4x5 In Dark Areas.

[Gavin Seim]

I've spent the last three days roaming around Carlsbad Caverns. It's truly amazing. It's also incredibly hard to photograph well.

A film side challenge I found however was the low low. When using a view cam it's quite a challenge just to get composed and focused as the lightest areas are often an Exposure Value or only 3-4.

I could focus the lightest area, but with tilts and shifts, trying to make sure shadows are in focus etc it was a great challenge. In the end I got it as close as I could and stopped down. Which of course led to long exposures, made even longer by reciprocity.

We'll see how I did in time. If any of you have any low light focus techniques for 4x5 to share please do.

[TSSP]

Whats makes these low light situations easier is a depth of field calculator.

Here is a Rodenstock one:http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/155145-REG/Rodenstock_260700_Depth_of_Field_Calculator.html

And a Linhof one: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/115415-REG/Linhof_025009_Depth_of_Field_Chart.html

And there are far more expensive versions out there, too.

But like everything these days- theres an app for that.  Several free DOF calculators exist, most are pretty good, but finding one that includes 4x5 or especially 8x10 gets hard.  So do your research on the app, especially if you're forking out money for it.

Also, if you are going to be using only a few lenses with your field camera you can take some white gaff tape and write focal length of the lens you will be using and note either where on the lens bed the standard is for focusing your hyperfocal distance-infinity or the mm distance from the lens' nodal point.shutter to the film plane to get max DOF.

Also, when trying to get EVERYTHING in focus and eek out as much as you can even after movements, for 4x5 diffraction, according to some, starts to appear after f/22, but even making my big enlargement I dont see much difference in minute detail rendering until f/32ish (and thats mostly tiny tiny things, like edge contrast around individual leaves in a landscape).  Just something to be aware of.

All the best-

[Gavin Seim]

Good tips man. And as for an app, I've been loving Optimum CS Pro for both digital and 4x5. Very useful for optimum apertures and distance scales.