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I

Ian Bell

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After many years of 35mm film photograhy with a bit of medium format and a dabble with digital, I have now put my toe in the deep water with this
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I have been collecting bits and pieces towards this for some time, such as Minolta spot meter, film backs as well as a Fuji Quickload back and films. Now I have the camera, the last piece in the puzzle is the lens. To get me started I am looking for something in the 150/180m standard range. Thinking of teaming that with a 90 ish for landscapes, as the camera has had bag bellows fitted by the previous owner to make using wide angle lenses a little easier
 
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s-l1600.jpg This is the "this" referred to in the initial post when the attachment went pete tong!
 
Welcome Ian, I have the same camera and can use a 75mm lens with normal bellows by moving the lens standard back, its a very versatile camera I hope you have lots of fun with it and of course some great photos.
Richard
 
Hiya Ian and welcome. I use the same and really pleased with it.
Cheers
Diz
 
Welcome. You will find that it's not deep water; it's a warm and comforting bath.
 
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David M said:
Welcome. You will find that it's not deep water; it's a warm and comforting bath.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that thought, David; although about 8 people a year in the UK drown in baths ! The danger seems to be thinking too much about a new thing rather than just getting on and trying it. It is, after all, a relatively simple process.
 
At least they drowned in comfort.
"Relatively simple" eh? Oh dearie, dearie me... You will find that there are people out there who delight in making it very complicated indeed. I've found that the most difficult thing to master is pointing the camera in the right direction. After that, it's turtles all the way down.
 
Welcome to the forum Ian. The hardest thing I found with large format was developing the negatives...

I'm not sure what the "turtle" reference means: Ninja turtles or a reference to what turtles are famous for - snapping.
 
Stephen Batey said:
Welcome to the forum Ian. The hardest thing I found with large format was developing the negatives...

I'm not sure what the "turtle" reference means: Ninja turtles or a reference to what turtles are famous for - snapping.
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Thank you Stephen. Think snapping is what was meant. If not..........

As to developing, my spiritual guide in this adventure is Roger Hicks via his book "Medium & Large Format Photography". He uses an old Paterson Orbital processor for his 4x5, 5x7 or even 10x8 developing ( mainly B&W I think) Since it looks a reasonable bet, I picked one up off of Ebay so will give that a try. Can't see any reason it shouldn't work. I used to process my own 35mm E6 slides with a fairly basic set up in the kitchen a few years ago! This might be a bit easier and certainly less temperature sensitive.
 
The only problem I can see with the Paterson method is that it will involve continuous agitation. This won't be a problem in terms of increased grain size, but it will preclude the effective use of acutance developers.

There are at least two other daylight tank options: the Mod54 insert for a Paterson tank and the SP455 tank. I use the now discontinued (because the moulds wore out) CombiPlan tanks.
 
Discworld stands on the back of four elephants, who stand on the back of a giant turtle. The answer to the question of what supports the turtle was that it's turtles all the way down. I'd intended to suggest there's nothing fundamentally difficult about LF photography, just one (fairly simple) process after another.
But I hadn't spotted the link to snapping. Thank you. My apologies for being obscure.
Don't use continuous agitation with the Paterson Orbital tray. You will get swoosh marks in the corners. It was designed for processes that go to completion where any irregularities are evened out as the process comes to an end. We do not develop negatives to finality.
You will need rather more developer than Paterson tells to use you for paper, so that all the films is submerged. Many people scratch or stick blobs of Araldite to the base to ensure clearing of the base of the film. This is not a problem when developing paper. Some people cut off the fins, in case the film floats up and is damaged on them.
The way to agitate is to put the tray on a flat surface and, after the dev is poured in, to lift one corner or edge quite gently, put it down and then lift the opposite one. You may then do the same thing with the unused corners or edges. After 30 seconds or a minute, or whatever your method prescribes, do the same again, rather as you would when developing roll film in tanks and using inversion. You may need to adjust your times a little, but you'd expect this anyway when using a new device. I don't see how any of this would preclude any particular developer.
I use Combiplan. They appear on eBay from time to time and they were never cheap. If you do find one, take great care of the little orange top clips.
 
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