[LargeFormat] Typical - lovely weather for landscapes

[Clive Warren]

At 5:07 pm +0100 19/6/02, Clive Warren wrote:
>At 3:36 pm +0100 19/6/02, mark.blackman1@btinternet.com wrote:
>>Here I am, sitting in an office in central London, whilst outside 
>>we have a lovely blue sky with fluffy white clouds, good light in a 
>>few hours & where am I?
>>
>>How does everyone else cope with this? Do you sit fuming, knowing 
>>of a shot you'd just love to take with the ideal conditions 
>>outside, but can't get to?
>
>Having been watching the same skies all day, just left the office 
>early clutching a new to me Series V Protar on a board and hope to 
>load up the holders now. Sometimes you just have to take the work 
>home and do the photography when the time is right!!

Mark,

It was good shooting light 'til 8.30pm and none of the wind that 
stopped me going out late yesterday. Popped off a few shots to check 
out the Series V Protar (8x10) - what a delight to use!  Was a little 
stuffed subject-wise but there may be something interesting in the 
holders. Hope to get into the darkroom tonight and soup 'em.

Focusing at f18 wasn't the nightmare I had expected and luckily the 
lens board went straight on the 8x10 B&J - wouldn't have been my 
first choice for camera but had just about enough bellows room to do 
a couple of inches of front rise. It did need some tripod juggling to 
keep the back straight though as the bound bellows were forcing the 
rear standard to take on some back tilt.

Shooting with a 365mm lens was a bit more of a challenge as the 
subject was big and there were a lot of angles which meant that only 
limited swing could be used. After the good experience of focusing at 
f18, I tried focusing at f32 on the coke bottle lens and again there 
was plenty of light. What a difference good weather makes! It took 
about three times as long to set up with the longer focal length with 
the difficult subject - really made me appreciate the little Protar 
and its depth of field (183mm focal length). Les, can see why you are 
such a fan of these little wonders.

Had more than my fair share of people asking about the camera and 
what exposure was being used. Just in case they were dialogue meters, 
conversation about the weather seemed safer......

Hope that you arrived home in time to get out there and take some shots.

Cheers,
        Clive