When will the doh`s end?

Amund · Sep 6, 2005

Lately I have been cursing at my 150mm f/5.6 Fujinon-W for it`s small image circle, not allowing almost any front tilt before vignetting.Not always easy to see this on the groundglass, so I ended up with a bunch of lousy negs because of this.
I was halfway ready to buy a 150mm Sironar-S to get over this..Then it came to me, I`ve alwasy had this rubber lenshood on it, quite large actually, the type that can extend to three different lengths.. So... I pushed it a notch deeper, and my tilt was back! Doh.........
I can`t imagine the Sironar-S can be much sharper than this little Fujinon, it`s super-sharp even wide open.

I`m still amazed by the number of mistakes it possible to do with LF, just when you though you had done them all....

Donald Qualls · Sep 6, 2005

My experience has been that the number of potential mistakes and the number of opportunities in a given system are approximately equal. Build a system with a small number of potential mistakes (incorrectly referred to as "foolproofing", which in fact merely reminds you how resourceful fools really are), and there are a similarly small number of ways to use the system well. Build a system (like a well made large format camera) with many ways to use it well, and there will be a plethora of ways to screw up with it.

The process of reducing mistakes and increasing successful use of systems is called "learning."

mark · Sep 6, 2005

It is not DOH!!!!! it uis a learning experience and no they never end.

Donald Miller · Sep 6, 2005

Front tilt eats up lens coverage faster then any other movement. The reason that this is so is that when front tilt is used the plane of the image circle becomes the hypotenuse of a right triangle.

BradS · Sep 6, 2005

Blix, Funny story to be sure. Thanks for sharing. Isn't reassuring to know that LF offers a whole new world of exquisite opportunities to screw up? My most favored way of messing up a perfectly good sheet of LF film is to pull the darkslide while the shutter is still open....

Jeremy · Sep 6, 2005

BradS said:
My most favored way of messing up a perfectly good sheet of LF film is to pull the darkslide while the shutter is still open....

Or to open the shutter back up after the exposure before replacing the dark slide and removing the film holder

Did this once yesterday.

roteague · Sep 6, 2005

Jeremy Moore said:
Or to open the shutter back up after the exposure before replacing the dark slide and removing the film holder

Try QuickLoads - its pretty obvious when the slide it out... then again, that can be overlooked as well.

glbeas · Sep 6, 2005

How about forgetting to cycle a grafmatic shut before pulling it from the camera? Argh!

Amund · Sep 6, 2005

Donald Miller said:
Front tilt eats up lens coverage faster then any other movement. The reason that this is so is that when front tilt is used the plane of the image circle becomes the hypotenuse of a right triangle.

I have a 250mm Fujinon f/6.7 on my way, for use on both 4x5 and 8x10.
I guess the 398mm image circle will be enough for some front tilt on my 4x5..

John Bartley · Sep 6, 2005

BradS said:
Blix, Funny story to be sure. Thanks for sharing. Isn't reassuring to know that LF offers a whole new world of exquisite opportunities to screw up? My most favored way of messing up a perfectly good sheet of LF film is to pull the darkslide while the shutter is still open....

My best "groaner" is when I pulled the dark slide off the BACK film instead of the one facing the lens. Talk about "DOH!" :rolleyes:

cheers

Amund · Sep 6, 2005

John Bartley said:
My best "groaner" is when I pulled the dark slide off the BACK film instead of the one facing the lens. Talk about "DOH!" :rolleyes:

cheers

I haven`t done that one, yet
Will probably happen when I shoot my first 8x10 $10-a-piece chromes....

Ole · Sep 6, 2005

Forget to close the aperture after focusing at f:3.5. Forget to close the shutter before inserting film. Give film 20 seconds at f:3.5 instead of 1/100 at f:16...

The horrible "scrunch" of the film falling out of the holder when you insert the dark slide is how I learned not to use 13x18cm film in 5c7" holders.

Pulling the wrong dark slide has been mentioned...

Loading film and interlef paper together - paper out.

Forget to tighten the tripod head.

Slamming the holder in so hard that the camera back shifts (I have to do this with one of the hoolders for my 18x24cm plate camera - so I aim&focus, slam the holder in, pull it out, reset camera, slam it in again, then expose. Only sometimes I forget one or more steps).

Set everything up nicely leveled and ready for a long exposure. Inset film, do everything correct, use self-timer since it's a long exposure. Just as the "whirr" turns to "click", see one tripod leg sink into the mud...

John Bartley · Sep 6, 2005

Ole said:
Set everything up nicely leveled and ready for a long exposure. Inset film, do everything correct, use self-timer since it's a long exposure. Just as the "whirr" turns to "click", see one tripod leg sink into the mud...

LOL - that sounds like something that "will" hapen to me

MenacingTourist · Sep 6, 2005

I recently tried to pull a polaroid out for development and had forgotten to switch the holder. I devoloped it anyway and on the beautiful white print I wrote "you suck" with a sharpie marker. It's now a lovely reminder on my wall

Shmoo · Sep 6, 2005

...how about opening up the lens to compose/focus and forgetting to close it down to shoot? Yeah, I intended to overexpose with highly narrow DOF...yeah...that's my story and I'm sticking with it...

raucousimages · Sep 7, 2005

How about not marking your quick-loads "EXPOSED" and sending the wrong ones to the lab and using the exposed ones twice. Or not getting the bellows behind all of the clips and having light leaks on 10 8x10 chromes. Or waking at 3:00 AM to see a forest fire up the mountain from your house, grab your pelican 1600 case with all of your LF gear, drive four miles , set up, argue with the cops only to discover the film holders are still in the darkroom where you loaded them last night. There was no need to put them in the case tonight, I wont need them until tomorrow. Or dont bring a tripod. I cant hand hold a Toyo 45AII I discovered. Or no bug spray at the Great Salt Lake in late summer although I liked the shadows of the mosquitos IN the camera.

