A camera is nothing but a light tight box with a lens on one side and a method of recording the image opposite the lens. You could stand inside a camera a trace out the image and color it with pigments by hand. A camera can be made thinner than a pack of playing card thanks to modern technology and our ability to handle individual photons and electrons. A camera can be a thing of wonder. A black box full of possibilities made all the better by the waiting time between image making and image viewing.
Our life styles demand so much of us. More productivity. Do more with less. Competition: Who can get to the finish line first.
“I” don’t want to reach the finish line for as long as possible.
I want to enjoy the trip and not race to the end.
I want to see and remember.
Life is an experience and not something to be consumed.
So when looking for something to do, just for me, I chose to return to large format photography.
I once owned a small collection of Graphic-Graflex equipment. Speed Graphics in both 2X3 and 4X5 formats. A 4X5 Graflex Single Lens Reflex camera. Flash bulb holders and cables and electric remote releases. Film holders. Film holders and roll film backs for the 2X3. A Polaroid 4X5 back. A Burke and James 8X10 field style view camera for portraits and buildings, maybe they are both the same.
This time around I chose a Burke and James 4X5 press camera. It has considerable front standard rise and using the drop bed and with some fiddling fall. A little front shift from side to side. I can tilt the front standard if I need to and move the plane of focus. If I ever “need” more I’ll deal with that when the occasion arises. Rare is the occasion in the field where you need to twist your view camera into a pretzel. The B&J has a revolving back for a quick change from portrait to landscape. I need to add a bubble level.
The best lens to own is the one in your hand. Learn its strengths and its weaknesses. Use the strengths and work around the weakness. My B&J came with a Steinheil Munchen Culminar f:4.5 f=135mm VL lens mounted in a Synchro Compur shutter with M and X flash synchronization using the PC socket. Shutter speeds are 1, 1/2, 1/5, 1/10, 1/25, 1/50, 1/100, 1/250 and 1/500 seconds. The aperture openings, the “f:” stops are 4.5, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22, and 32.
This Weston Universal dates from 1938, about the same year as my camera, so the non-standard by today’s standards shutter speeds can be found with a little searching on circular exposure computer.
The C. A. Steinheil Söhne Optical and Astronomical Works was a German optical company based in Munich (München), Bavaria and my Culminar is a 4-element Tessar* design lens of four elements in 3 groups for use on a camera. At 135mm by my taste it’s a wide(r) angle lens but Press type cameras tend to come with wide angle lenses both for the expected applications and so that you can close the camera up when not in use. So far testing shows straight lines. There was some out of focus apparent, something that turned out to be due to my clumsy finger being in the way, so I bought a cable release for the shutter.
*The Tessar is a photographic lens design conceived by the German physicist Paul Rudolph in 1902 while he worked at the Zeiss optical company and patented by Zeiss in Germany; the lens type is usually known as the Zeiss Tessar