Shooting on Large Format Cameras & My Experience

Shooting on Large Format Cameras

Shooting on large format cameras isn't the easiest thing to ever be done.
There's always so much you need to remember to do, or your whole image could be ruined. My  first experience luckily turned out well.

First, you must obviously set up the camera;

1. open tripod and make everything level
2. Screw in the camera holder to the tripod base plate and click it in place
3. add the plastic protectors on to the camera holder
4. Place the camera on the camera holder and tighten until it can't go further
5. Get your lens board; remove the rear lens cap and place the board into the camera by using the tabs to unlock and relock the board into place.
6. remove the front lens cap
7. screw in the cable release at the bottom of the lens

Now that's set up, you can get ready to shoot;

1. Find your subject (probably should do this before you set the camera up)
2. ensure the back is vertical; remember the back controls perspective
3. compose your image. You can now change the rear standard if you desire, to change the perspective. You'll want to do this under the dark cloth with the preview button open so you can see what you're doing!
4. Find your focus - this should be done with your aperture wide open. A loupe can help ensure a more precise focus.
5. Now once it's focused, apply any movements that you may desire. 
6. Stop down until everything is in focus under the dark cloth. This allows you to be able to have more in focus. Your light meter can help you stop down if you don't know how the aperture and exposure time correlate.
7. Double check your f-stop
8. Take an incident light meter reading from a neutral area
9. Check your shutter speed against your chosen aperture on your light meter
10. Apply bellows factor and reciprocity
11. Close the preview button
12. Cock the shutter
13. Test the shutter with the cable release
14. recock the shutter
15. insert your film
16. take out the dark slide
17. take your image
18. close the dark slide, this way the other way round so you know that that side has been exposed.

And done!

My Experience

All of this is easily said, written, typed etc than done. My experience was tough, especially as I have never done this before, but it worked out okay!
I chose to shoot a war monument in a park, so i'd have a clear focal point and an interesting background with lots of texture, so if the images come out I can really see how well this camera performs.

I did struggle with the focusing a little bit, but the use of a loupe really helped, and I found it much easier than using a medium format hasselblad. I wasn't that thrown by the projected image being upside down, and got used to it quickly. I focussed on the tip of the statue, however as I wanted all the edges to be in focus too, I did tilt the front standard a little bit, by 4 degrees.

After this, I had to check the light readings in the image. Using an incident light meter reading, I chose to read off the pavement in front of the statue and I believed it to be a perfect mid grey.
However, I couldn't use this reading as it was, for I had to apply Bellows Extension because my subject was reasonably close up. After calculating, I had a factor of 2.3 which I just rounded down to 2, and so I had to add a stop to what the light meter was telling me to shoot. So instead of f64 @ 1/15th second, I used f57 @ 1/15th second. Luckily the aperture is still really small, which allows lots of the image to be sharp.
Reciprocity was not needed to be added as my exposure wasn't over 1 second.
I then proceeded to set up all my settings on the lens, close the preview button and test the shutter. We had a bit of a silly moment where our shutter release cable was being incredibly temperamental, for us to later learn it was still locked and we needed to unlock it. That situation got me rather stressed and I wanted to just take the photo and be done with it; I certainly could use this camera to teach me some patience!
However, after that was sorted we did manage to take the images by inserting the film, recocking the shutter removing the dark slide and shooting. I did forget to flip the dark slide around so I knew what side had been exposed but luckily I only had one film holder and so it wasn't confusing at all, just something to work on if there's a next time.
After both of my images were taken my friend took some shots and we packed the camera away.