out someone had

added a fresnel lens in front of the ground glass. Took it out, and

also made some adjustments to the holder - the bail lever was

preventing the holder from seating completly. Took two shots - great

focus!

 

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Thanks so much for your help. Great discussion.

Thanks for the great suggestions - I wondered about the ground glass

possibility but didn't check it out. It does have a fresnel screen so

someone may have put it in backwards - I'll check it out today and let

you know. If it is a no-go, I check the registration etc. It is very

dishearten to come out with a first batch that is lower quality after

all that effort and anticipation. Never-the-less, undaunted he moves

on (lots of windmills on the horizon!)

I have just lucked?? onto a Burke and James Orbit monorail 4x5 as a first stab at LF work and have run into a focusing/resolution problem. I have only used the camera once, but am stumped as to how to address this problem so I can move ahead with learning to make it a practical part of my amateur work.

 

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This is an all-metal camera (which I understand to be rare for B&J cameras) and is likely a mid-60's model. I got it along with a Polaroid 500 back in decent shape - in fact the whole camera is in fairly good condition. It has a Synchro Compur shutter (which sticks a lot at slow speeds, and is a bit spotty at higher speeds - needs cleaning and adjustment)with a Schneider Kreuznach Xenar 150 mm, f4.5 lens which seems flawless.

 

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The problem: poor focus using the polaroid back with 100 iso B&W film, which is the only film I've tried so far. Focus is extremely soft below f16 and at 4.5 is unusable. At f22 and f32 it is decent but not great - at least not as great as I'm led to believe LF should be or as good as I've seen published.

 

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My perplexity comes from the fact that on the ground glass, at any aperture, focus is excellent, using an 8x loupe, but when I put in the polaroid back and shoot I get very poor results. I finally noticed that the ground glass frame doesn't seat well (maybe as much as 1/16th in. off the camera body) and you have to futz-around with it to get it close to firmly seated. Even then, one corner is 1/32 or so off the camera. Correcting this seems to have helped some, but still at open apertures very fuzzy.

 

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Why would it focus correctly on the glass and not on the film? Could the Polaroid back not be suited to the B&J body? Am I putting the film packet in wrong? Am I focusing wrong? Am I expecting too much? Is the Polaroid film simply very grainy even at 100 iso?

 

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I would like to be able to do outdoor portraits (I normally shoot landscapes etc.), but having to use only the higher apertures means I can't fuzz-out the backgrounds enough to get a good head shot. It also means if I'm shooting close foliage and there is a breeze I get blurring because I have to shoot at such slow speeds for the high aperture.

 

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Am I doing something wrong, overlooking something, or is there a mechanical problem?

 

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Help!!