Portrait with Baby Crown Graphic

Large Format senior portrait, why not.

I try to create a more natural bokeh with sublte front tilt.

Didn’t want to experiment too much because it wasn’t really time to. But next time I need to mount the camera side way and do some front swing.

Look at the Ektar glow here, with everything else it made this photo looks like it is from Alice in the wonderland or the wizard of oz.

  Shh… The client hasn’t even seen these yet.

  Some of you may already knew that I have purchased a Baby Crown Graphic recently.  It’s a 2 1/4″ x 3 1/4″ press camera with limited front and back movements. However, instead of shooting sheet films I am using a “22” Graphic roll film adapter instead. Essentially it’s a 6x6cm back for 120 film, so, it’s a lot more affordable. I serviced the camera as best I could, couple weeks later I took the camera out for this shoot. Mounted with the Kodak Ektar 105mm f3.7, and loaded with Fuji Pro 400H. In a way, this is a test roll.

  It was quite an experience shooting with this thing. Instead of using the range finder, I was using the ground glass to focus, so that I can use my camera movement (tilt, mostly). Using the ground glass to focus slows down the process significantly. Here is the break down (for me anyway):

Try and make your model sit perfectly still. Open the shutter, apply what movements you want to use, focus, adjust movements to fit last focus, focus a final time. Meter, set aperture and f stop, close/cock the shutter. Advance the film, pull the dark slide out, making sure the model didn’t move, (or you’ll have to do all that over again) and then you fire.

Now, it really didn’t take that long, but I did have a hard time getting the model not to move too much as I am trying not to torture my subject, but next time I shall be more strict with this camera. The only other problem I ran into is that I am terrible at remembering to advance the film.

  It turned out pretty good, except for the frame that I double exposed. That Ektar lens has a glow to it, something that I find very interesting. Other than that I think I should look for a graflok rollfilm back, so that it locks on the camera tighter, while hopefully keep the film flatter. Next time, I might use my tried and true Zeiss Tessar that I took off my Rolleiflex, already mounted on a Synchro Compur #00. Tilt Shift Rollei, sounds like fun.