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LF: Shooting hand held 4x5

Dean Jones

New member
I recently took the plunge and decided to shoot the fourteen artists who either reside at, or have a studio within 'Montsalvat', an artist's colony situated near Melbourne, Australia... It turned out a much bigger quest than I first envisaged, but it was a lot of fun over a couple of months. It was to become an exhibition that's currently running in the Long Gallery. I tried several B/W film types but after two hundred plus negs, I arrived at an absolute favourite...Chinese ERA 100 4x5 sheetfilm, stuff I originally bought for testing purposes only, now I love it....developed in HC for six minutes, it scans like a dream and leaves many more expensive filmstocks in the dark. My Razzle 900 handled it extremely well and far outperformed the Canon 5D I used for checking the lighting setup. I had fitted a press shutter with an old (chipped front element) 150mm f5.6 Schneider and shot almost everything wide open at 1/30th of a second. Images can be viewed here: http://www.pbase.com/razzledog/razzle_900
It sure helped shooting hand held using a radio trigger to fire the flash.
 

Daniel Buck

New member
nice!

I shoot my speedgraphic hand-held fairly often, it fun shooting a big camera handheld :) I've not tried using external flashes yet with the speed, I've got some pocketwizards and flashguns for my digital, maybe I should try that sometime!
 

Dean Jones

New member
Radio Razzle

I simply used the cheap Chinese 'popshing' trigger, then I could 'do the walk' to find the best angle without falling over the wire.....
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Hi Dean,

Here's what you do with pBase. cleick on any of your images so it is the larger size. Right mouse click or for Mac control-click and chose "Open Image in New Window:. From the top of the page copy the URL. If you quote this post you will then see how it's inserted between


111802100.M1MGVxIF.jpg


Kind wishes,

Asher
 

Dean Jones

New member
Thanks Jim...coming from you this is most appreciated. I checked out your site and figure what you're doing with shallow DOF is exactly the effect I'm after. The area of real sharpness, fading instantly into a nice soft bokeh is brilliant, so I have begun experimenting with a few older (and newer) lenses that I'd previously given up on. The also tried to obtain a similar effect by building a LF swivel attachment that resembles an overgrown lens baby. Selective focus and soft edges are the way to go.
I thought about using an Aero Ektar, a la Bjarte Borkum or David Burnett (every couple of years he makes an inquiry about a Razzle) but the radioactive rear elements together with the absolute bulk of the thing put me off. At present I quite like the results from a few projection lenses I have, at least it's something to play with until a Xenotar f2.8 comes my way. anyways.....

Thanks for the advice Asher.....I'll practice gettin' some more pics up shortly.... (heh heh)
 
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