Mongo · Sep 7, 2005

John Bartley said:
My best "groaner" is when I pulled the dark slide off the BACK film instead of the one facing the lens. Talk about "DOH!" :rolleyes:

cheers

This is my personal favorite. I like it so much, that I've done it three times. Ouch!

Ole · Sep 7, 2005

raucousimages said:
... I cant hand hold a Toyo 45AII I discovered. ...

That's what Technikas are for (see avatar)!

Bob F. · Sep 7, 2005

I try to have a sequence that I always follow, in particular I always fire the shutter a couple of times before pulling the darkslide (trying to remember to pull the right one!). This does a few things: being at the front reminds me to check the shutter speed and f-stop and that I have in fact fitted that 3-stop ND filter I was planning to use; it exercises the shutter to free it up and very importantly, it won't fire if I have forgotten to slide the preview lever over... Of course, this all falls to shreds when I am in a hurry and the light is changing...

What I do keep forgetting is to square the front and rear frames and then spend 5 minutes under the cloth wondering why I can't get a proper focus across the whole subject.

Cheers, Bob.

Dan Fromm · Sep 7, 2005

Speed Graphic. Was trying out a new -- to me, anyway -- lens in Compur. The Compur is naturally suspect, so I shot wide open using the camera's focal plane shutter, down one stop with the FPS, ... , and finally stopped down to an aperture that needed a timed exposure longer than 1/30. No problem, use the Compur and pray it won't run much too slow. But I left the FPS where it had stopped after my last shot with it. Yep, closed. Yep, ouch!

df cardwell · Sep 7, 2005

Don't know whether to mention the great secret of view camera shooters, back from the stone age... practise without film.

Even Edw. Weston practised.

Even Ansel set up the camera, did compositions, and executed them...without film.

I think one of the reasons many people make better pictures with 8x10 than with 35mm is that the cost of failure is sufficient to get one's attention.

Certain things help if they become habitual: zeroing the camera movements after every shot; on a monorail, setting the standards in the same place, always; thinking ahead, like classic Leica shooters: have a default exposure floating in your consciousness in case you have exactly 30 seconds and one piece of film to make your best image; strip your outfit to the bare minimum when you go shoot.

TAKE ONE LENS. Take one filter. Take 6 sheets of film. Don't bracket.

After 30 years, I keep a laminated 'cheat sheet' dangling from the tripod. Filter factors, reciprocity info., all that stuff that falls out of my head when I see a picture I want to take. I guess the point is that if I don't forget all the technical stuff, it isn't compelling enough to be a good picture.

.

laz · Sep 7, 2005

The DOHs end when you're dead. Unless of course you intend on comming back, but I've heard images of ghosts are impossible to focus so I suspect the opposite is also true so don't bother!

colrehogan · Sep 7, 2005

laz127 said:
The DOHs end when you're dead. Unless of course you intend on comming back, but I've heard images of ghosts are impossible to focus so I suspect the opposite is also true so don't bother!

LOL!

My most recent DOH was after I released the shutter. Someone said hi to me (I was standing on a bridge) and then I couldn't remember whether I'd pulled the darkslide at all.

It turned out that I hadn't. Oh well, I managed to get several shots of that particular scene.

Bill Hahn · Sep 7, 2005

A new DOH! for me....

A couple of weeks ago I was shooting and the meter was always showing
a shutterspeed of 30 for the f-stop I was using. I was congratulating
myself on the constant light, and the fact that I had set the shutterspeed
to 30 and left it there for the past few shots, when I realized that I set the shutterspeed on my 135 lens and had changed to the 210 about 3 shots ago....had I set the shutterspeed to 30 on the 210?

Nope.

Donald Qualls · Sep 7, 2005

I'm afraid I pulled one of the classic ones. Did it some time ago, but just found out about it today.

Went out with my plate cameras to shoot some images for the APUG Anniversary Gallery. Had five holders loaded with Fomapan 100, and five with TXT. Shot 4 Fomapan, all good (two of each scene -- insurance, first time I've done that). Exposed 2 of the Tri-X, and was proud I'd remembered to change exposure for the faster film.

Got home, into the darkroom, loading the first sheet of each pair into the developing tubes -- hey, that's odd, it almost felt like the notches were in the wrong corner of the Tri-X; had to rotate it differently to curl it emulsion in for the tube. Loading the second sheets into storage tubes so I could reload the holders -- damn, the Tri-X was in the holder backward, that one too.

Checked the other three TXT holders, they were fine. Of course, I hadn't exposed them...

I'll be posting elsewhere on methods of pushing Tri-X five stops, in hopes of getting *something* from those two sheets of TXT.

When will the doh`s end?

Amund

Donald Qualls

mark

Donald Miller

BradS

Jeremy

roteague

glbeas

Amund

John Bartley

Amund

Ole

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John Bartley

MenacingTourist

Shmoo

raucousimages

Mongo

Ole

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Bob F.

Dan Fromm

df cardwell

laz

colrehogan

Bill Hahn

Donald Qualls

When will the doh`s end?

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