After talking recently with Vince Lupo about the nice results he has gotten from his Ermanox I was inspired to get back to shooting with my own plate cameras. They are not as exotic as the Ermanox, but the lenses are good and the big negatives from 120 film produce very nice images.
Since I had not used the plate cameras in some time I had to go through them to check functionality and make sure no pinholes had appeared in the bellows. The Patent Etui looked pretty good, but I'm going to have to clean the shutter before it can make pictures for me again. I couldn't find any pinholes in the Bentzin Primar bellows, and the big old Compur shutter remains very reliable, so that was it. I loaded the camera with my last roll of HP5+ and went to the Botanical Garden which is now fully open again.
It took me half the roll of eight shots to get back into something approaching a competent performance with the Bentzin. I'm looking forward now to shooting more soon with the plate cameras so that I can take advantage of my renewed familiarity with the old folders. I'm thinking I may use the half-frame mask with the Rada film back so that I can get sixteen shots from the 120 roll. I would also like to try shooting some sheet film and some glass plates, but I'll need to look for some good advice on getting set up properly for that.
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