[LargeFormat] Lensboards on the road

[Clive Warren]

At 16:05 06/04/02 -0500, Hornford, Dave wrote:
>For those of us who venture off the beaten track with your LF gear what
>do you do about lens & lensboards?
>
>Do you have each lens mounted to a lensboard? Change them in the field?
>What do you do to protect them?

The field outfit here contains small lenses mounted on lensboards. The 
lensboards for the camera are 1/8" thick 4"x4" flat alloy panels. Each lens 
is stored in a Ziplok freezer bag to keep out moisture and the biggest 
potential problem, dust. They all live in a single camera bag together with 
the camera. Each lens lives in its own padded area within the bag.

I am currently rationalising lensboards across cameras and am making a 4x4 
adapters for most of 'em. This means that a number of cameras can share the 
same lenses easily.

Was off the beaten track yesterday with Robert Lawrence - scrambling 
through trees and fields with passing natives and wildlife. We had the 
protection of two large cameras to swing at them if they came too 
close....  My field kit was only slightly heavier than Roberts for that 
particular shoot. I was carrying a Speed Graphic 4x5 in its wonderful 
vulcanised case, together with a 15" telephoto, and Graflex bulb flash gun 
with additional remote bulb flash head and about four grafmatics.  All of 
the kit fits nicely in the case - well the lens is a Wollensak that was 
made for the Graflex cameras and I'm sure the bottom right compartment in 
all these cases is designed to take the telephoto mounted on the 
lensboard.  When I say carrying the kit, this is only in the loosest terms 
- it was more like on wheels as I was kindly lent the photographic 
equivalent of a golfcart on large wheels that did an excellent job of the 
several fields we walked through :-)  Photos for the Forum to follow.....

Cheers,
            Clive