My Ermanox Journey

I can so much see you shooting Wet Plate. If you ever want to Really learn it, I’ll give you a full tutorial (free) if you buy the chems and travel to South Jersey.
 
Ambro51 said:
I can so much see you shooting Wet Plate. If you ever want to Really learn it, I’ll give you a full tutorial (free) if you buy the chems and travel to South Jersey.
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I’m fairly confident in saying that I don’t think wet plate is ever going to be part of my future (of course never say never!), and I’m pretty sure my wife will make sure of that too. Besides I’m still trying to get dry plate down!
 
Intriguing! I wonder why? I know there was a vogue a couple of years ago for taking photos with a technque that created a similar effect, but I'm damned if I can remember what it was called to look it up.
 
Muggins said:
Intriguing! I wonder why? I know there was a vogue a couple of years ago for taking photos with a technque that created a similar effect, but I'm damned if I can remember what it was called to look it up.
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They call it "tilt-shift", and some DSLR can even do it in-camera. But The real deal is with a large format camera with horizontal movement (Scheimpflug principle)
 
carbo73 said:
They call it "tilt-shift", and some DSLR can even do it in-camera. But The real deal is with a large format camera with horizontal movement (Scheimpflug principle)
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Photojournalist David Burnett did that at the 2012 Olympics with a Speed Graphic and I believe an Aero Ektar (which I think is an f/2.5 lens?), though judging by his photos I think he used the tilt function of the front standard, not the shift function. Guess you could also get the same look with the swing function, if your front standard is so equipped.

In an odd way it’s like turning the Scheimpflug Principle on its head (using a view camera or tilt/shift) as you’re intentionally trying to minimize the depth of focus so that things take on that ‘miniature’ appearance. I suppose that’s why some shots taken with the Ernostar lens at wider apertures might exhibit a similar look.
 
Muggins said:
Intriguing! I wonder why? I know there was a vogue a couple of years ago for taking photos with a technque that created a similar effect, but I'm damned if I can remember what it was called to look it up.
Click to expand...

Sometimes called the "miniature village" effect. Basically it tricks the brain by providing shallow depth of field in a situation (e.g. outdoor picture, normal distance, good light) where the brain has been trained to expect a larger amount of depth of field. Usually we only see this type of limited DOF in close-up photos, so the brain interprets the image as a picture of a miniature scene.

(Presumably a person who had never seen a photograph before would not experience this, because s/he would have formed no expectations and probably would just be puzzled as to why most of the picture was so blurry.)

The Ermanox and David Burnett's Aero Ektar setup are able to create this because they use a large film format and a lens with an aperture larger than normal for that format, so they're able to capture a more limited depth of field than the brain expects. (And never mind that DPReview TV video that came out over the weekend purporting to prove that different format sizes give the same DOF; they were deliberately trying to to keep everything equal, which of course does produce equal results, but you get unequal results if things are NOT equal!)

Yes, you also can do it with a tilt lens, by throwing the image plane at an angle so only a very narrow slice intersects the sensor and results in thin DOF. When I used to shoot food for corporate market research, this was a handy capability: I could either tilt to maintain the plate in focus, even at a fairly wide aperture, or tilt the opposite way to have just a limited slice in focus, handy if we wanted to direct attention to just one item on the plate. Ermanox probably is more fun, though!
 
How, oh how, could I have forgotten the Scheimpflug Principle?

Intriguingly, I have a Kodak circa 1909 with a small degree of rise in the front, presumably for correcting verticals, but it is a film camera so no ground glass to focus on - maybe you just guess?
 
Muggins said:
How, oh how, could I have forgotten the Scheimpflug Principle?

Intriguingly, I have a Kodak circa 1909 with a small degree of rise in the front, presumably for correcting verticals, but it is a film camera so no ground glass to focus on - maybe you just guess?
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I’d think that the viewfinder that’s above/next to the lens rises along with the lens, doesn’t it?

If your film plane is parallel to the building (or anything with vertical lines), then presumably the verticals should all be vertical (no keystoning). It’s the tilt function of both the rear standard and front standard (such as a view camera) that corrects the verticals (well actually the rear standard corrects the shape, the front standard corrects the focus). I suppose in the case of your Kodak, the vertical rise would be if you have too much ground and you want more sky, or if by having the film plane parallel to the building, it’s cutting off the top of it. I’d think that the viewfinder would rise and fall in concert with the front standard of that Kodak, but I could be wrong.
 
You know what, Vince? For my next challenge, I'll find a camera with something I don't understand*, but not describe it to you, just name the camera, and you can solve it for me!

More seriously, I've just fished the camera off the shelf, and you are absolutely right - the viewfinder is attached to the front standard, and moves with it. Link to similar camera below - note the lever under the lens which adjusts the verticality of the standard (moves the top backwards & forwards), and the knurled knob on the LH side of the photo that controls rise and fall. If it took 120 film (and didn't have bellows that make scary crunching noises) I'd have probably used it enough to work that out, but it takes 118, which hasn't been made for 60 years, so it's mostly a shelf queen.

http://licm.org.uk/livingImage/Kodak_FPK-E2.html

*OK, howsabout 1930s folders with shutter releases in horribly awkward places?
 
When you are shooting glass plates, what would you say that your average # of exposures per day is - half-dozen, perhaps? I can't imagine wanting to bracket extensively.
 
JeffS7444 said:
When you are shooting glass plates, what would you say that your average # of exposures per day is - half-dozen, perhaps? I can't imagine wanting to bracket extensively.
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Depends - one day here in New Mexico I shot 15 plates, and at those Civil War reenactments I'll shoot 30-40 (I have 47 glass plate holders). It's pretty much one shot per scene, so I better get the exposure right!
 
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