Shooting moving objects with 4 x 5 field camera

Kids these days!
Bannister and Landy on the final turn, during the "Miracle Mile" race at the 1954 Empire Games in Vancouver.


I got to print from what I believe was the original negative when a Vancouver Sun customer ordered a reprint.
Charlie Warner was the photographer. I believe he used a Speed Graphic. By the time I worked there (late 1970s), he was the manager of the department - my boss!
It was the first 4x5 negative I ever printed from .

excellent inspiring message thanks everyone

MattKing said:

Kids these days!
Bannister and Landy on the final turn, during the "Miracle Mile" race at the 1954 Empire Games in Vancouver.

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thats great story Matt thanks for sharing!!! my dad's an athlete all his life so the story I know it well

Paul Howell said:

In the 40s, 50s and 60s a many action shots were taken with 4X5 press cameras. In World War II Army and Marine Corps photographers shot with Speed Graphics without rangefinder. The wire frame is often referred to as a sports finder. Lens were often somewhat wide, 127 or 135 to provide room for a crop. The trick is use the rangefinder to pre focus on the spot you pick as the point of action. If far enough way just focus to infinity. If you have a Speed Graphic with focal plane shutter make sure the shutter speeds are accurate. With Tmax400, Trix, or Delta 400 or HP5 at box speed in good daylight lighting, 1/500th of a second at F 16, with focal plan shutter at 1/1000 F11. If you are shooting backlit then you will have to adjust by 2 stops or so. Tricker at dawn or dusk, just try to keep your shutter speed up as high as lighting will allow. Unless you are forced to shoot at 125th or lower handheld is best. press cameras were designed to be hand held. If shooting with a monorail, pick a 135mm lens, heavy duty tripod, shutter cable, use the ground glass to pre focus on the point of action, ,make sure you have enough room in the shot for a crop. You have time you can make a DYI sports finder, not sure how you install one ona monorail.

Both my Graphic and Bush press cameras have sports finders, the sports finder is comprised of a front wire frame that fold up or pops up from front lens standard and a back finder that fold out from the top of the camera. Both are use for better accurate framing.

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thanks for this Paul appreciate it

David Lindquist said:

Paul Caponigro's "Running White Deer."

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There's an interview on youtube where he discusses it - I just found it. He doesn't mention what camera, though. He found it a bit of a mystical experience.

I have a 4x5" wooden folding field camera, as well as a 4x5" monorail camera, and as luck would have it, I have a handheld Razzle 4x5" camera which is perfect for walking around and taking exposures very quickly, including horse racing.

Well the horse racing was a one off, but I managed 12 sheets of film held in two Grafmatic backs, and from memory, every exposure was a winner, unlike the horses I was photographing!

Razzle cameras are no longer made as the manufacturer, Dean, passed away about 10 years ago, but his cameras are around and having personally seen about 10 of them in action; Dean generally road tested every camera he built/converted.

The Razzle cameras are converted Polaroid cameras, that after their conversion use 4x5" sheet film. An aftermarket lens was really needed as the original Polaroid lens was stretched to work very well with the larger format.

My conversion has a Fujinon f/6.3 150mm lens, which is small and perfectly suited to the camera as it easily folds with this lens.

This thread is from 2008 and depicts Dean, the manufacturer and myself with my new Razzle.

I like the linhof sports finder very much:




I also use mine to frame before I take the camera out of the bag. Mine has an additional frame for wide angle lenses (75-90 mm).

numerus said:

I don't know that guy in the link but it shows the linhof sports finder I like very much:

link to ebay: Linhof Sports Finder


I also use mine to frame before I take the camera out of the bag. Mine has an additional frame for wide angle lenses (75-90 mm).

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interesting....like a director's viewfinder......

numerus said:

I don't know that guy in the link but it shows the linhof sports finder I like very much:

link to ebay: Linhof Sports Finder


I also use mine to frame before I take the camera out of the bag. Mine has an additional frame for wide angle lenses (75-90 mm).

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MPP made them as well.

Mick Fagan said:

I have a 4x5" wooden folding field camera, as well as a 4x5" monorail camera, and as luck would have it, I have a handheld Razzle 4x5" camera which is perfect for walking around and taking exposures very quickly, including horse racing.

Well the horse racing was a one off, but I managed 12 sheets of film held in two Grafmatic backs, and from memory, every exposure was a winner, unlike the horses I was photographing!

Razzle cameras are no longer made as the manufacturer, Dean, passed away about 10 years ago, but his cameras are around and having personally seen about 10 of them in action; Dean generally road tested every camera he built/converted.

