[LargeFormat] Polaroid film/ My first photos

[rstein]

Dear Nephew John,

     Do not tease your cousin Becky! Pulling your shirt up over your head to
cover the back of the camera is a terrible thing to do, unless you have a
tattoo of a lens with the aperture centered around your belly button.

    Your point about the focussing hood is well taken - semantics, again. We
of the more elegant school refer to it as a focussing cloth. In my case
there is absolutely nothing more elegant than a 1.5 metre square of fraying
black broadcloth that alternately wraps around the neck in a strangle hold
or slips off the camera while you are trying to focus. It is a wind magnet.
I resist adding weights to it or clipping it to the back of the camera as I
just know that if I do it will either whip round and get me in the eye or
pull the camera and tripod over like HMS CAPTAIN in a heaving sea.

    In the studio I have resorted to a Linhof right angle viewer  - picked
up secondhand unused by someone who had no idea what it was. It is a
godsend.

     Uncle Dick

PS: I have stopped looking through the right angle viewer during the actual
exposure as it is hard to distinguish fine detail in the subject through the
film holder. Much better to just look over the top of the camera.