Birth of landscape photography

Seen in Beyond the Lens: New York times had a great article about Edward Weston and his career as landscape photographer. For me he's up there with Ansel Adams and both used large format cameras for their work.

Lost and found

Well, only lost. Lost my cable release. 8$ spent and used 2 times. Not sure it it was worth 4$ both times. I know the thing is somewhere, but just can't find it.

Results

Got the latest batch of negatives back from the shop today. The good news first. All four negatives seem to have been shot the right way around. Good for me.

The not so good news is that two of the negatives show signs of serious light leak. I'll have to mark the film holders and see if they consistently leak or if this is just due my carelessness.

The shot of the old truck looks really good!

Found the shift release "button"

After some more investigation I managed to locate the shift release. The front standard lock has to be open and then you just push down on the shift lock and adjust the front standard sideways. The movement though is quite underwhelming 1cm left or right.

Large format camera movements

I stumble upon a picture of similar camera than I have and it definitely looks like I should be able to shift the lens board. I just can't find instructions how and for the life of me I can't do it om my camera. Infuriating!

Picture of the camera with lens board shifted in the rightmost image.

Large format camera movements

I should be able to:

Raise the lens board - check
Drop the bed - check
Shift the lens board - GgggrrR!

Sunday shots

I was having a lazy Sunday, mostly driving around running small errands. I put my Graflex into the trunk so if I happen about something interesting I might take a picture or two. I ended up taking 3 shots. One of the Golden Gate bridge and two in Alamo Square here in San Francisco. Pretty touristy stuff, but have to see how they turn out.

I dropped the films off for development today and will get them back on Wednesday.

Inspecting the equipment

Haven't had any time to take pictures with the big camera. Instead I have been spending my free time making a movie and taking pictures of that with my DSLR. Some pictures can be seen in Flickr .

Today I spent some time troubleshooting my inside-out negatives. I still stand behind my instructions on loading the film. I went through the negatives and it seems that only last 4 are exposed on the correct side of the film. I also checked all the already loaded film holders and all of them seemed OK.

All the hassle must have been problems with the initial loadings. Have to start being more careful.