need exposure advice for packard shutter

I just recently purchased a B&J 5x7 with a Bausch & lomb tessar lens, and a packard shutter. I have never used a packard shutter, and was wanting to know the best method for calculating shutter speed/ exposure. Any advice is greatly appretiated.
Mark

kayakerguy said:

I just recently purchased a B&J 5x7 with a Bausch & lomb tessar lens, and a packard shutter. I have never used a packard shutter, and was wanting to know the best method for calculating shutter speed/ exposure. Any advice is greatly appretiated.
Mark

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I use Packards with a couple of different lenses. The "instant" time on Packards is about 1/20 sec (give or take), but that varies on the size of the shutter and your air bulb squeezing technique. Unless I'm working with flash, I try to stop down enough to make my exposures at least 1/2 second or more. I'll even use N.D. filters if necessary to achieve that goal, unless of course I get lucky and 1/20 @ f/22 is close to dead nuts on...