The Razzle cameras are converted Polaroid cameras, that after their conversion use 4x5" sheet film. An aftermarket lens was really needed as the original Polaroid lens was stretched to work very well with the larger format.

My conversion has a Fujinon f/6.3 150mm lens, which is small and perfectly suited to the camera as it easily folds with this lens.

This thread is from 2008 and depicts Dean, the manufacturer and myself with my new Razzle.

New Razzle 4x5 camera!

This morning I visited Dean Jones to pick up my Razzle camera. It is a Polaroid Land camera converted to take 4x5" sheet film. The day started out not too good as the front tyre on my motorcycle was flat, luckily I got up at 0530 to do some work and noted the flat as I was packing the bike...

www.photrio.com

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Dean also fitted his Razzledog cameras with 90mm f6.8 Angulons. Early versions of the lens were hit & miss in terms of sharpness, Dean found the issue was inconsistent tube sizes of the Compur Rapid shutter, this affected the cell spacing. He would strip the shutter and machine the casing to the correct tube size if it was out of tolerance, and he found that solved the poor sharpness issue.

Shortly before his death he was asking people to measure their shutter's tube size.

Ian

mshchem said:

https://electronics.sony.com/imaging/interchangeable-lens-cameras/all-interchangeable-lens-cameras/p/ilce9m3b

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That's a funny-looking 4x5 camera.

Don_ih said:

That's a funny-looking 4x5 camera.

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Yeah, probably more like a 5x7

Shooting 4x5, best done with very expired Tri-X pack film. 16 exposures in one holder

Don_ih said:

There's an interview on youtube where he discusses it - I just found it. He doesn't mention what camera, though. He found it a bit of a mystical experience.

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Thank you very much for this. I based my guess of a Deardorff on notes (and memory) from a fall 1972 workshop at Yosemite where Paul Caponigro was an instructor. At that time he used both a Deardorff and a Sinar. He had a Deardorff at the workshop. He commented that he liked the aspect ratio of 5 x 7, didn't particularly feel that it stood enlarging better than 4 x 5. I think he was using the Deardorff with a 4 x 5 back, maybe with Polaroid film. It was over 50 years ago...

David

For any action shots I always try to frame in camera with the expectation that I'm going to crop and float the final image with a bit of flexibility.

If I'm photographing a jammer pushing through the pack in a roller derby game, then I don't exactly have time to carefully study every edge of the frame for a random hand or something sticking in an odd place, or if I'm photographing a bird hopping around on branches I can't double check I don't have distracting bright spots at my edges.

So I try to set up with a generally pleasant background across a wide area before even trying to frame a photo, and position my main subject such that I'm confident I have enough negative to work with reliably when I get home and actually have time to study things in detail.


I don't find the flip up wireframe sight on my Busch Pressman to match the 135mm lens I have on it all that nicely. It frames for a slightly wider lens, and personally I rather be sighting in slightly less than the film captures, but there are two styles of sight that I've seen that I'm tempted to make for myself.


The first style was somewhat of an anti-aircraft inspired gun sight. Simple rear post that you line up with a front sight post, and then around that a wireframe for roughly the 1/3 mark around the image, assuming a slight crop. A random photographer I met in a park here one time had a rig like that, and their argument for it made sense and agreed with my limited experiences so far: If they couldn't rely on an accurate edge framing while using their large format hand held, then they were only going to care about their centre and rough thirds for framing. Therefore there is no need for the extra size needed to frame the edges carefully.


The other style that seemed slick was for working off a tripod with prepositioning. Instead of just a wire frame sight, the photographer had a sheet of plexiglass with a framed border in front of a centre post to sight down. They would position the camera on a tripod with the usual darkcloth method and frame for an expected background. The plexiglass viewfinder above the camera had 1/2 and 1/3 grid line marks, but the photographer I saw using it would also add additional notes and marks with whiteboard markers.


They were using it for dog agility courses, but horses are really just larger dogs with hard feet... So as long as you have a known trail to set up with it should work fine. I had also run into them using it for less predictable subjects with ducks on a pond, where they had used their markers to draw up notes for where they were hoping ducks would be moving and reminders for areas they didn't want ducks in.

I probably am the only one here with a Littman 45 Single IV, I proved to myself that I like the idea of a rangefinder 4x5 simply by mounting a Pocket Instamatic onto the frame of a view camera.

A Graflex, Linhof or Press Graphic camera is the obvious choice.

Converted Polaroid 110’s are cool though.