Today was time to take the New Countess full plate camera to Clevedon and try some images of the wonderful Victorian Pier. Shame it was so breezy – not ideal for longish exposures with a huge camera like this one!
With two slides I had 4 exposures to make. It was a good opportunity to try the (supposedly) F384 lens too as it was a good focus length (12 inches – 300mm ) for the job.
Bringing the exposed paper negatives home for developing, I found that the lens I was using – Rapid Aplanat No.3 Ser.D.F.8 (R.O.J.A. vorm. Emil Busch, Rathenow) – was not operating at the indicated F stops – see the title image!
I had tested it in the garden on the pear tree using the widest aperture with no problem – but at the indicated f90 it way over-exposed the image (Paper negative). I tried a couple of other lenses at the same time successfully so thought I’d make some measurements of the diaphragm aperture with digital callipers and calculate the theoretical f-stop (dividing the focal length by the aperture diameter)
As the F stop numbers increase the variance between the indicated F stop and the calculated one increases greatly. Column headings are Focul length, Diameter (of aperture) in 100ths of an inch, The F stop indicated and the F stop calculated.
Using a more familiar lens at F45 for a 2 second exposure I achieved a reasonable if (wind) shaken exposure.
Komentar